Too Much.

Boiler House Texas Grill & Wine Garden
312 Pearl Parkway, Building 3

(way in the back, towards the River, behind the CIA)

No doubt the re-developers of the Pearl Brewery complex heartily welcome this trend-following down-home-chic new restaurant. Any addition to their tenant rolls is surely welcome; one that has cachet especially so, as it will draw both locals and tourists, and tourist visits will lend specious justification to the strong desire to snuffle around in the public trough for a ridiculous streetcar line on Broadway (as if tourists are stupid enough to walk three blocks in the summer heat). 

Well, the restaurants and bars at the Pearl are also sufficiently au courant to draw tne New-Age Masters of the local Universe, so this place fits right in, another gilt lily in the bouquet.

It got off to a bad start at the door. I can understand the hostess asking if I had a reservation, because sometimes people with reservations, who arrive to find a restaurant half-empty, don't mention the fact, and the house ends up needlessly keeping a table out of circulation. But when I said no, the young lady asked for a last name. Okay, I thought, a little odd that she'd specify a last name; maybe all those empty tables over there are reserved, and there's actually a waiting list consisting of those three couples at the bar. So I gave her my last name. 

Then she asked for my first name. Hmmm, I thought; my last name is not exactly uncommon; it's possible that someone with the same last name is already on the list. Okay, I gave her my first name. 

Then she said she needed a phone number.

Alright, the light bulb popped on: this is a marketing scheme. No, you can't have my f***ing phone number. You don't need to call me, I'm right here waiting to be seated.

Trying hard to not be in a bad mood (and, to my own surprise, generally succeeding), I and my wife followed the young lady to a table off to the side, where I was able to sit with my back to the television. A lot of good it did: in that half-lit space, the screen was blindingly bright as a searchlight scanning the sky, or one of those irritating new LED billboards along a freeway at night, and its flickering glare reflected off everything in the room.

The menus feature a lot of wines, as one would expect in a "wine garden." I'm not a big wine drinker, but I do like the occasional glass with a nice meal. I skipped to the food listings, to get some idea of what my choice might be before selecting something to complement the meal. I had come to this new restaurant because it showed up on the list of steak houses on Urbanspoon as a three-dollar-sign place, and because I had never heard of it, and don't like the idea of restaurants sneaking into my part of town without my knowledge.* The menu listed a couple of appetizers, seven small plates, five sides, and a half-dozen large plates, in addition to the "boiler cuts," which included a few steak options.

A grilled snapper topped that list, stuffed with crab for $50 ... on my menu. On my wife's, we discovered, the same dish was $32. The cheapest steak was antelope, for $44 ($41 on my wife's menu.) There was also an over-large steak for somewhere north of $90. So the viable choices for plain ol' beef steak were narrowed down to a ribeye, a New York Strip, and a filet mignon, each priced at more than $40: in other words, way beyond anything I'd have been willing to pay for a piece of meat unaccompanied by a glass of bourbon, a good cigar, and a massage with a happy ending. Plus, I was upset that, in the few weeks this joint had been open, the prices had already been bumped up, sometimes dramatically. So we decided to split a couple of small plates and a side, and made our choices accordingly. (And we had learned a lesson the last time we went to one of these modern-day tapas houses: there are very few drinks that go nicely with everything you order, so unless you plan to change wines (or beers) with each dish, it's better to stick to basics: water, or iced tea.)

The waitress (the only completely competent part of the service at the Boiler House) informed us that the dishes would be brought out as they came ready in the kitchen. This is an irksome trend in restaurants, at best a case of making lemonade out of lemons; it lets the business get by with a smaller kitchen staff, and obviates the need to hire those who learned that lesson in cookin' school on how to make things come out at the same time. It is another way of cutting operating costs at the employees' expense. It was charming when I encountered the practice at Feast; it was already tedious by the time I encountered it at the Monterey; now it's just downright slack, another silly trend that is ripe to find itself in the dustbin of fashion, but will probably continue.

The first small plate to drift out of the kitchen was pork pincitos, a pretty white plate with two skewers, each impaling a dozen or so small pieces of pig meat and lying in a green sauce applied with a minimalist's hand, and what looked and tasted like some home-grown artisan cilantro. The presentation was elegant, and the meat was nicely grilled, with a crusty seasoned coating along the edges, but too fatty. Way too fatty.

No city inspection yet.

The next thing that came out from the kitchen (after a longer interlude than I would have liked) was an order of clams casino. This was a compromise dish for us: it wasn't something either of us particularly wanted, but of the choices available it was sort of a least-bad option. (I wonder whether there's really much of a market for "bison Tartare.") There were six clams on a bed of seaweed, which our waitress admitted was edible, "but I wouldn't recommend it." The shellfish were prepared with a breadcrumb crust and a good blend of seasonings, and were almost worth the price charged ($11). But too salty. Way too salty.

Finally came the side dish we'd ordered, zucchini with quinoa and golden raisins. Here, at least, was a dish that was worth what they were asking for it ($8). It had an excellent taste, with the zucchini not overdone and the quinoa simmered to perfection. It was almost perfectly prepared, except that it was too oily. Way too oily.

I have no use for this place. Its appeal is all newness and snobby chic. Next time I want a steak, I'll drive out past the Loop and go to Outback or something like that. If I want a nice wine selection, there are a dozen good places out there (the closest being, I think, 20Nine, at the Quarry). Likewise if I just want elaborate artistry in the preparation of the food: you can't swing a dead armadillo in this town without hitting a place like that. And if I want tapas ... well, I've enjoyed the other such places I've been to in town, certainly more than I enjoyed this one, but frankly have found them all to share the flaw of a too-limited menu. Five or seven small plates isn't enough, especially if they're only on the menu to impress the clientèle with the chef's imagination in the fusion of exotic ingredients and his use of white space on the plate. There need to be twenty-five to forty choices to make the small-plates idea work well; and that, in turn, requires a chef who not only can create inspired dishes, or what passes these days for inspired dishes, but also can manage the menu with an eye toward the bottom line. It is possible, you know, to have a twenty-five-option small-plate menu and still not have to stock an entire HEB in the back room. 

 

* I generally don't go to new places until
they've lost their new-car smell, but had
recently been to the only other steak houses
in the area.

Skip Dessert

Two Step Restaurant & Cantina
9840 North Loop 1604 West

(at Braun Road, on the Northwest Side)

I have a friend, Roland, who lives out in the suburban sprawl of the northwest side, in one of those indistinguishably attractive, oak-studded subdivisions that litter the ground where the grid of streets in the older part of town gives way. He and I and my side-kick Rick made plans to see the new Bond flick, Skyfall, and since Roland has had surgery recently and can't drive, we went out to collect him. We had planned to have lunch at a restaurant near the theater, but some last-minute discussion revealed that none of us was really interested in the place we had planned on. Roland had been there numerous times and pronounced it "okay," hardly a recommendation; Rick had chosen it from a short-list I'd provided after half an hour's research on options in that area; and I had included it on the short-list because it was hyped as a "New Orleans-style cafe." Being a native Orleanian, I was interested. But then I found out that it's a chain restaurant outlet with no connection to New Orleans beyond the fancy of some Hollywood entrepreneur, and anyone who's read more than a couple of the reviews on this site knows that I consider chain restaurants to be the culinary equivalent of relative-humanist Tee-Ball. You know: everybody's good, nobody's better than anybody else, and everybody gets a trophy. A chain restaurant's fine when you're in a strange town at dinnertime, or when reliability is more important that artistry. Maybe someday I'll go to that "New Orleans-style cafe," but not this trip.

So instead, we pulled into Two Step Restaurant & Cantina. I had only heard of the place because someone connected to the place had sent me an email a while back, inviting me to have lunch on the house. I declined that offer, on the probably spurious ground that someone might actually rely on these restaurant reviews, and the appearance of improper influence is every bit as inimical as actual improper influence.* So we had to pay for our lunches.

The place itself is in a couple of buildings surviving from one of the earliest settlements in the area, built about 1870 and subsequently joined together in a full re-modelling. The result is quite pleasant in concept and execution. You enter through a bar that is thoroughly Texan in appearance and atmosphere, if not in size, and have the choice of inside or outside seating in the dining area. The outdoors would be nice in the afternoon, except that the proximity of Loop 1604 makes me think the traffic noise may be too bothersome. (Nothing that a nice limestone wall wouldn't resolve....) On a late morning in November, though, it was just a little too cool to sit out there. But we sat by the large glass overhead doors that open onto the patio, so we got a lot of the effect without the chill or the traffic. Other parts of the dining room seemed as nice, being cozily dark and maintaining the bare limestone walls all round.

The service was as good as the atmosphere. We were greeted by a down-home-friendly someone who seemed to be the head honcho, offered a choice of seating, and given a quick run-down of things we might want to know. Our wants were looked after by a crew of uniformed staff (the uniform being house-logo T-shirts, and jeans): the guy from the front desk, and our particular waitress, Melissa, both of whom were attentive, helpful and charming; plus an assortment of less cheerful functionaries, who delivered this or that item and seemed to be in some kind of daze, as though they were not accustomed to daylight.

Our choices from the menu began with bacon-wrapped brisket-habanero stuffed jalapeños, an appetizer that comes with the warning of being "Super HOT!" They weren't. They were mildly piquant. The jalapeños themselves were large and slightly undercooked (which I liked, but Rick didn't), stuffed with the advertised mixture of shredded brisket with a dose of habanero that was too trivial to thrill. The whole thing was wrapped in a spiral of crisp bacon. Despite the disappointing lack of spicy heat, the overall taste and texture were both excellent.

Roland is on a special diet by his doctor's orders (the kind that would make me reconsider the morality of euthanasia, but it doesn't seem to phaze him), so he had only a house salad with vinaigrette dressing. He had no comment about it, but it looked very much like my salad, the "Texas-Sized Two-Step Salad," with a meat topping of choice: salmon, chicken or blackened catfish. I picked the salmon, which is billed as "cured house-smoked." I'm guessing that after they smoke it (which they do quite well) they keep it refrigerated at a very low temperature, because the meat is extremely dense and served very cold. Once I got past the jarring chill of it, I decided that it was done well, with a deep smoky flavour that complemented the innate salmon taste. There was enough of it, too, to satisfy. The greens underneath were reasonably fresh and varied, and included little bits of lagniappe like pumpkin seeds, corn, bacon and half a boiled egg. I chose the honey mustard dressing, which had the appearance and flavour of an in-house creation.

Rick's choice was the pulled pork sandwich, with french fries. It turned out to be a pretty good version of the classic sandwich, with plenty of tender lean pork and an excellent barbecue sauce, served on the side; and the bun was fresh and soft. The fries had an excellent flavour, and were fried to a nice crispness, though they were clearly of the pre-fab sort that arrive in a freezer pack already blanched.

Last city inspection: May 2012
26 demerits

It being five o'clock somewhere, Rick and I both indulged in frozen margaritas. These turned out to be somewhat pale and thick machined concoctions, with little flavour. And after the meal, Rick was unable to resist the offer of a slice of lemon-lime cheesecake. I thought it was reasonably good, with a nice tartness and a fair texture, though Rick considered it insufficiently creamy. The crust had coconut in it, which added an interesting element, and which I enjoyed. However, both these items — the drinks and the dessert — were seriously overpriced. The margaritas, at $7.25, were a good 40% more than I think would have been the norm for drinks of that size and modest quality; and the dessert, which I considered at the time "a four-dollar slice of cheesecake," was priced at $5.95, nearly 50% more than I think it should have been. The prices of the other items are only slightly above what I'm accustomed to paying for comparable food elsewhere; close enough to call the high side of reasonable; but those drink and dessert prices take the overall rating for value below an acceptable level, I'm sorry to say.

So I would recommend Two-Step only to people who don't drink, and who don't eat dessert. Other than that, it's pretty good.

on Yelp!

* This is why I didn't go into politics.
My friend Roland thought I was too full of myself, and said that he'd have accepted the offer and then written an honest review. I would have liked to have done that, but can't honestly be sure it would be possible. So it set me back, I don't know, twenty bucks?

Ouch!

Bakery Lorraine
511 East Grayson Street

(a short way east of Broadway)

The foodie community, which I reluctantly admit to being a less-than-fully-devoted groupie of, has been a-buzz lately with praise for this new venture in the fringe of the up-and-coming area around the Pearl Brewery. It was inevitable that I, who am helpless before a display of baked goods, would make my way there sooner rather than later. It all just sounded so good!

The two people behind the little business met while working together in northern California. One of them — her, I think, but I could be mis-remembering, and don't care enough to look it up, even though it would probably be only a matter of forty seconds and two, maybe three clicks of the mouse — anyway, one of them had the good taste, or good luck, to be from San Antonio, so they came here to dip their toes in the entrepreneurial waters. Well, 'cuz it's such a classy town and all. Or something like that.

Anyway. I first heard of them in connection with the Farmers' Market operating at the Quarry on Sundays, and read some excited puff-piece in (probably) the local disreputable weekly throwaway rag. Sounded good, it really did; but I have better things to do of a Sunday morning than go traipsing out to the Quarry when it would likely be crowded: the English Premier League is on TV on Sunday mornings. So I never actually got over there to experience the goodies that induced such undignified passion in the writer.

Then here comes news that they have a bricks-and-mortar location all their own, on Grayson Street. Closed Mondays, which is damned inconsiderate of them, but they're probably not soccer fans, and one must make allowances for such people. So it was a Tuesday, when I happened to be in the area anyway, that I finally encountered Bakery Lorraine.

A smell can be a powerful provacatrix. Some mornings, stepping out out into my back yard early in the morning, the whiff of a certain timbre of diesel fumes from the avenue instantly and unfailingly reminds me of Guanajuato, Mexico, one of my favourite places In The Whole World. (You know it's a magical place, when something as pungent as diesel fumes can evoke fond memories. But then, as my dog says, there are no good smells or bad smells; there are only smells.) Stepping into Bakery Lorraine, I was immediately and powerfully reminded of another place, a tiny boulangerie in a small town somewhere in Haute-Savoie. I haven't been there in decades, and haven't thought about it in nearly that long, but the aroma at Bakery Lorraine took me back there instantly.

Last city inspection: October 2012
3 demerits

It's not a particularly large variety of goodies on display in the fairly small double case that presents itself to the arriving customer. I'd say it has a capacity of less than a third of what you would find on offer at, say, the Bistro Bakery in Olmos Circle (which, however, lacks that evocative aroma of France, as well as the exceptional American pleasantry of the staff); and at that hour of the morning, around 10AM, it looked to have been pretty well picked over. But everything that survived the morning rush looked perfect, as though any croissant with slightly too much or too little golden brown crust, or any macaron with even the tiniest bulge or bump, would have been tossed in a bin out back.  There would, of course, be a thorough investigation to attribute responsibility, but that would take place in discreet privacy. Perfection, I'd say, is the watch-word here.

An admirable goal, but not one yet attained, in my estimation. I sampled three of the offerings that morning, and found one approaching perfection, one perfect in some ways, and one noticeably falling short.

The best of the buy was a morning bun, a spiral of dough with cinnamon and a generous sprinkling of sugar. The dough had a density to it that I found truly enjoyable, and the cinnamon-sugar that had pooled at the bottom during baking had cooled into a slightly chewy, slightly sticky ribbon that any child, even one as old as me, would love.

Next-best was the pain au chocolat, a traditional French pastry made from the same kind of buttery laminated dough as a croissant, but differently shaped (which only slightly affects the resulting texture). Normally, in making these pastries, the dough is rolled around a baton of chocolate; if that's the way Bakery Lorraine does it, something went wrong, as the chocolate was in three separate parts, as though two chocolate chips and half a baton had been used. I found the chocolate flavour rather ordinary, detracting from the overall experience.

The least pleasing of the three items I tried was, to my surprise, the tart. I chose an "Almond Joy" tart, made with chocolate filling in a roughly four-inch shell, topped with whipped cream, almonds and a sprinkle of shredded coconut. The shell was excellent: dense and firm, as it should be, with a clear buttery flavour. Other than that, though, the piece seemed unremarkable. The consistency of the chocolate filling struck me as being exactly that of the sugar-free instant pudding you get out of a Hill Country Foods box; and the whipped cream seemed to lack, oddly, creaminess.

If I had paid ordinary prices for these things, I'd have been reasonably satisfied with Bakery Lorraine, overall. But the pain au chocolat was four dollars, as was the morning bun. The tart, at $6, provokes the title of this post. This place is expensive. And for the kind of money you will spend at Bakery Lorraine, I think you have a right to expect better than I found there.

on Yelp!

A Taco Alternative?

The Donut Palace
1583 Thousand Oaks

(a couple of blocks east of U.S. 281)

Few things in the realm of food can count as a substitute for that San Antonio staple, the sacred breakfast taco. Donuts are among those few. This morning, heading out to the wilds of Government Canyon, and knowing that there are very few acceptable breakfast options along the way, we stopped in at this traditional little donut shop in the 281 corridor. It's just far enough off the freeway to have escaped the mercilessly crass commercialism on view there, tucked into the endcap of a little strip center filled with stores of a decidedly quirky  bent. 

We immediately rejected the kolaches. They appeared to all be of the pig-in-a-blanket variety, which holds no attraction to someone like me, who has been to West and eaten sausage-jalapeño kolaches of heavenly consistency, even day-old. I never cared too much for the link sausage wrapped in what seems to me to be refrigerator-case biscuit mix, and, I'm sorry, but a little jalapeño ain't gonna make that enough-better.

Last city inspection: March 2011
a perfect score!

We both went instead for the breakfast-sandwich croissant, which despite being re-heated in a microwave was quite good. The croissant itself was flaky and buttery; the egg, too, tasted of butter; the cheese was, well, ordinary, and the sausage (patty, not link) was reasonably good. I tried an apple fritter, too, which had the delicious texture of a cinnamon pull-apart bun, but almost no apple flavour to it. My friend Rick tried a chocolate glazed donut, which he pronounced better than Krispy Kreme. Considering that he dislikes Krispy Kreme, that could either be a plaudit, or the damnation of faint praise.

The coffee had a remarkably strong nut flavour without being in the least acidic or bitter. That alone would justify a recommendation for this little hole-in-the-wall, with its two tiny tables. But I'd still rather have tacos.

on Yelp!

Not Quite Guilt-Free

Souper Salad
5222 De Zavala Road

(just east of I-10, near Vance-Jackson)

I have a good friend who has recently been placed on a strict diet by his doctor. I went to have lunch with him — my friend, not his doctor — and salad was the order of the day. So I got on Urbanspoon, my preferred web site for such purposes, and found, much to my surprise, that there are very few salad-oriented selections out in his part of town. I don't know what I was expecting; I guess I just thought that all those young-professional types that make our sprawling modern suburban areas sprawl were going about munching on lettuce leaves and sprouts all the time. But of the 26 restaurants listed in the area under the "salad" heading, Souper Salad was the only place that offers leafy greens as its main focus. Perhaps someone of an entrepreneurial bent will smell an opportunity.

So: Souper Salad, by default.

My entirely reasonable prejudice, based on a lifetime of experience, against chain restaurants extends as much to Souper Salad as any other. I've been to a few locations, including another here in San Antonio, and have never been impressed. On the other hand, I've never been particularly revolted.

You get what you expect at Souper Salad, and a few little extras of an inexpensive and nutritionally questionable variety. Besides the big bowl of cut lettuce, there's a couple of Romaine salads, and the more irresistible and fattening things, like potato salad and pasta salad. All the usual toppings are available to jazz up your rabbit food, from red onion and peppers to various seeds, and other things suitable for scattering on the pile, including a good number of drizzly things to give it a little moisture. I was pleasantly surprised to find a low-cal Italian and a low-cal Ranch. A dieter's wet dream.

The buffet line is colourful and conscientiously attended, being kept clean, well-stocked and reasonably fresh. (In fact, I would say it is kept cleaner at this location than has been my experience elsewhere.) My only complaint is that most things are found only on one side of the buffet table or the other; and since customers tend to leave the tongs lying on the side of the food containers nearest to themselves, people on the other side can't easily reach these implements. I have arms just long enough to span the distance, with an unseemly and graceless lurch under the sneeze-guard; but most people, I'm sure, would absolutely have to go down both sides of the buffet in order to get all the things they want. 

Last city inspection: September 2012
a perfect score!

I was pleasantly surprised to find four soups on offer; two is, I think, the norm (although maybe the name of the place would be a clue here). I chose a meatball soup which, other than an excess of salt, was quite good, even considering how long these dishes have to be kept out on the serving line. There was also a good selection of breads, of which I chose cornbread and, as a treat, a small square of gingerbread. The cornbread was about as good as you could expect from a mass-production facility, but the gingerbread, sadly, turned out to be the low spot of the meal. To say it was rock hard would be an exaggeration; it was only drywall-hard, and only on top, I know not why. 

Pigging out on salad is just as bad as pigging out on any other type of food, but easy to do, and it's a relatively low-guilt indulgence. You think "I'll just have a tiny bit of this, and this, and this," and before you know it you're having to get a staff member to help carry your tray. But you don't feel bad, because it's just salad. And a sprinkle of cheese. Some chopped egg. A little soup, with beef and rice in it. A couple of small slices of thin-crust pizza. The bread, and the pasta salad, and potato salad (made with mustard, so of course it's like no calories). And then you can go back as many times as you like, plus there's desserts: cookies and puddings and non-dairy frozen stuff that comes out of an extruder, and all kinds of things to sprinkle on top of that.... 

If you're going to Souper Salad for lunch, you will get reasonably good food at a reasonably good price, and you will eat in a reasonably clean setting with reasonably efficient attendance by waitrons, who will keep you well-stocked with drink, and will keep the dishes from piling up embarrasingly. If you're going because you're on a diet ... well, take your will-power with you. Sadly, I left mine in the car.