An Average Joe in San Antonio

With the days getting longer and the nights having just a hint of a chill, folks will begin exploring the hill country and might even be looking for a patio to enjoy a brew.  Traveling ten miles north of 1604 on Blanco Road can transport you to a place as Texan as a Bob Wills fiddle, Specht’s Store.

Built in 1887, Specht’s has been a watering hole for over 100 years.  In fact, there is a legend that William Specht had a way to procure beer during Prohibition when other saloons had run dry.  Today, the restaurant is operated by the sixth owner in its history with the inside adorned with a variety of ephemera (most of it being directly related to the history of the store/saloon) that makes Specht’s as much museum as restaurant.

What I love most about going to eat here is the drive — it is just long enough to leave behind the hustle and bustle, but close enough to be accessible.  This most recent trip proved how San Antonio is sprawling even further and further north — there seemed to be only a couple of miles of country between the McMansions and the country store.

Even though I was in the mood for a beer, I decided to go with a little sangria wine and was not disappointed.

I stopped by Specht’s on the way back to town after a hike in the Canyon Lake Gorge with my girlfriend.  It was later in the afternoon, and there were a couple of regulars on the porch who were chewin’ the fat and told us to go on in.

Even though Specht’s seems like more of a beer joint, I was in the mood to try their house sangria wine, and being in South Texas, I couldn’t get that Jerry Jeff Walker song out of my mind.  The drink was sweet, refreshing, and the perfect compliment to the half day hike.  For lunch, I decided to order the Jäger-Schnitzel with the burgundy mushroom sauce.

You can see how the breading is similar to a chicken fry; this makes it really good.

As opposed to other Jäger-Schnitzel that I have had in the past, the one at Specht’s was breaded like a chicken fried steak with a nice and flaky crust.  The pork was tender and the the brown sauce was chopped full of mushrooms and had a pleasantly “wangy” type of taste to it.  While the green beans were all right, the mashed potatoes were really good.

My date got the chicken fried steak and she was convinced it was one of the best she has ever had.  What she really liked about it was that they put the cream gravy underneath the steak so that it wouldn’t make it soggy.  I hadn’t ever seen that before and if you think about it (especially if you like the crispy breading), it really is pure geniusness.

The next time you have an aching to get out of the city, head a little bit farther North than you might typically be used to and stop by Specht’s to see what they got cookin’.

Value: 8/10 (the lunch plate seemed to be right at $11-$12 with a tall glass of sangria being $6; this is a little pricey in my mind for lunch, but I was impressed by the quality of the food)
Atmosphere: 10/10 (while places like Applebees tries to manufacture history in their restaurants, Specht’s is the real deal; be sure to check out all the cool things that they have on the walls)
Service: 9.5/10 (the waitress was incredibly friendly and accommodating, letting me have all the time in the world to make up my mind)
Taste: 9.5/10 (down home country cookin’!)
Website: http://www.spechts.com/
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I had planned this week to get a solid sleep each night, to start running again, and to begin to cook healthy.  That went out the window when something got a hold of me Monday afternoon and still hasn’t quite let go; even as I write this I am still a little under the weather.  I guess it’s true, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.  Now for the quick bites!

• While I have been there for drinks, I finally got to eat out at Spetch’s way out north on Blanco Road.  I ordered the special of the day, Jäger-Schnitzel, which had a crispy chicken-fried crust and a delicious burgundy-mushroom sauce.

• If you like beer, good food and have a some money to spend, I would suggest checking out the Ranger Creek Beer Dinner at Lüke San Antonio this Monday, February 28th.  They are offering a five course meal paired with five beers brewed at SA’s own “brewstillery” for $60/person.  The beers include: South Texas Lager, Mesquite Smoked Porter, La Bestia Aimable, Oatmeal Pale Ale, and Belgian Witbier; check out the full menu here.

• For the kind of food related (but kind of not) article of the week, I stumbled upon the irreverent Food Network Humor the other day and couldn’t help but laugh!  Possibly NSFW depending on where you work.

• The Honey BBQ Chicken Strip Sandwich is back at Whataburger!  Possibly the best “limited time only” item ever invented; now I really have to start exercising so I can eat one of these.

• For the non-food story of the week, I was amazed at how Amazon took aim at Netflix by offering streaming video with their Amazon Prime subscription.  If you are not familiar, for $79 you can get a two day shipping on all Amazon purchases by signing up for Amazon Prime; they sweetened the pot by offering online streaming of over 5,000 titles.  This is almost too good of a deal for me not to pass up…

I recently worked with local filmmaker, Aaron Evenson, on a film for the San Antonio Office of Cultural Affairs Neighborhood Film Project.  We had the choice of four different neighborhoods and decided to make a film on the North River Walk.

I originally saw the announcement calling for submissions while working on this blog at Sip in the middle of January.  I immediately called up Aaron and we started working with the main idea complete just two days later.  This project was incredibly fun to brainstorm, storyboard, and film.

I hope that you have as much fun watching this flick as we had making it!

Finally the cold weather seems to have passed on by; I blame it on missing last week’s Quick Bites! The Rodeo has almost come and gone, the Spurs will be back in the Alamo City pretty soon, and you can enjoy a beer on the patio. Life is good.

• The Beverage Bar is turning into a place where I not only do work on Mobile Apps, but also enjoy good food.  The inside is something you would expect to find in the Bay Area that is sort of a hodgepodge of a coffee bar, wine bar, meeting place, and kick-back-and-relax place (complete with a Wii).  I like the open feel and the people are nice.

• The Dosarita at the Quarry Hofbrau is pretty tasty and packs a punch; I would have never imagined that a Dos Equis mixed with a margarita would have tasted this good.

• If you want a chance to see San Antonio in a different sort of way, check out the Alamo City Ghost Tours.  The tour happens nightly and meets across from the Alamo.  Everyone is given some ghost hunting equipment (infrared temperature sensors and EMF readers) and the guide, J.R., is incredibly interesting as he gives you some history of our great city.  The price is $15/person and you get a group discount of $10/person for groups of ten or more.

• The food link of the week goes to BR Meyers article in The Atlantic called “The Moral Crusade Against Foodies” as it has caused quite an uproar in the foodie community.  While not really considering myself a foodie, but rather an average person who likes food, I don’t really have a dog in this hunt and found some of the points interesting.  At any rate, controversy is always fun, right?

• Bun ‘n’ Barrel has a great lunch deal for cheeseburger and fries for $6.  The burger is pretty good (it would be better with a home baked bun), but the fries are really good.  After walking into the restaurant and seeing an older gentleman with an awesome milkshake, I knew I had to get one myself.

• The non food blog of the week is for a new iPad app called Pennant.  As a baseball fan, I am salivating to get an iPad just to buy this app; it would be days of fun and I’d love to go back and see some of the games that I attended.

Graham Weston is a native of South Texas and grew up in San Antonio.  When he was in the seventh grade, he moved to Marion to live on the family ranch.  Growing up, he participated in the San Antonio Stock Show and later graduated from Texas A&M with a degree in Agricultural Economics.

A serial entrepreneur, Graham started a business in college and ultimately became involved with real estate.  In December of 1998, Graham became a founding investor in a small startup called Rackspace.  Rackspace Hosting has turned into a publicly traded company employing thousands of Rackers (employees of Rackspace) around the globe.  Graham Weston was recently one of the tri-chairmen of the SA2020 initiative by Mayor Julián Castro.

Rarely does government, industry, and the general public work together to improve the overall well-being of a city.  The SA2020 initiative aimed to get all three groups to put forth a vision for what San Antonio could look like look like in ten years.  Wanting to make sure that local industry was well represented, the mayor of San Antonio asked Graham Weston, chairman of Rackspace Hosting, to be one of the three chairs for the SA2020 project.

SA2020 harkened back to a program in the 1980s by Henry Cisneros called Target 90 that was aimed to bring major improvements to the Alamo City before the end of the century.  “San Antonio was really a very different city [then].  We were a sleepy backwater city.  Today, we are a major city and one of the more prosperous cities [in the country],” Weston says.

Graham Weston, Chairman of Rackspace Hosting and Tri-Chair for SA2020

To become even greater and overcome some of the current issues, the San Antonio community was engaged in several sessions aimed at developing a roadmap for the city.  An issue that Mr. Weston is most passionate about is ensuring that everyone receives a quality education.

“We have to lead a turnaround in the education system in our city.  I really think that there is not even a close second.  We must become a leader with educated citizens.”

With the budget cuts at the state level, Mr. Weston believes that San Antonio cannot count on the state or federal government to provide the solution to the education problem.  “We must take the initiative ourselves to do what is necessary.  My vision is [for] San Antonio [to] decide that education is something that we must prevail in,” Weston says.

Having a highly educated pool of citizens benefits not only the individual and his community, but ultimately companies looking to hire talented contributors.  Weston believes that “corporations should be more demanding of schools, but corporations should be more involved with schools.”

To help this vision, Mr. Weston has ensured that Rackspace Hosting is doing its part to help the community.  Recently, Rackspace relocated its headquarters to the abandoned Windsor Park Mall in Windcrest, Texas off of Walzem and I-35, and Mr. Weston wanted to get involved with the neighboring community.  He made it his goal to make the surrounding schools, termed the “Magnificent Seven,” become some of the best in the state.

Rackspace Hosting became directly involved in many of the schools where Rackers, or employees of Rackspace, are involved with the Big Brothers and Big Sisters Programs at Roosevelt High School and the schools that feed into it.  Furthermore, Rackspace Hosting sponsors many programs designed to help students of the “Magnificent Seven,” including City Year, Communities in Schools, Gemini Ink, and Youth Orchestra.  They also sponsor a chess club that is open to both students and the community at large.

“We find programs from organizations that we think are worthwhile and go to the school district and see what they think,” Weston says.  He feels that it is important to hire organizations with an expertise in education, much like customers hire Rackspace Hosting to provide a solution to their IT Hosting needs.

[Video with Mr. Weston and NowCastSA]

Instead of focusing on  students’ weaknesses, Mr. Weston feels that it is paramount to focus on their strengths and to give them encouragement.  “Schools are generally very weakness-focused.  Whether it is music or writing, those are both things we are trying to bring out.  Let’s bring that talent, that strength out.”

At the time of this story, a draft of the SA2020 final report was released to the public.  The report identified 11 topics that Mayor Castro should focus on including:

• Arts and Culture
• Community and Safety
• Downtown Development
• Economic Competitiveness
• Education
• Family Well-Being
• Government Accountability and Civic Engagement
• Health and Fitness
• Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability
• Neighborhoods and Growth Management
• Transportation

The next step is to take the priorities from these meetings and inspire individuals, companies, and the government to take action on them.   Getting folks to rally around the areas of focus is key if San Antonio is to see measureable improvements.  Mr. Weston believes that “the only real tangible result is to move the needle on the goals and create results on the vision.  The ultimate test of success of SA2020 is whether we create a focus of priorities on [these points] that creates better results in a decade.”

With a successful entrepreneur and businessman like Mr. Weston championing this project, San Antonio can take the vision of the SA2020 initiative and continue to evolve into a leader of American cities.

Graham makes his residence in New Braunfels, TX and suggests that you check out the Huisache Grill the next time you are up I-35.  He advises ordering the beef tender tails with the tortilla soup and either getting green beans or asparagus as a side.  He’ll drink ice tea, and lots of it.  “The Huisache Grill is world class,” he assures us. “It’s not expensive, and it’s absolutely great!”

When he offices out of the Rackspace location in Windcrest, Graham likes to drop by Mama Lee’s for some soul food.  He orders the baked chicken with double okra and yams and will wash it down with red Kool-Aid.