I was recently in San Antonio - a city that I had long wanted to visit - for a week-long dealer conference. I was there with a couple colleagues and we had some time to kill one afternoon and we decided to go have lunch along the famed River Walk in downtown San Antonio. There are tons of "touristy" restaurants with mediocre food to choose from - Dick's Last Resort, Landry's Seafood and Joe's Crab Shack immediately come to mind - so we were looking for something that was a little better than that. Walking along, we saw a place with outside dining called Las Canarias. Thinking it was an upscale Mexican restaurant - and that a margarita sounded pretty good on a hot San Antonio day - we decided it give it a try.
Before we went to the River Walk, we had to pay homage to the Alamo. I've heard and read that the Alamo wasn't all that big so it was no surprise to me that the building itself is so small. But it's a large symbol of the Texas spirit of independence and self-reliance, possibly the single most well-known attraction in Texas.
The River Walk (see map) actually surprised me with how smallish it was. While it was nice down by the water, it was also somewhat of a tourist trap with t-shirt shops, schlocky restaurants, and various bars. What also surprised me was the narrow sidewalks that went along the canals - sidewalks that had little to no railings to keep people from falling into the water. I questioned my two colleagues as to how many times on a busy Friday or Saturday night that they had to fish people out of the canal after falling in or getting knocked in by passing pedestrians. Their guess - a lot.
Most of the restaurants had nice looking young women out front trying to get people to come in for lunch and we stayed away from those places. One of my colleagues had come in a day early to save on plane fares and he pointed out a restaurant that he ate at that he thought was pretty good, but we ended up finding Las Canarias that had a nice and laid-back outdoor patio with a Mexican name (basically "the canary") figuring that we'd get margaritas and some Mexican food.
It turns out that Las Canarias was part of the Spanish-inspired Omni La Mansion del Rio hotel that sits along the River Walk and is one of four restaurants (plus a bar) that is part of the hotel. We took a table that was alternately in and out of the sun due to puffy clouds that would float by in the high Texas sky. We were given menus and it wasn't long before our server, Antonio, came by to greet us. My colleague John asked if he could make a good margarita, preferably with Herradura silver tequila. Antonio said, "Yes, we have Herradura silver and I can add some Grand Marnier in with it, too. How does that sound?" We all signed up for one of those.
The menu immediately told us that this was not a Mexican restaurant. While they did have chips, guacamole and salsa, there were really only two items that were remotely close to Mexican or Southwestern food on the lunch menu. One were beef short rib tacos, the other was an achiote-marinated chicken breast in a tortilla wrap. That was it. In fact, the menu was pretty limited - a cobb salad, a double cheeseburger, a salmon reuben sandwich, a vegetarian pasta dish and shrimp omelette were the main things on the menu.
Antonio brought out the margaritas and they were spectacular. Sipping these great margaritas on a warm (90 F) afternoon along the San Antonio River Walk was a nice touch for lunch and a real spot-hitter.
I ordered the double double cheeseburger - two patties topped with sharp cheddar cheese on top. It came highly recommended by Antonio and after some wavering between the salmon reuben and the beef short rib tacos, I ended up getting the burger. When it was presented to me, I started to laugh. There were two cheese-topped burger patties, but they were the size of sliders.
On top of one another, they were probably about four inches high. But placed side by side on the bun, they barely - barely - went over the edge of the bun. Oh, the burgers were tasty and the sharp cheddar went well with the burger but they had the audacity to charge $16 bucks for this burger - or double cheeseburger - and it was far from a good value.
One of my colleagues ended up getting the braised beef short rib tacos. They were topped with fresh cilantro, avocado slices, chopped jalapeños, sliced tomatoes and pickled onions. He was hopeful that they would be very good, but he was disappointed. "They're so-so," he said to me. "Not exactly what I thought they'd be."
My other colleague ordered the cobb salad. However when our food was brought out (by another staffer, not Antonio) he was given the chicken wrap instead. When he told the person that he had ordered the cobb salad and not the chicken wrap, the server became a little flustered. "Go ahead and eat the chicken wrap," he said. A few moments later the manager stopped by to apologize for the mix-up and that a cobb salad would soon be on its way to the table. My colleague began to nibble at the French fries on the plate and when the cobb salad didn't make it in a timely fashion, he began to nibble on one of the half-wraps on the plate. He had about half the wrap and good portion of the fries finished before his cobb salad showed up.
So, the burger I had was good, but not a good value. The braised beef short rib tacos were "so-so". They screwed up my other colleagues order, but he basically got two lunches for the price of one. The highlight were the margaritas and Antonio's good nature as a server. But Las Canarias was vastly overpriced and not a good value versus the quality of the food. The only thing that was worth the price of admission were Antonio's Herradura Silver and Grand Marnier margaritas. Other than that, look elsewhere for food on the River Walk.
Check out Biga on the Banks at 203 S. St Mary's near the Riverwalk. IMHO, best value of the restaurants around the Riverwalk.
Posted by: Tom Kirkendall | July 08, 2015 at 08:42 AM
Las Ramblas Restaurant San Antonio along the River walk. Get the paella
Posted by: Neil | July 09, 2015 at 01:56 PM