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Top: e Blue Star Brewery is located in one of the many hip areas of San Antonia. Bottom: Late night, in-room, dinning? e mini bar.
22 Spring 2016
them out. Once in, we tried the trout in chili pepper, lime and salt, with a half order of six onion rings that stood a foot tall.
On to San Antonio’s La VillitaArts Village where we encountered the town’s new regional specialty, the breakfast taco. At $1.95 a taco this is a cheap way to start the day, with a rolled up our tortilla containing your preferred combination of eggs, potato, cheese, bacon and sausage. In So Cal, anything in a our tortilla is called a burrito, not a taco. e our tortilla itself is a postwar invention, so whether Jack in a Box inspired this regional cuisine, I’m not sure.
One day we River Walked right out of town, past the King William historic home district and to the end of the landscaping, where the river becomes natural again. From here you can rent bicycles and continue in an eight mile loop downstream to see four Spanish missions. At the intersection of the man-made and natural worlds is the Blue Star Arts Complex, containing art galleries, a bike shop, bars, co ee houses and restaurants. You can see the tanks in the Blue Star Brewery and sample the product in a bar full of bikers - that is, bicycle bikers. Once again I went for the chicken salad because it’s like a lottery where the winner might nd some lettuce. is time I won.
Meanwhile, back at the hotel, the snacks were not hidden in the minibar fridge but covered half the top of the dresser, daring you to resist. So late at night, we would cut a swath of devastation, leaving only a pile of wrappers in the trash can. en we would rearrange the remaining snacks to look like no one had touched them, to avoid the overpriced fee. It’s all about intentions, and no hotel should charge you for what you intended not to eat. A minibar is to a guest as a highway patrol is to speeding cars. ere should be an entrapment defense.
Post-Indian Texas cuisine began with the French Colonists under La Salle starving to death when their supply ship sank in Matagorda Bay. During the Battle of the Alamo, cattle were herded in and roasted by the defenders. Mexican American food originated in San Antonio in the 1890s, by women selling homemade tamales from steaming pots on the sidewalk. Nowadays the cuisine of all nations is welcomed as long as they abide by the Statewide Convention prohibiting undecorated vegetables. Do not do as we did and try to maintain a strict vegetable and chocolate diet. For God’s sake, there’s authentic Tex-Mex food - cheese enchiladas smothered in sauce with more cheese on top. ere are places like e Salt Lick, serving heaping mounds of smoked brisket, steak, chops and sausage. ere is a whole closed o street of bars serving Texas beer and hard liquor in Austin. As the Texas settler slogan goes, “Come and Take It.”
www.edibleorangecounty.com