LEFT Designated as a Unesco World Heritage Site, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West was built by the architect and his apprentices in the 1930s using desert rock. The building, which comprises Wright’s personal home, studio, and architectural laboratory, is considered one of his greatest masterpieces. ABOVE Les Paul at the Musical Instrument Museum. BELOW Granite Mountain's lupins and California poppies in bloom.
firm purchased the land. Led by local billionaire Kit Goldsbury, formerly the president of Pace Foods— whose commercials famously mocked salsa from New York City—the development preserved the iconic architecture. It drew on the brewery’s history for design inspiration. The closest restaurants to the Emma serve modern American, French, and hearty Texas cuisine. I imagined Parisians seeing me tear off pieces of a baguette at Brasserie Mon Chou Chou until one gasps in horror, “This stuff’s made in San Antonio!” I grabbed an electric bikeshare and peddled off the polished plaza of The Pearl, following the Riverwalk south to Lala’s Gorditas for the uniquely San Antonian specialty of puffy tacos. Instead of cooking tortillas on a comal, Lala’s Gorditas fries the masa, then fills it with crisp iceberg lettuce, juicy chopped tomatoes, and ground beef, crowning it with curtido and crema. That night, I ate fluffy pita drawn through spicy feta dip, leeks in olive oil with kohlrabi greens, and Wagyu beef tartare at Ladino in The Pearl. The restaurant traces the culinary journey of Sephardic Jews from pre-Inquisition Spain through the Balkans and into Israel. It is not Tex-Mex, but it is possibly the only Sephardic restaurant in the United States. The money Goldsbury’s group poured into The Pearl brought in unique, excellent restaurants. But if people get too comfortable waddling from cocktails at Cured to mochi hush puppies at the Vietnamese- Texan Best Quality Daughter, I worry it could shift the
OPPOSITE PAGE The Hotel Emma retains some of its industrial character as the former site of a hundred-year-old brewery. TOP Thick, puffy gorditas like those served at Lala’s are a staple of Tex-Mex cuisine. ABOVE Hotel Emma guests can bring the scent of San Antonio—or, at least, The Pearl’s take on it—home with “Recuerdos,” available in a spray, rollerball, or candle.
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