San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
8 scrumptious miles of West Avenue
You can still smell the smoke leaching up through the ruins of Jacala, carried on the wind from embers black as charcoal left over from when they bulldozed the West Avenue Mexican restaurant after a fire last year.
This is the far southern end of West Avenue, an 8-mile boomerang of a road on the Northwest Side that takes flight at Fredericksburg Road near the H-E-B, brushes the Medical Center to the west and slices through Castle Hills on its way to a crash landing at Bitters Road.
Across from Jacala’s tomb, there’s a “For Sale” sign in the window of a Fred’s Fish Fry, and it’s starting to feel like I could tell the story of West Avenue not by the restaurants that remain but by the ones no longer here. What went wrong on West Avenue that Fred’s Fish Fry couldn’t make it?
But that’s one small part of the story of West Avenue, a story that includes one of the city’s best taco stands and a burger drive-thru straight from an old black-and-white photo. A story that includes new life for a 20-year-old Chinese cafe and the enduring charm of the sushi master they call Goro.
And it’s the story of Jason Dady, the chef with the moviestar face and national TV cred who’s never forgotten the city where his own story started. And part of it’s told right here on West Avenue, a street Dady drove every day in the early 2000s, shuttling between his old restaurants The Lodge and Bin 555.
On one of those drives he saw a “For Lease” sign on
West Avenue at a shady alcove across from Walker Ranch Park. But by the time he called, the lease was gone, snatched up by a restaurant with — and I’m not making this up — a Wizard of Oz theme.
“We laughed so hard,” Dady said. “This’ll be available in a couple of years.”
One year. That’s all it took to come back on the market. Dady wanted it. He’d never done barbecue before, but he wanted to open a market-style, by-the-pound operation in that classic Luling-Lockhart style. And this seemed like the right place, a sprawling outdoor space shaded by legacy oaks.
Dady said he jumped on Craigslist, where he found an ad for a smoker pit in Dripping Springs. When he got there, it was a rancher’s retreat with not just the one smoker but a whole set-up: picnic tables, stainless steel kitchenware, extra pits. They made a cash offer on all the equipment, signed the West Avenue lease, and Two Bros. BBQ Market was born, named for Jason and his brother and restaurant project wingman Jake.
“We had to learn how to barbecue real quick,” Jason Dady said.
Thirteen years later, it’s safe to say they’ve learned. And Two Bros. BBQ Market joins Taquitos West Ave., Godai Sushi & Japanese Restaurant, Phoenix Chinese Cafe and Murf ’s Better Burger as one of the five restaurants that tell the story of West Avenue.
Godai Sushi Bar & Japanese Restaurant
On a Tuesday afternoon, William “Goro” Pitchford shifted attention from his cutting board to his phone as he set up interviews for potential hires. Keeping Godai staffed is almost as challenging as staying open during the worst of the pandemic, he said.
You wouldn’t know it from his grace under pressure, flowing from ticket to ticket at the sushi bar, by himself, working from an eight-page menu that includes sushi, sashimi, Japanese bento boxes, tempura, elaborate specialty rolls and stir-frys. On Facebook, he’s constantly inventing
and retooling specials to keep the flow going, like he has since opening Godai in 2005.
A big table of serious men is letting off steam in the middle of a dining room framed in blond wood. It’s the kind of coffee klatch you’d see at a diner, except they’re ordering sushi and bottles of wine like they do this time every week, Pitchford said.
Wine is part of the Godai experience, and a glass of New Zealand sauvignon blanc — “not too grassy,” as he puts it — pairs nicely across a lunch that includes a six-piece nigiri sampler and a bento box with beef teriyaki, nigiri, a tuna roll, crab salad, tempura shrimp and veggie tempura.
Running a business on West Avenue is a puzzle, he said, a study in opposites. Sometimes the street’s packed and the restaurant’s empty. Other times, the street’s dead but the dining room’s packed. Either way, Goro plans to stick around, even if he can’t hire all the help he needs.
11203 West Ave., 210-348-6781, godaisushi.com
Murf ’s Better Burger
At 5 o’clock on a Thursday, the cars swarmed to Murf ’s Better Burger like they’d just announced $1 gas. But it’s a different kind of fuel. From 5 to 11 p.m. Thursdays, the single-patty Murf Burger is halfprice, and everybody on West Avenue knows it, judging from the line of BMWs, pickups and beaters in that serpentine drive-thru.
Murf ’s is old-school, a local burger chain mentioned in the same stories as the old Whopper Burger shops in San Antonio.
This is the last one, a short yellow building with a tiny dining room, a few picnic tables and a two-story marquee sign out front lettered in yellow and black.
The burgers aren’t much to look at, the type you might find at Burger Boy or Griff ’s, all shiny around the edges with beef cooked flat and wide. The double with cheese is part of a special with large fries and a drink for $8.99. The rest of the menu is a carnival midway of fast food: hot dogs, shakes, sundaes, chicken sandwiches, corn dogs for the kids.
It’s fast, cheap and real, a time capsule of burgers the only way San Antonio knew how to make them way back when.
2922 West Ave., 210-342-1574, no web presence
Phoenix Chinese Cafe
The first time I ate at Phoenix, just before the pandemic, a Chinese civic group was holding a board meeting at a big table in the raised dining room, a table with a lazy Susan filled like a culinary carousel of steam and color. I ordered from both the inclusive and familiar Chinese American menu with General Tso’s chicken and crab rangoons, and a specialized Chinese menu with hot pots and bitter greens and fried cuttlefish.
Selim Sharif and his sons bought Phoenix Chinese Cafe in December, after Sharif spent 25 years as director of alumni engagement at Trinity University. A man who understands the value of relationships, Sharif wants to keep Phoenix exactly the way I experienced it. It’s not just an idle hope. Phoenix founder and chef John Wu, who opened the cafe in 2001, agreed to keep cooking after the sale, to train the next generation of cooks to handle a menu almost 300 dishes deep.
The Chinese American menu is a study in value and familiarity, with lunch specials costing around $9 and dinner around $10 with an egg roll, fried rice, soup and cheese rangoons. The immersive Chinese menu includes crispy duck, salted fish, 21 kinds of noodles and my favorites: wok-steamed Chinese broccoli and a hot pot filled with purple eggplant and garlic.
11821 West Ave., 210-525-1961, phoenixchinesecafe.com
Taquitos West Ave.
The sounds of Tejano blast loud and proud onto the sidewalk outside Taquitos West Ave., even after midnight on a Friday. A dad’s there, eating tacos with his daughter and her friend as they text and pass conspiratorial eye rolls. A man dressed in black from his boots to his hat drinks Mexican Coke in the back room under a mural evoking what’s happening up front: A team of men working a fire-breathing al pastor trompo rotisserie, and a bank of flat-top grills turning out seven kinds of meat for tacos folded into mini corn tortillas, doubled up and loaded with cucumber, radishes, jalapeños onions and cilantro.
The steamy chaos behind the glass is like watching a Netflix documentary about a taco stand in a city far away. But it’s right here, at the corner of West Avenue and La Manda in San Antonio, with al pastor tacos in tangy shades of orange and tripas crispy or soft, dressed the way they do it in Mexico City. And your subscription to that service is just $1.89 a taco, counted on the honor system and paid on the way out.
2818 West Ave., 210-525-9888, Instagram: @taquitoswestave
Two Bros. BBQ Market
The story that began with the Wizard of Oz, a lucky break on Craigslist and chef Jason Dady’s dream of “a great legacy Texas barbecue restaurant that can last 30 or 40 years” has become the kind of barbecue made for obsessive overhead photos.
It’s all there, with a live oak patina from pitmaster Darion Densley and a little chef action thrown in. Fatty and lean brisket with black lava bark, golden-brown chicken thighs, cherry-glazed baby back ribs, the Cheesy Chop yin-and-yang of mac and cheese with chopped brisket. The beans have peaches, the pickles are homemade, and the Shinermolasses barbecue sauce is the kind of thing you brag about to out-of-town friends.
Inside, it feels like a smalltown barbecue shop, with iced tea and Kool-Aid and rolls of paper towels on the tables. Outside, it’s like a family reunion, with gnarled oaks, shaded picnic tables and bottles of beer. It’s gonna be a good 30 or 40 years.