Photo of the old Earl Abel's building in San Antonio by
Brent on Flickr
I have spent most of this decade - the first of the new millennium - living in Southern California, but last year I made an interesting series of choices that eventually led me back to the town where I was born and raised - San Antonio, Texas.
I miss the usual things about Southern California, I guess - the architecture, the topography, the ocean, In-N-Out Burger - but I've been really looking at San Antonio with a fresh perspective.
Let's face it - I've never eaten so well as I have eaten in Texas. My comfort foods consist of Tex Mex (yes, bean & cheese tacos even!), Luby's Lu Ann Platter (although I wish they'd bring the little bitty soda glasses back and the servers with pushcarts who refilled them), brisket (I heartily recommend Two Bros. BBQ Market, but the options are nearly endless in this town), double cheeseburgers at Chester's (nevermind the Yelp critics), coffee and pie at Mama's Cafe (where once upon a time I used to wait tables), and so on.
I'm also rebuilding my library courtesy of Half Priced Books - always a glorious hunt - and I'm spending a lot of time with my family.
It's been a great six months so far.
But I'd like to take a moment to mention two things that broke my heart when I moved back here.
First, they tore down the old
Earl Abel's to build condos. The restaurant isn't gone, but they have relocated it - along with some of the old decor - to a strip mall. I am told that the building on Broadway and Hildebrand had been in ill repair, but I feel like a piece of San Antonio history is gone forever. Here's a
Flickr slideshow with a lot of pictures of the old place.
And second, they attempted to modernize the interior of
Bun 'n' Barrel, ripping out every nostalgic thing I had loved about that place to begin with. Listen: when you're a kid and your dad takes you out on a Saturday to go look at motorcycles and hot rods and
handmade cowboy boots, and then he takes you to lunch at a place that he might have eaten at when
he was a kid, you aren't going to go back just for the food. Right?
Well, so it goes...
