By the time we arrived, we were starving and craving sushi. Ingrid, Vanessa, and I met up with my friend Jon and we checked out Sushi Zushi. You can always tell the quality of a sushi restaurant by whether or not their name includes a rhyme. ;) Kidding, but the food was really good. They have a GIANT (7 page) menu and we were daunted by our options, but finally ordered four rolls. The spicy tuna roll was kind of weird and mayonnaise-y, so we weren't much impressed by it, but the other food was good. The highlight was the valentine's roll: avocado and soft shell crab, rolled uramaki style, and wrapped with salmon and tuna. It was so good that we ordered a second one!
The first night, around nine of us went to Rosario's Mexican Cafe Y Cantina, where I had two lovely fish tacos. Rosario's is just south of downtown and is in kind of a weird neighborhood but it's a cute and colorful cafe with pink glowing lights and turquoise chairs. The one thing I found strange about them was that the server repeatedly emphasized the non-spicyness of the food, as if that were a selling point. What if I wanted my food hotter than mild? No way at Rosarios would they let this happen.
The next night our lab went to dinner at Iron Cactus on the Riverwalk. I tried a hibiscus champagne cocktail, which sounds as though it would be delicious, but it turned out to be horrible. Just really sour and non-tasty. I guess hibiscus was not meant to be consumed, lol. However, the salmon salad I had (with goat cheese, candied pecans, and other tasty tidbits) was really good.
Ingrid and I stumbled upon Las Canarias the next day for lunch. Their menu changes seasonally and is full of fresh and organic food. I had blackened crimini mushroom pasta with spinach, sundried tomatoes, and manchego cheese. It was one of the best meals of the entire trip.
That night a few friends and I discovered Las Ramblas, a lovely Spanish restaurant on the Riverwalk. We spent 3 hours and many dollars there enjoying tapas, rioja wine, and vegetarian paella. Dessert was Irish coffee.
The last food adventure I'll document was at Azuca Nuevo Latino. A South American place, it was full and busy when the four of us arrived a few minutes late for our 8:00 reservation. Azuca is comprised of a bar and a restaurant (two separate buildings) with a patio out back. As the weather was balmy, we opted for a table on the patio rather than in the noisy restaurant. The service was maddeningly slow (our appetizers took over an hour) but our food was incredibly delicious when it arrived at long last. I tried a caipirinha - a cocktail made from cachaça (a sugarcane-based alcohol), sugar, and lime. It was a bit too sour/bitter for me, but I can see how it'd appeal to some people since I like gin & tonics a lot.
We had plantains as an appetizer and they also brought us some lovely warm cranberry cornbread while we waited. For dinner I had a seared tuna steak over mashed potatoes and a balsamic mustard drizzle. It disappeared in less than five minutes. Could have been my hunger, but I thought it was extremely tasty. I love seared ahi when I get Japanese food, and this was similar since it was blackened on the outside and rare on the inside. Mmm, tuna.
And that concludes my San Antonio food adventures! Hope you enjoyed the tour.
