Dining in San Antonio - Day 1

Before I get to San Antonio, a brief word about our layover at Newark. When you have a lengthy layover stuck in an Airport, your food choices can be limited. But our hopes were raised by a neighbor at the school bus stop who told us there was a diner type place with a decent burger at Terminal C. (For the record there was also a steak house with dry-aged ribs and short loins on display, and a Tex-Mex place which seemed redundant considering our destination, don't you think?). The diner was The Garden State Diner.

Yes it's a chain, but I draw a distinction between a local chain like Ted's and a national chain like the Olive Garden. This falls into the latter category.

Irrespective of that it was a good burger at a good price, and a decent meal for an Airport meal.

We got into SA at about 5:30 Central Time, checked into the hotel and met some of the friends we'd be spending the next few days with. We wandered a bit about the Riverwalk (part wonder, part tourist trap). About 7:30 we were really hungry, and the aroma of BBQ beckoned. Texas BBQ was one of the goals on this trip - this wasn't it.

I have said before that I don't do restaurant reviews, so I am not going to identify this place. A
Google search will give you the answer. The meats were properly cooked. The sauce sucked. There is debate in Texas as tho whether the sauce is slathered on the meat or served on the side as a condiment, but nothing I have ever read expresses a description of Texas BBQ other than the Wikipedia definition:

"Texas sauces are tomato based, less sweet than Kansas City and spicier, and are not generally used during cooking, but are used as a table sauce." Look, this may have been an old family recipe, handed down through the generations, but it was sweet and cloying and it looked and tasted an awful lot like Cattlemen's or another foodservice brand.

When you trimmed the sauce off the brisket, it was lovely. And the hot links, minus sauce, were quite good. The sauce gets a big thumbs down.

Oh, and the restaurant was a chain!

But the day did introduce a new friend:

Shiner Bock!