Interesting, Challenging, Novel

The Monterey
1127 South Saint Mary's Street

(in Southtown, below Pereida Street)

The idea behind the Monterey (which, by the way, is not named for the Mexican city, or for the California city, but for the defunct Mercury sedan, like the red one with flashing lights parked by the street to serve as a sort of new-age sign) is that prosperous young professionals around here will appreciate elaborate dishes of locally-sourced foods in a casually hip setting. I'd say they got that right. 

The unexpected relief provided by a cool front this afternoon (only 88 degrees at six o'clock! Wow!) made dining al fresco in the Monterey's gravel yard a tolerable idea. It's not a huge space, just big enough for a dozen tables at the end nearer the building, with café tables beyond, clustered around a chimenea, in what looks like a venue for live music. There is seating inside, about evenly divided between barstools and tables, but where the outside dining area, surrounded by a privacy fence and partially covered by the building's overhang, seemed intimate, the inside seemed downright crowded. We were there early enough, at 6.30, to have our choice. 

As our waiter explained (in what he called his "spiel," which consisted of a single sentence), the dishes are made for sharing; he suggested three plates for the two of us to split, and that proved to be about right. The beer list is extensive, but with almost nothing on it that I had ever heard of. I described what I usually like, and he made suggestions, which we accepted: a North Coast pilsner for me, a Brooklyn ale for my wife.

The hardest part of dining at the Monterey is coming up with a good combination of dishes. There aren't really all that many to choose from; the menu (which, I believe, changes frequently, and from which, according to the waiter, "all the really gross things have been removed") lists about a dozen plates, some of which are clearly not intended as entrées: pickles; toast; french fries. It gives the ingredients for each dish, and therein lies the difficulty. Once we decide, for example, on the cauliflower with coconut curry, salted grapes, cashews and basil, what would complement that? Would smoked fried chicken with pickles go well with country ham, pimento cheese and saltines? Would any of those not be revolting with a plate of Prince Edward Island mussels, ham and corn broth, with jalapeño and cornbread? And how well would they go with the beers we had picked? They all sound good ... well, some more than others, but all to some extent; but constructing what amounts to a three-course dinner is not really a job for amateurs, especially those who don't know what the ingredients are.

In the end, we picked the cauliflower dish, the rice bowl (with yellow squash and mirin-soy chili, and a raw egg plopped down in the middle of it), and a Thai-style sandwich of smoked brisket. And we didn't do too badly in our combinations. 

Last city inspection: October 2011
7 demerits

For me, ordering cauliflower is a rare thing: it spent many, many years high on my List of Five Foods I Will Not Eat Under Any Circumstances, and only had to be removed when a good friend of mine served an Egyptian dish that I thought was mashed potatoes. This cauliflower dish almost didn't make the cut tonight because it contains coconut curry, and my wife feels the same kind of irrational antipathy toward coconut that I feel towards, say, beets. (My hatred of black eyed peas, though, is of course completely rational.) It was, though, the best of the three choices. The vegetable was very nicely grilled, the curry sauce had just the right degree of thick creaminess about it, and the many different flavours in the dish complemented each other in exquisite harmony. 

They did not, however, combine particularly well with the rice bowl, which in turn didn't harmonize particularly well with the brisket sandwich. All three dishes, taken by themselves, were delicious, elaborate and fascinating in their contrasts, but in combination, it was rather like lime jello with Concord grapes and couscous, a combination that might work (visually, at least) on Fat Tuesday, but the rest of the year grates like fingernails on a blackboard. And my North Coast pilsner, which had seemed mellow and crisp before the food came, tasted bitter and smelled worse by the end.  A casualty of the clash. 

Prices at the Monterey are not unreasonable, but neither are they a real sweet deal.  We spent about fifty bucks for two people, normal for this type of restaurant, earning the Monterey only an average rating on that criteria. 

The real draws at the Monterey are the exotic combinations of foods (which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your tastes and experience, or on your luck) and, even more importantly, the relaxed, casual, sociable atmosphere of the place. A good place to go with a large group, if the weather is fine; but then, aren't most places good for large groups of friends?

What You're Looking For

Taquería Datapoint
1702 West Gramercy Place

(at the junction of Fredericksburg and Zarzamora roads)

Let's face it: very few Tex-Mex-style restaurants aspire to a fronteras version of haute cuisine. They're just places where working people can grab lunch; their aim is to provide reasonably good food, done in a familiar style, at prices that the local workforce is willing to pay every day.

With that in mind, Taquería Datapoint is an unqualified success.

This converted fast-food restaurant, which most recently housed a slightly more pretentious Tex-Mex place, offers just what the locals need and want during their lunch hours, as can be inferred from the crowd that squeezed in just as we were leaving this morning. It's a small place, with just seven tables for four, plus a two-top to bring capacity up to a nice, round number. When we arrived, the place was all but empty, and the four employees were enjoying a convivial social hour between the breakfast and lunch rushes. If I had thought that was too many people for such a small place, I'd have been wrong. The two kitchen workers and the two waitresses were just enough warm bodies to keep the place turning over. Only the drive-through window had a line.

The draw isn't just the good quality of food. The portion sizes are on the large side, yet the prices are competitive with other places in the area. The tortillas are hand-made in house, and while the flour tortillas were just good, the corn tortillas were excellent. The chips, served with a roasted-pepper salsa, had a slightly sweet aftertaste that added an interesting note. They could have been fresher, but were perfectly acceptable as offered. The coffee, too, was good, and served in large mugs, which kept the staff from having to spend extra time refilling them, while keeping the customer placated with drink.

Last city inspection: April 2012
15 demerits

Our choices for entrées were from the thirty or so listed lunch plates on the menu: pork al pastor, and milanesa. Both dishes were overloaded with food. The pork al pastor was a huge serving, probably twice as much as would have been expected, and the meat was lean and well-seasoned. Most surprisingly, it had almost no grease. It was served with Spanish rice, which was fresh and tasty, and an unusual serving of refried beans, which had a subtle flavour and the colour of terra cotta.

The milanesa plate came with two good-sized cutlets, the Spanish rice, a small salad, and a huge pile of crinkle-cut French fried potatoes. The fries could have benefitted from a few more seconds in the fryer, but they weren't so undercooked as to warrant grousing about (much as I enjoy that). The breading on the cutlets was brightly seasoned and adhered so well to the meat itself that it was difficult to separate them for tasting. This is, I consider, a good thing. The breading, after cooking, took on a darker colour than I normally see on this dish, and I was expecting to find it tasting burned; but it didn't. It was, in fact, a very good milanesa, having too a tender texture that made superfluous the flimsy steak knife provided.

The place had no ambience beyond the expected fast-food style of the building, but it was clean and neat, and blessedly free of the undesirable insect life that plagues the town at this time of year. Taquería Datapoint fully deserves the crowds that it attracts.

 

What a Tex-Mex Restaurant Is

Mary Lou's Cafe
1002 Pleasanton Road

(between Division and Southcross)

If you looked up "Tex-Mex Restaurant" in the dictionary ... well, you probably wouldn't find anything listed, but in a perfect world (i.e., one that conforms to my personal desires of the moment), you would find a photo spread taken at Mary Lou's Cafe.

Last city inspection: March 2012
22 demerits

That pretty much says it all. The ratings graphic says the rest.

Who's Got Time For This?

Santos Cafe
603 Isom Road
(in the corner of the shopping center, at the intersection of Ramsey)

There is, obviously, a tremendous demand for Tex-Mex food in San Antonio. Within a block of Santos Cafe, for example, there are two other, similar restaurants I'm familiar with: one, a block away toward the freeway, is something of a favourite, the other is across the street, a place I went to once and didn't much care for. And a couple of blocks down Ramsey is yet another, a slightly exotic cucina veracruzana.

So the people opening Santos Cafe must have known they would have competition for the dining dollars of the residents and workers of the area. Unless they believed that three Mexican restaurants in the space of 400 feet was simply not a sufficient density (and, let's be honest, a case can be made for that), they must have had the idea that something they had to offer would lead diners to choose Santos over the other three nearby restaurants.

I don't know.

My friend Rick, who usually accompanies me on these little culinary expeditions around town, met me at this place for a late breakfast or early lunch, about eleven yesterday morning. Santos is conveniently located in between my house below Hildebrand, and his out in Loopland. (That's why the place a block up the street has become a semi-regular place for us to get together.)

Tucked into the corner of the shopping center, Santos is deceptively large inside. So surprising is the size of the main dining room that the word "vast" actually came to mind, but that would be an overstatement. It's a large room, well-lit and painted in a bright, typically Mexican colour, somewhere between orange and terra-cotta. The tables are nicely separated, so I suspect that, even with the hard floors and furnishings, a little white noise or canned music over a P.A. system would be all that's needed to create a sense of privacy in a crowded room. But I can only speculate on that, because at eleven A.M. on a Monday, we were the only customers there.

Last city inspection: November 2011
12 demerits

There were at least three employees, two waitresses and at least one cook. This place seems to do a lot of take-out business — while we were there, several people called to collect trays and trays of food. We chose a table at the farthest point from the kitchen (because there was a TV on the wall in the small dining area there, and I've had my fill of too-loud telenovelas and the kind of sleazy cable shows that seem to be all the rage during those hours of the day (not, I suspect, because people actually watch them, but because they're cheap to produce)). We had more than enough time to settle in, inspect the surroundings, note the pleasant, inexpensive traditional rustic landscapes on the wall, and form an initial impression, before the waitress appeared with menus and took our drink orders.

I decided on the chilaquile plate, a departure from my usual order of one machacado taco and one chilaquile taco; they were out of machacado anyway. Rick asked for fajita tacos, his usual order. We got our drinks — coffee and water — promptly and our orders were taken. 

And then nothing happened. We sat, lazily discussing the unexciting events that had transpired in our lives since we had last seen each other a week before; the tribulations of Rick's bathroom remodel, my own do-it-yourself version of the same (almost finished, after a mere nine months). We each groused about medical conditions and petty marital discords, and about the general lack of excitement in our lives — the last exciting thing was when we went in together on 20 lottery tickets, and didn't win — but eventually we ran out of things to make light conversation about. 

Okay, here's the thing: I can understand that the kitchen might be backed up, what with all those large orders to go. What I can't understand, though, is the inactivity of the two waitresses. Our waitress, in the ten or fifteen minutes we waited, never thought to come with a coffee pot, to refill our cups and explain the delay. The other waitress seemed like a satiric caricature of a waitress — in fact, she reminded me of the sassy dark-haired waitress on the uninspired sit-com, Two Broke Girls, but with less sense of duty. The second waitress sat behind the counter, talking on a cellphone and doing something to her hair, almost the entire time we waited. She looked at us at one point and I thought, Oh good, she's seen us, she'll bring us some more coffee or tell her colleague. But no, nothing. She had thoughts only for her hair and phone.

When the food finally came, it was good enough. The fajitas were well cooked and nicely seasoned, and the chilaquiles, made without eggs in a style more reminiscent of Mexico City than Coahuila y Tejas, were interesting and well made (most restaurants that attempt chilaquiles in this style seem not to know when to take the tortilla chips out of the fryer; whoever's in Santos's kitchen does know). The rice, which I had asked to substitute for potatoes on the plate, was better than average, possibly because it was so early in the day and it had not had time to dry out at all; while the refried beans were, well, soup-like. The had little flavour and way too much time in a blender.

San Antonio, God bless it, is a pretty laid back place. Visitors from Dallas and Houston often are amazed at the slow pace of life around here. They should be: in those cities, only the very rich and the unemployed ever have a relaxed lunch, it seems, but we take our more serene pace as a birthright. Yet there is such a thing as too slow. And if it happens when there's a 1-to-1 ratio between floor staff and customers, what must it be like when the place fills up?

I don't want to know.

The bar, raised a notch

Thai Dee
5307 Blanco

(just south of Jackson-Keller)

Could a great restaurant hide in any less promising spot than the cramped, litter-strewn, delapidated little strip center inhabited by Thai Dee? It seems unlikely. Yet there it is. Fight off the competition for the one remaining parking space, carefully lock your car and step over the rubbish, and enter what I firmly believe is the best Thai restaurant, bar none, in this part of the world. 

I first tried it, I don't know how many years ago, and liked it, but promptly forgot all about it; it's a little off my most-beaten paths, and when we think of Thai food in this household, we always think first of the place on Austin Highway — you know which one — that was our first favourite Thai place. Habits die hard. (And besides, the other place has those bubble drinks that my wife enjoys so much, as an extra-special treat.)

But lately, Thai Dee has resurfaced in my consciousness, and after taking my friend Rick there a few months back, it immediately became his favourite Thai place. So now, when the subject of Thai arises, he thinks of Thai Dee.

The interior is panelled in a medium wood; the only natural light is through the door, which is tempered with glare-reduction plastic. The resulting mix of natural and artificial light (at lunchtime) produces a modestly cool ambience. The décor is, shall we say, eclectic, with inexpensive-looking pictures of traditional Thai dancers, and similar cultural knick-knacks, stuck somewhat haphazardly along the walls, with no apparent regard for the strongly carved pattern of the wood panelling. A counter hovers along the back wall of the dining room, de-emphasizing the service areas beyond. About fifteen to twenty tables are lined up front to back: mostly tables for four, with tables for two along the wall. Surprisingly, considering how good this place is, we've only once had to wait any time at all for a table: the staff is exceptionally industrious, and the kitchen is quick to fill orders, so the turnover at even the busiest times is quick.

Before you order, you're presented with a cup of the soup of the day. The hot-and-sour soup is tasty, but won't win any awards for exceptionalism. Several of the other soups I've tried were superior among their types, and deserving of some sort of medal. (If I could remember which, I'd tell you; I can't, so don't ask.) The lunch specials, which include the aforementioned soup, plus spring rolls and your choice of meat, run generally around eight bucks; a little more if you want shrimp. And for that money you will get enough outstanding food for two lunches. It's all so good, you won't want to stop eating just because you're full, so I have reverted to the old WeightWatchers trick of asking for a go-box as soon as my meal is served. (You always have to ask twice, no matter where you eat. Usually it's because they don't realize you mean you want it right away; at Thai Dee I had to ask two different people because the first guy's English did not extend far enough, and my Thai is limited to mispronouncing words I've seen on a menu.)

Last city inspection: May 2012
7 demerits

Lunching at Thai Dee has forced me to expand my preferences in the cuisine. I used to be smitten with the wonderful dish called (with various spellings) pad wun sen, a mix of glass noodles, egg and meat (usually chicken) with half a dozen vegetables, all stir-fried in a light sauce. It's still a favourite, though I don't think it's a dish Thai Dee excels at. Or maybe it's just that other things I've tried there have been far, far better: lad na, pad see ewe, and khee mao (my new favourite), to name a few. The food has been so good that I have tried to pay it the ultimate compliment of imitation, with limited success: the recipes I've located for these dishes vary enough from the restaurant's that there is, sadly, no comparison.