A tour of long-lost S.A. favorites

Cullum’s also pays homage to the jazz great

There’s a picture on Chris Cullum’s phone that he likes to show people when working the floor of his new restaurant Cullum’s Attaboy just off the St. Mary’s Strip.

It’s a black-and-white photo of his dad as a stylish little boy sitting at Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Havana with his own dad, probably in the late 1950s or early ’60s. They’re both named Jim Cullum. They both played jazz. They’re both gone now.

But they live on at Cullum’s Attaboy. There’s a line drawing of that photo on Attaboy’s menu, and there’s that boy again, this time as a grown man, in a photo with his father standing next to Louis Armstrong. Yes, that Louis Armstrong.

Jazz from that era fills the air at this Kings Court bungalow. In the foyer is a sign from The Landing, the old San Antonio River Walk jazz club where the younger Jim Cullum made a national name for himself with his band and his cornet.

Chris Cullum worked the kitchen at The Landing, one stop along the career path that would lead him to open an Airstream burger trailer called Cullum’s Attaboy more than a decade ago, then the chickenand-beer hangout Cullum’s Attagirl in 2015 near the St. Mary’s Strip. He resurrected Cullum’s Attaboy just a few doors down from Attagirl in March, taking over the cottage that once housed NOLA Brunch & Beignets. NOLA moved around the corner into the former Cookhouse Restaurant, where Jim Cullum and his eponymous band used to play.

A deep dive into the past is essential to the story of Cullum’s Attaboy. Chris Cullum grew up eating at the coolest places in San Antonio, thanks to his dad. Now it’s his turn to run one of those places, borrowing from everything that came before.

“This is all the stuff that my dad loved,” Chris Cullum said in January. “I’m lighting a candle for his era in San Antonio.”

That era includes the Frenchinfluenced La Louisiane and Chez Ardid restaurants, and the more casual Christie’s Seafood, the eclectic kitchen at The Landing and even doughnuts from the Spudnut Shop. Chris Cullum is channeling that era in a space that feels like a neighborhood

dive bar, a midcentury lunch counter and a highway diner rolled into one, with a staff dressed all malt shop chic in white aprons and short-order cook hats.

With pancakes, eggs Benedict, Champagne and caviar, Attaboy leans hard toward brunch, if brunch ran from 9 a.m. to past sundown. But it’s so much more.

A plate of steak and eggs put serious craft on display, starting with a well-rested, nicely seared tenderloin cut in neat, rosy cross-sections with a sidecar of scrambled eggs with density and fluff in equal measure — some of the best I’ve ever had.

I splurged on two key extras for the steak. Attaboy believes in truffles, real ones, shaved liberally for a nominal $10 upcharge. A real truffle lends earth, funk and magic to everything it touches, a magic further amplified at Attaboy for just $5 by the salt-and-fat extravagance of a lush demi-glace so concentrated that a Facebook post showed it as thick and supple as mahogany bread dough when it cooled.

Attaboy’s other indulgence is

caviar, with five kinds available by the gram like high-end party drugs. They make it easy on the first-time user with a setup called the Swell Life, with a generous dab of black Russian Oscietra farm raised in Uruguay and an even more generous spread of bright orange smoked trout roe on a bed of crème fraîche with chives and a fan of little blini pancakes.

The popping-fresh brininess of the roe was the ideal counterpoint for two more indulgences: cold sparkling wine in frosted coupe glasses, and vodka served ultra-cold on its own and in a minimalist martini with just a spray-bottle spritz of vermouth.

I can’t name every gone-andlamented restaurant influence Chris Cullum brought to the table, but the name La Louisiane was attached to a rippling pâté of carp roe called tarama, a cool and mild snack served with little toasts for spreading, dipping and waving in the air to make points after a bracing Lillet Spritz cocktail and a creamy, nostalgic Ramos gin fizz.

Attaboy struck a more elegant tone with escargot served

in the shell with scotch-andherb compound butter almost as good as the snails themselves. I liked the ritual of clamping the shells with the pincer tool to remove the meat, but what I liked it even more is that they weren’t just little garlic-butter bombs. And I appreciated the simplicity of a single perfectly poached scallop in a textbook hollandaise sauce for a bite of something swanky without a hard commitment.

Nostalgia inspired a few simple joys at Attaboy, including Spudnuts, little knobs of fried dough dusted with powdered sugar, existing in a land somewhere between beignets, doughnuts and funnel cakes at the fair. Chris Cullum capitalized on his own nostalgia with an Attaboy Burger that evoked his old Airstream without leaning too hard on that operation’s smashburger aesthetic, letting the beef keep its juice between neatly shellacked house-baked buns with a side of shaggy hand-cut fries that could launch a food truck of their own.

But in that shaded area where brunch, nostalgia and reality meet, Attaboy left a few smudges.

A dish of scrambled eggs plated with toast and truffles suffered from an overload of salt, not just once but on two separate trips. Pancakes came hard and thin and greasy, with a crunch more like fried pastry than something from the griddle.

And whitefish meunière, one of the few full entrees on the menu at Attaboy, came not so much dressed in butter but wrecked by it, at once soggy, sloppy and stiff in its flour dredge, served direct from the broiler on a plate where every splatter felt like a mark on its permanent record.

But there was consolation for dessert. For everyone who ever had a slice of cheesecake at The Landing, they can rest easy knowing that Chris Cullum has re-created his mom’s recipe for a version that’s dense and sweet while being neither too dense nor too sweet.

For a minimalist place, there’s a lot going on at Cullum’s Attaboy. What used to be just a smashburger trailer is all grown up now, a fitting tribute to a father’s legacy and a son’s dedication.

Attaboy, Chris.

Photos by Mike Sutter/Staff The impressive steak and eggs can be upgraded with shaved truffle and rich, brown demi-glace, a decision your taste buds will applaud.

A caviar setup called the Swell Life includes Russian Oscietra caviar, smoked trout roe, crema, chives and blini.

The whitefish meunière, served with a Caesar salad, was a disappointment.

The elegant escargot is served with scotch compound butter.