Walking through San Antonio’s new 40,000-square-foot specialty grocer and eatery, Pullman Market, I couldn’t help but draw parallels to my first time visiting Eataly in New York’s Flatiron District. Swap the aisles of fresh mozz (though Pullman has that too) and Italian wine bar with fresh-off-the-press tortillas and a mezcal bar, and you have the Pearl’s latest addition. I toured the massive market from Austin’s Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group in early April with an animating question on my mind: Does the Pearl need another food court? In addition to several restaurants—including Ladin ..read more

“Here’s your Chicken 65,” announced our server. We stared at the bowl, steam rising from the heap of golden brown nibbles of fried meat. You’d expect to find the southern Indian snack in a casual setting (of the many theories regarding the name, one posits that it was created at a hotel in Chennai in 1965). But what was it doing at a smart-looking restaurant in a fancy new Houston development? I popped a toasty bite in my mouth. Oh. “Chicken nuggets of the gods” might be going too far, but these tender morsels had a lot going on: expert frying, complex spice (curry leaf, ginger, mustard seed ..read more

On a late February evening in 2023, the winds off the Gulf of Mexico turned the temperature in Corpus Christi from mild to teeth-chattering. Nevertheless, a friend and I were determined to cross Birrieria y Mariscos El General off our day’s itinerary of seven stops. I wasn’t jaded or tired from the previous six meals of serviceable tacos in commodity tortillas, but I was hopeful Birrieria y Mariscos El General would change my mind about cheesy beef birria. (I’m not a fan of the tacos that were once a trend but are now a taqueria staple.) The promise of fresh seafood dishes, such as fiery ..read more

Emilio Vargas wanted to play high school football in Texas. His father, Javier Vargas, wanted the best for his son. As a lawyer, Javier had the means to fulfill Emilio’s wish, so he arranged for the sixteen-year-old to leave Mexico City to stay with family in Georgetown and play at East View High School. Javier and the rest of the Vargas family soon joined him. Because Javier’s Mexican attorney license didn’t transfer to the U.S., he had to take other jobs to support his family. He worked in restaurants and construction. Emilio kept bringing up the traditional Central Mexican Hidalgo-style bar ..read more

Among the culinary mainstays that have made their marks on the palates of Laredoans, few have been more essential than La India Packing Company. This April, the family-owned spice-and-herb company hits a monumental milestone as it turns one hundred years old. An official bash celebrating the anniversary is on the books for April 27, and later this year, the Texas Historical Commission will officially designate the company and its headquarters, in old Laredo, with a historical marker. According to owner Elsa Rodriguez Arguindegui, the reason for the company’s success is simple: “People like the ..read more

There’s Taco Bell, and then there’s everyone else. Torchy’s Tacos and Velvet Taco may aspire to national reach, but they’ll never match the market share—or the international footprint, across nearly thirty countries—of the home of the Crunchwrap Supreme.Yet they and other Texas-based chains—Taco Bueno, Taco Cabana, Taco Casa—share common traits with Taco Bell. Their menus are filled with head-scratching takes on Americanized Mexican food, and they were each launched by non-Hispanic white founders with access to levels of investment capital that most Latino business owners can only dream of.Tha ..read more

Something stops Clay Dover cold as he strolls behind the restaurant’s counter. The CEO of Velvet Taco has been all smiles and high fives since he entered the chain’s location in the Grandscape shopping center, amid the suburban sprawl north of Dallas. But now, staring at a few chicken strips in a bin under a heat lamp, he cuts off his friendly patter midsentence and pulls out one of the little brown hunks. He turns it over in his hand, tears it apart, takes a bite, and throws the rest in the trash with a faint trace of a pucker on his face. He’s not going to call anyone out on the spot, but he ..read more

Arturo Reyes and his best friend, Mark Rubio, were leaving a Naughty by Nature concert in Las Vegas in late 2018, when Rubio’s nephew called at 2 a.m., from Texas. The young man was speaking in a hurried, excited manner. It was difficult to hear him, but one question came through: “Hey, Tío, does Art still make that delicious queso?” Rubio switched the call to speaker and heard his nephew tell the two men that their families were confident enough in Reyes’s recipe to sign up for the Quesoff in Austin. The day of the contest, Reyes arrived with his family’s decades-old chile con queso recipe: a ..read more

If you’ve been paying attention to the culinary world the past few years, you know that foods that have been cured, pickled, fermented, and otherwise deliciously enhanced are “having a moment,” as they say. Humans have been preserving food for eons, but there’s nothing like a global pandemic to get folks in a back-to-basics mindset, diligently nursing sourdough babies and cultivating a newfound appreciation for things that are fleeting.None of that is new to chef Steve McHugh, who opened his San Antonio restaurant Cured in 2013. His approach to cooking has long celebrated the ideas of plenitud ..read more

Growing up in a Muslim community, I knew many people who would fast during Ramadan, a month-long religious observance where participants abstain from food and water from sunrise to sunset. My family wasn’t particularly religious, so I only fasted on occasion, but I admire people who fast—especially when they work in a strenuous, food-centric environment like a professional kitchen. There’s no doubt that working with food while fasting can be a challenge, especially since it’s customary for cooks to continuously taste dishes to maintain quality standards. Aside from the nature of the job ..read more