deviant housewife.: alamo city

Showing posts with label alamo city. Show all posts

Rosario's

On our last night in San Antonio, we walked over to Rosario's for some of the best margaritas in the city.

If you are in the mood for some light Mexican food, try their Enchiladas Mexicanas! (They're vegetarian too.)

Countdown to moving! I'm excited about starting over in a new city, but this is the longest I've lived anywhere except my hometown. Things I will miss, dearly, about our lovely little apartment include our view of the pioneer building.

Day:

and night:

that's right, folks

Snow in San Antonio! Of course, it was back in the 70s the next day. What is happening to the weather?

hello, winter

Seriously, a few days ago I was wearing shorts and a neighbor was outside studying in her bikini top. Now, it's 21 degrees and we had this lovely note stuck on the door...

One more reason to drink...

Wanted to try some Texas wine, and this was the most interesting bottle that I found:

Proceeds support the Alamo!

Although, obviously, I don't have too high of hopes for it. Maybe an end-of-the-night bottle, when pretty much anything tastes fine?

The Alamo is a funny thing. Every once in a while, we unintentionally drive by it - it's just right there in the middle of things - and it's so weird, it's like, hey, look, it's THE. ALAMO. I know this is blasphemous, but it's terribly unimpressive in real life. But it's still weird that it's right there.

the good, the bad, the ugly

We've been drinking a tiny bit more wine around here than ever before, and occasionally buying few bottles for the house, and since I know absolutely nothing about it except whether I like the taste or not, I figure I probably should start paying attention to which ones I like (and especially which ones I don't like) instead of choosing at random at the store. Iphone camera photos come in handy for this as long as you remember which were good and which were bad.

Here's the ones I would pick up again:

Paso Creek Cabernet Sauvignon 2006

Les Jamelles Merlot 2006

And one I wouldn't:

The Show Cabernet Sauvignon 2007

The label was pretty though. So far I usually only take a picture if I like it, but from now on I'll try to remember to do the bad ones too.

And one I really liked the first time (the right side, left is still unopened), but not much when I bought a second bottle of it:

Clos Du Bois Sonoma Reserve Alexander Valley 2006

And of course, all of the wine we tried in Rome was sooo good:

Pradio Cabernet Sauvignon Crearo 2007

Terre Di Zagara Nero D'Avola Ummira 2008

Bertani Villa Novare Valpolicella 2008

Dolcetto d' Alba

Chianti Classico Point Al Mass

weekends

It's not quite summer time, there's still a really nice breeze at night that makes it bearable to be outdoors, and we've gotten new chairs for our shared patio, and so the weekends have been full of sitting out with a beer or glass of wine and hanging out with whatever neighbors happen to be around and hanging out. It's so nice to actually have friends around, people you don't mind running into and actually like socializing with. I haven't been this un-hermit-y in a long, long time.

A couple weekends ago my sister-in-law came to visit and it was the best, most relaxing weekend in a long time, full of drinking and talking and listening to music, and most of all, eating! Some of the highlights, eating wise:

Mexican appetizer plates:

White bean nachos, jalepeno poppers, fried mushrooms:

I love the ground here, it is covered in bottle caps:

BBQ brisket and coleslaw:

Fried meatballs.

Other weekend highlights: church converted to bar, margaritas at the riverwalk, meeting wine-bearing new neighbors, crazy-detailed Mexican folk art:

(Of course, I didn't take enough pictures, so the stolen ones are linked back to where they came from.)

nowhere to go

Still haven't found decent Italian food in San Antonio. And I'm not even comparing it to the awesome hole-in-the-wall eateries everywhere in downtown Gloucester anymore, now if it's as good as the Olive Garden, it'll be the best so far in San Antonio. (When we first moved here, we saw Olive Garden voted as one of the best Italian restaurants in San Antonio. We laughed then, but not anymore.)

Last week, we stopped into La Focaccia Italian Grill. It was so bad that I wouldn't even be writing about it, except I actually remembered to take pictures of all the food and stuff and it would be a waste.

It looked promising, hole-in-the-wall-y, but still nice:

Bread and olive oil came fast, all the service was fast:

The oysters rockafeller tasted more like my granny's mustard greens than oysters rockafeller, because of a surplus of smokey bacon overwhelming the dish:

Hubby got clams and linguini with white sauce, which was horrible. I couldn't place the spice used, but there was way too much of it...

And I knew I was ordering too ambitiously, but I couldn't resist my favorite: Stuffed Flounder - "filled with crab, scallops, and snapper served in a lemon butter sauce"!

It was really bad, the whole thing just tasted bland and wet, and there was rice mixed into the stuffing. Partly my fault, I should've ordered chicken parmesan or meatballs and spaghetti or something, but hey, it was on the menu... Note to self: Next time you find a bug in your water before ordering, just go ahead and leave.

Azuca Nuevo Latino

A few days ago, we went over to Azuca, a sort of Latin fusion slash steak and seafood restaurant. The atmosphere and decor were great:

Most of the pieces looked like they came from Garcia Art Glass (located pretty much just behind the restaurant). The chandeliers were gorgeous.

The service was also great, and the food was decent, except this is definitely someplace to split meals. I ordered pork tenderloins and received a platter-sized dinner plate with enough food for at least three meals on it. I think there were a pound of green beans as the side. Here's a picture of something similar from the web site, although my plate was easily triple full compared to this photo:

(I keep saying I'm going to start taking pictures of my food, but always forget. All these food pictures came from the restaurant's web site)

Their cornbread is the best; even after we were stuffed of the entrees we couldn't stop eating it!

There are enough better fusion-ish restaurants at this price point in San Antonio - Acenar comes to mind - that I probably wouldn't go back to Azuca again for dinner (although if you're into quantity this is the place to go). I will definitely check them out again for lunch or just drinks and appetizers; hub and I both agreed that their appetizers were great. Mine was a goat cheese spinach salad with strawberries and toasted pumpkin seeds: