For the last thirty-five years she and her husband have lived in a Victorian cottage near the river, putting down roots as deep as towering Texas pecan trees. Louis to a Palestinian father and an American mother, settling in San Antonio in her teens. “I remembered the old men / in the west side café / dealing dominoes like magical charms,” writes Naomi Shihab Nye in her poem “San Antonio.” Full of her own particular magic, Nye was born in St. “All meat and wood in your face…very rooted in tradition.” “It’s a step back in time,” Hernandez says. But his eyes really light up when he talks about his next project-San Antonio’s first-ever asadero, a classic Mexican all-wood-fired outdoor grill that will spit-roast house-made sausages, lamb, whole fish, and plenty of carne asada. “It is a shift toward a more authentic taste of San Antonio’s history and culture,” he says, “not a diluted Tex-Mex version of it.” His empire has since spread to other enterprises: the funky Frutería, the upscale Casa Hernán, and, set to open in late 2014, a second La Gloria restaurant and marketplace, where Hernandez plans to sell Latin America–sourced ingredients such as the farm-fresh cacao that he imports straight from Guatemala. At his first restaurant, La Gloria, he introduced a menu highlighting the street food of interior Mexico, a region he studies like a food anthropologist. A San Antonio native, Hernandez creates dishes that are far more diverse, nuanced, and even (shock) healthier than the chips-and- queso-joint standards. Not only is chef Johnny Hernandez helping put San Antonio on the culinary map, he’s also turning Mexican food stereotypes on their outdated cabezas. “When you’ve done it a while, it’s just second nature.” “It’s like throwing a football,” he says. But despite the celebrity attention, you’ll still almost always find Cortez on the floor attending to customers himself. He’s outfitted the likes of Sammy Davis, Jr., Johnny and June Cash, the King of Spain, and Pope John Paul II, who took home a big white Stetson. And it’s not just cowboys and tourists who have benefited from his expertise. He’ll even hand crease Western hats according to style preference-rancher, bull rider, Fort Worth, or tycoon. I’ve ever since I could walk.” With an intuition honed over a lifetime, Cortez is the man to see to find your perfect topper. “After school, I’d come and roller-skate on the sidewalk outside,” Cortez says. Better known as Abe the Hatter, Cortez manages the shop floor at Paris Hatters, a San Antonio institution since 1917 that belonged to his uncle and his dad. Perhaps no one else in Texas knows hats quite like Abe Cortez-and that’s no small feat in a state where headgear is as ubiquitous as pickup trucks and tacos.
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