Renee Talamantes and Jacob Onofre know something about being on the move. Three years ago, they packed up Blissful Burgers on South Zarzamora and moved it 14 miles north to Loop 410 and Bandera Road. Big deal, right?
But Blissful isn’t just another burger joint. It’s a reimagining of our favorite fast food as a completely vegan operation, a crossover that earned Blissful the top spot in our first ranking of San Antonio’s Top 10 veggie burgers. Updating that list is one of the driving factors that took me to more than 40 restaurants in June, a month that also included Top 10 research for breakfast, Italian food, doughnut shops, Korean restaurants and puffy tacos. Here’s the best and worst of a month on the move.
RISE AND SHINE: Top 10 breakfast spots in San Antonio
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The best
Blissful Burger at Blissful Burgers: All I can say is I wish I’d hit Blissful Burgers when I was eating all those burgers for my Top 10 burger list in May. Not just because my body could have used a vegan vacation in the middle of all that beef. No, it’s because Blissful would have made that list, never mind the vegan provenance.
The namesake Blissful Burger is a two-handed beast with the gravity and grease of an all-beef burger, reconceived with a vegan Beyond Beef patty and Follow Your Heart vegan American cheese that salutes the same flag as its dairy-born brothers. Lettuce, tomatoes and grilled onions drive the point home, punctuated by Bliss Sauce that combines chipotle, onions and relish for a taste that’s refreshingly familiar and defiantly different. 5714 Evers Road, 210-239-5830, blissfulburgers.net
Ana’s Fancy French Toast at Bobbie’s Cafe: San Antonio’s No. 1 place for breakfast got there with lots of heart from owners Ana and Greg Ferris, hot coffee, huge portions and this: French toast soaked in mascarpone sauce with a double-down dose of praline sauce, crowned with strawberries and whipped cream. 6728 S. Flores St., 210-923-1158, bobbiescafe.com
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Korean fried chicken at Wow Chicken & Cupbop: I’m thrilled to be working with my colleague Salgu Wissmath to explore San Antonio’s Korean food scene for a Top 10 list coming this summer, drawing on their four years living and teaching in South Korea and a photojournalism career that includes the Express-News and the San Francisco Chronicle.
The main thing I’ve learned? Korean food isn’t just one style of food. It’s barbecue, it’s seafood, it’s stew, it’s bibimbap. And it’s fried chicken. And so far, one of our favorites is the sweet and spicy fried chicken at a place where the name backs up the crispy crust, the volcanic juiciness and the sticky grandeur of the chicken itself: Wow. 4403 Rittiman Road, 210-463-9133, Facebook: Wow Chicken & Cupbop
Barbacoa kolache at Chacha Bedoy Donuts & Bakery: Kolaches are a side benefit of the restless energy it takes to run San Antonio’s No. 1 destination for doughnuts. Creativity, opportunity and time lead to new ideas for dough and heat. And the best of those ideas at Chacha Bedoy’s are sleek kolaches filled with barbacoa and salsa.
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Think of it as a self-contained taco, with a perfect balance of fat, acid and starch. Experience Chacha’s sweet doughnut-kolache hybrid called the dolache and fill up with a potato, egg and cheese kolache. But find real San Antonio doughnut shop alchemy with the barbacoa kolache. 1723 Babcock Road, 210-515-4886, chachabedoy.com
Lasagna at Mare e Monte Italian Restaurant: Mare e Monte owner Prince Blakaj does something very few restaurant owners can do: He makes you feel like a regular on your very first visit. And part of being a regular is knowing exactly what to order.
Let me help. Mare e Monte paints best when it paints in shades of red. The most luminous red of all finds its canvas with lasagna Bolognese, a brightly acidic pomodoro ladled generously over layers of pasta and slow-cooked meat sauce united by cheese, a dish brought to a higher place with an optional meatball rising like a peak in the center. A melting-pot moment of Italian, American and Albanian soul food. 9390 Huebner Road, 210-267-1233, mareemonte.com
Baguette at La Boulangerie: There’s a sign at this downtown bakery, taped to the wall by a rack of baguettes and loaves of fresh bread. Just a sheet of paper, really. But it says so much: “La Boulangerie is now using French flour.” At this Top 10 breakfast destination, that shift has opened the oven door for Sylvain and Sylvie Nykiel to create baguettes with the look, the texture, the aroma, the chew and the flavor of a French bakery. Which is exactly what La Boulangerie is and always has been. But even more so now. It’s the best $3.50 you can spend on a loaf of bread in San Antonio right now. 207 Broadway, 210-639-3165, saveurs209.com
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DOUGHNUT DYNASTY: San Antonio’s Top 10 doughnuts
The worst
Pasta sampler at Albi’s Vite Italian Kitchen: At Albi’s Vite, the air conditioning is louder than the cheesy Italian soundtrack, the rolls are rock hard and the restaurant is stone-cold empty at noon on a Friday. It’s the type of atmosphere that would only find its redemption through food that forgave everything else. This isn’t that food. And that holds especially true for a pasta sampler with ziti, ravioli and lasagna that turned out to be all three pastas crowded into one baking dish, sharing the same beggar’s blanket of marinara and broiled mozzarella cheese.
As I understand it, the whole point of a sampler is the same as a salesman’s kit, something to demonstrate quality and range. But what this sampler demonstrates is Albi’s regards the pasta corner of the great wheel of Italian food as one homogenous, indistinguishable mass. And we all know it can be so much more. 4979 NW Loop 410, 210-255-1757, albisvite.com
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Gogi Street Wings at Gogi Street: During a month of exploring San Antonio’s Korean food scene — a scene with fried chicken that has made me rethink what I thought I knew about fried chicken — I came to this Korean fusion fast-food place with readjusted expectations for Korean-style chicken wings. Gogi Street Wings failed to meet any of them. Instead, these hard, sticky little knobs of bone and what once was chicken tasted like they had been burned, slopped with sugar and ketchup, and then burned again, served over skinny, tired, french fries from the same school of cooking.
The good news is the wing shortage is over. The bad news is that means plenty of wings at Gogi Street. 12820 Jones Maltsberger Road, Suite 104, 210-455-5574, Facebook: Gogi Street
Apple fritter at Dunkin’: What do you call a doughnut that’s been left on the catering table for three days during the shooting of a Ben Affleck commercial with Matt Damon in a track suit? You call that an apple fritter from Dunkin’. 18235 Bulverde Road, Suite 102, 210-530-8342, more locations at dunkindonuts.com
Puffy tacos at Taquería Chapala Jalisco: I love this place on McCullough for chilaquiles, al pastor and breakfast tacos. I don’t love it for puffy tacos, the kind with shells laid out flat like bloated tostadas, the kind that fall into greasy shrapnel on the first fold. 1902 McCullough Ave., 210-735-5352, Facebook: Taquería Chapala Jalisco
