Restaurants in Schertz

Even the best chefs have to get their start somewhere, and that somewhere is often a burger joint. This is certainly true of five-time James Beard nominee Bruce Auden. The profile in the San Antonio Express-News traces his meteoric rise from flipping burgers at a cabana to apprenticing under Guy Petit to earning Food & Wine magazine's Best New Chef title in 1988. Since then, Auden has continued to hone his culinary innovation, first at his award-winning restaurant Biga and now at Auden's Kitchen.

Auden’s Kitchen retains a local focus and serves creatively redesigned comfort food. There's buttermilk fried chicken with lemon-pepper marinade, and burgers with dijon aioli and applewood bacon. Pizzas come with house-pulled mozzarella and the hot kiss of a wood-burning oven, which also prepares salmon and whole-roasted trout. In addition to these classics, the seasonal menu saves space for a number of more lavish entrees, such as duck confit blanketed with cherry-zinfandel barbecue sauce. Diners have more than 75 wines to choose from, as well as bar offerings such as martinis and imported beer.

The dining room’s laid-back decor invites guests to relax, rather than worry about whether they’re combing their hair with the right salad fork. Wine bottles and copper pots cluster on shelves lining the dining-room walls, and diners can see right into the kitchen over a stainless-steel countertop shaded by a bevy of frying pans.

Malibu Shack makes a splash in the San Antonio culinary waters with a California-inspired menu brimming with fresh half-pound, handmade 100 percent Angus beef burgers on buns of choice, taco plates, and battered seafood. The SoCal-inspired eatery welcomes neighbors and far-flung wanderers into its surfboard-festooned dining room, which is painted in bright green and orange. Patrons sip fountain drinks amid potted fronds, lounge on the outdoor patio, or saunter over to the 45-foot bar made of bamboo and spritzed with panda-repelling perfume.

Forty years ago, Sandy Beall had an epiphany—he would open a restaurant with handcrafted food made with quality ingredients, such as 100% USDA Choice or Prime ground beef, seasonal vine-ripened tomatoes, and applewood-smoked bacon, and he would serve it in a family-friendly, casual atmosphere. Ruby Tuesday opened near the University of Tennessee in 1972, and it proved to be so popular, that it is now an iconic American institution with about 900 restaurants across the United States and the world.

Surrounded by flat-screen televisions playing sports or marathons of Suddenly Susan, customers select dishes from the menu, such as jumbo skewered shrimp, top sirloin steaks with roasted spaghetti squash, or chunks of rich lobster meat swimming in a creamy mac ’n’ cheese. Cocktails from an ample bar menu compete with craft beer and frozen drinks.

Ruby Tuesday’s staffers aren’t just concerned with making their customers happy—they also want to make Mother Nature happy and do so with a variety of green efforts and massages for trees. Their paper TueGo bags and T-Sack plastic bags are recyclable, and their new restaurants are built with the help of a LEED-accredited design and construction adviser.

With the historic town of Summerville as its backdrop, Firewater Grille situates fresh, local products at the core of its menu. Chef Perry Stone and his staff join forces to craft classic American dishes, most recently adding a steak and seafood spread that includes grilled T-bones and Dr. Pepper BBQ baby-back ribs. Throughout the week, diners can combine bites with specials and live entertainment, such as karaoke and acoustic music. Comedians seize the spotlight during free standup performances on the weekends, and on weekdays, happy-hour discounts melt stress into puddles that can be collected, frozen, and launched at an overbearing boss's car.

Mesón European Dining combines authentic flavors from across the Atlantic and won a San Antonio Express Reader’s Choice award for doing it well. The eatery's chefs fuse Spanish and Italian culinary designs to complement its specialty in French fare, splashing cuts of chicken, steak, seafood, and pasta in epicurean sauces. Tableside preparations of coffee and banana flambé serve as beguiling, appropriate restaurant performances, unlike poorly memorized monologues from the third act of the Friends series finale. Drinks pour forth from the full bar, and the Mesón team particularly takes pride in hospitably hosting celebrations. A separate private room accommodates formal congregations for candlelit meals, set upon elegant table linens offset by understated centerpieces.

At Tiger Pop, kimchi and other traditional Korean ingredients mingle with influences from the Americas. Chefs layer authentic Korean KimPop rolls, which resemble sushi but contain only cooked ingredients, with pineapple-sautéed ham and american cheese, and draw from Mexican recipes to whip up spicy burritos and tacos with Korean kogi steak. Sunlight pours through the eatery’s tall windows, and cheerful bright walls and an absence of haunted suits of armor create a welcoming atmosphere.:m]]