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On Trend
These evolutions dominated the San Antonio bar and beverage scene in 2021 BY RON BECHTOL
F
rom cultivated lowbrow aesthetics to a growing cluster of adventurous drinking spots south of downtown, these trends defined the boozy end of San Antonio’s food scene in 2021. Pour yourself a drink and let’s run them down.
Craft Brewing William Menger started making beer in a basement connected to what became the Menger Hotel in the early 1850s, and by the early 1900s, San Antonio boasted some of the state’s largest and most successful breweries. It’s only taken 100 years, but it appears that the Alamo City is once again poised to 20
become a brewing powerhouse. At least in numbers. Inside 1604 alone there at least 16 breweries of varying sizes and ambitions. And while the craft’s local pioneers were largely German immigrants, the latest crop is far more diverse. Joey Villareal kickstarted the craft movement in 1996 with the founding of Blue Star Brewing. Since then, Freetail Brewing took flight in 2008, and brewery-distillery Ranger Creek was established in 2010. Alamo Brewing, now in impressive digs on the near East Side, launched its label in 2014, while Dorćol Distilling and Brewing started distilling in 2013 and later added Highwheel Beer to the mix. And these are just the bigger guys. Small but scrappy Islla St. Brew-
CURRENT | December 29, 2021 – January 11, 2022 | sacurrent.com
ing serves South Texas-inspired suds — including one that smells, looks and tastes uncannily like a certain red cream soda — out of a modest taproom set with picnic tables. Weathered Souls has made a national name for itself with its Black Is Beautiful initiative. Downtown’s Roadmap draws customers with a wall of taps that reads like a hit parade of local favorites: New England and Double IPAs, a dry-hopped Pilsner, Blonde Ale, Kettle Sours, Hefeweizen. Food is front and center and the city’s most impressively appointed operation, Southerleigh Fine Food and Brewery — which happens to occupy the original Pearl Brewhouse, built in 1894. We’ve come a long way, only to look back.
‘High-low’ Design Let’s acknowledge something from the get-go. There’s “high” design, of which San Antonio has precious few examples in the hospitality realm, and
there’s “low” design, of which we have a ton — both purposeful and accidental. The accidental lows are worth examining another time. To point out just one example of the purposeful low, which might best be called “high-low,” let’s look at Little Death on North St. Mary’s Street. It’s the architectural equivalent of a tattooed sideshow performer with no square inch left uninked — great as a one-off riff on graffiti, but maybe not sustainable as a trend. Moving up the aspirational scale, we come to Hot Joy, the interior equivalent of Little Death’s exterior, with every surface — some of them inspired by tattoos — meticulously embellished with Asian themes and artifacts by designer Greg Mannino. It’s perhaps the city’s most fully realized work of interior imagination. The only competition there might well be the more recent Hugman’s Oasis on the River Walk, an ultra-atmospheric tiki den sporting tropes from skulls to South Seas shields and grottoes to palm-thatch huts. And
