Edmund Tijerina

With Luis Colón back in a high-profile kitchen, San Antonio has a better dining scene. Nearly a decade after a wild ride that included creating the “best burger in Texas” plus a few rough years, Colón has returned to take his place among the top chefs in the city. He’s now leading the culinary team at Fig…

For many of us, our grandmothers served years of happy food memories that include freshly baked cookies, chicken- fried steak, pot roast, or—in my case—fresh tortillas with calabacita con puerco. Houston Carpenter fondly remembers his grandmother, Claudine, serving him Southern home cooking. So, when a space opened up in what had been a dilapidated old house on…

San Antonio isn’t the kind of city that hops on the latest culinary fads. Chef Berty Richter describes it as a more conservative dining scene but still one he was confident would embrace his Mediterranean-Sephardic concept, Ladino, the newest restaurant from Austin’s Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group. “San Antonio also being such a fast-growing city, we knew…

Since we’ve presented our list of the city’s best new restaurants. We took a break in 2020 as the industry worked to survive COVID-related shutdowns and challenges, and in 2021 opted for a roundup of San Antonio’s top 30 restaurants—a celebration of long-time favorites and newcomers that not only made it through the pandemic but also…

Add Iron Chef: Mexico to your Netflix playlist, if you haven’t already, and keep an eye out for San Antonio’s own Sofía Sada. Sada, a chef-instructor at the Culinary Institute of America campus at Pearl, worked with Iron Chef Gabriela Ruiz, who was named Best Chef in Mexico in 2019. Read more here

In dining, as in life, mastering the details propels good into the realm of sublime. For Robbie Nowlin, a focus on the fine points goes back to the earliest days of his working life. In his first job at 14, he remembers helping his mom at an Olive Garden, sometimes making bowls of the chain’s famed…

How a demanding Englishwoman inspired me to become a better Mexican As tributes come in for author and noted culinary authority Diana Kennedy and her efforts to publicize and preserve traditional regional Mexican cuisine, I remember her as someone whose work changed my life. Read more here

The more I appreciated mood barbecue as I grew older, the more I appreciated my father. He would smoke beef ribs every once in a while when I was growing up. While my mom and I went to Mass on a Sunday morning, he’d start the offset smoker. I could see the smoke in the backyard by…

Today, San Antonio displays the best range of barbecue in the city’s history—and it’s truly exciting to experience. Meats by the pound and classic two- and three-meat platters are in good hands, while the bucket-list-worthy options also include inventive sandwiches, tacos and unusual combinations, like brisket with green curry, pork sausage made with Oaxaca cheese and…