Grey Moss Inn survived 90 years but not COVID

Second of two columns Last Sunday’s column began an answer to reader Robin Holbrook’s question about Grey Moss Inn, the Helotes-area restaurant that reached the age of 90 but closed in 2020.

The inn was founded in 1930 at what was then known as Scenic Loop Playground, incorporated in 1963 as the city of Grey Forest. The Playground was developed in the mid-1920s as a subdivision for vacation or year-round homes, and the tearoom established by Mary Howell was an enticement to prospective buyers, a reward of fried chicken at the end of a long drive.

Through the 1930s and ’40s, the inn became primarily a dinner restaurant, opening at 5 p.m. most evenings and for “Sunday dinner” at noon.

From packaged-goods sidelines, both Grey Moss Inn and Mary Howell became brand names. At the restaurant, customers could buy Grey Moss

Inn’s house-made pies (apple, cherry, rhubarb and rum custard), “meat sauce” (probably the apple-based marinade eventually known as “Witch’s Brew”), salad dressing, date cakes, Texas-theme jellies (grapefruit, agarita, prickly pear and mint) and her hand-dipped Mary Howell candies in 1or 2-pound boxes. For tourists and downtown workers, the candies also were sold during the late ’40s from a shop at 112 E. Travis St. A frozen version of Mary Howell’s Olive Twists was sold in gourmet shops and grocery stores well into the ’70s.

Not surprisingly, Mary Howell calculated for the 1940 census that she worked 50 hours a week, bumped up to 60 hours for the 1950 count. These were the years when the Grey Moss Inn became the unique dining spot

people remember, adding the wishing-well-style grill, the garden and patio dining areas and more menu items.

With Howell as hostess most evenings and her products available for mailing nationwide, the restaurant became legendary well beyond San Antonio, rating mentions in magazines and guidebooks. It became a place to show off to out-of-town visitors, including celebrities. Howell told the Light, July 7, 1940, that she’d served John Jacob Astor V, author Vicki “Grand Hotel” Baum and actresses Katharine Cornell and Colleen Moore ( discussed here Feb. 21, 2013).

Born in 1890, Howell handed the restaurant’s reins to son Arthur Jr. during the early 1960s. Afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, she retired to Boerne, where her son served as mayor, about six

years before her death from heart failure in 1976. That same year, Grey Moss Inn was sold to retired Datapoint executive Jerry Martin and his wife, Mary, who also operated the Tastemaker restaurant in Frost Bros. department store at North Star Mall.

While preserving many of Howell’s recipes, the Martins renovated the inn, enclosed its garden room and added the tradition of serving squash au gratin and half a sourcream baked potato with each entree. Several employees from the Howell era stayed on, as did many loyal customers. “People who came here when they were courting return with their children and grandchildren,” Mary Martin told the Light, Jan. 20, 1977.

The last (so far) handover happened in 1984, when Dr. Lou and Nell

Baeten bought the inn and took it through further renovations and menu expansions, preserving Howell’s recipes for the squash dish, baked potatoes, apple and pecan pies. Nell Baeten updated the olive twists from a croissant-type pastry to wheat bread and added a jalapeño baked potato, she said, because “I had made it in my own kitchen for years and thought the spicy palates of San Antonio would love it.” While keeping their Grey Moss signature dishes, the couple “allowed our chefs to show their creativity by having chef ’s specials.”

The basic gestalt of the place stayed the same, natural setting, grilled steaks — and homey decor that included the multicolored candle-oncandle wax volcanoes on the tables. Their source was San Antonio’s own Root Candle Co. “We

always started out with one candle on a salad plate and just adding one on top of another until they became tall enough to enhance a woman’s face,” Baeten said. At a customer’s request, staff would crack one of these distinctive centerpieces in half and sell it to them to take home.

The Baetens, who expanded the wine list, started some new customs as well.

Former Express-News restaurant reviewer Ron Bechtol remembers “the yearly ZinDin, a tradition we carried on for over 25 years.” Once a year, usually in January, Bechtol, Lou Baeten and former Express-News wine writer Bill Stephens would enter the dining room garbed as monks of the Order of Original Zin, chanting and ringing bells “to celebrate and promote a grape, namely zinfandel,

that had been unfairly maligned.” The procession was followed by “a kind of homily that changed from year to year, depending on other wine trends that needed skewering” and a special dinner “that had the added benefit of allowing the kitchen to stretch its wings beyond the usual menu.”

The Baetens divorced in 2012, and Lou Baeten, who’s in failing health, now lives with family in Frisco.

Grey Moss Inn closed in the spring of 2020 during the throes of COVID-19 isolation. The restaurant was first listed for sale in June 2021. A real estate listing for the Grey Moss Inn property reports it as sold.

Wwwthealamocity.com An undated postcard shows the patio dining area circa 1960 at Grey Moss Inn. At left is the wishing well-style outdoor grill, where steaks and chicken were grilled over charcoal after being mopped with a secret sauce called “witches brew.”