I found a lot to like in my research across more than 30 cafes, bistros, taquerías and pizzerias to find my Top 10 Stone Oak Restaurants. I also found some things I didn’t like. I talked about it a little with three sushi places on the bad side of the 10 best (and worst) things I ate in June. Here’s the rest of it, a cautionary tale of the five worst things I ate in Stone Oak.
STONE OAK TOP 10:Nothing but the best
Pizza at Urban Bricks: If you’re looking for the reason I keep it local when I put together Top 10 rankings, just look around the corner from the corporate pizza chain called Urban Bricks and you’ll see the San Antonio-born Trilogy Pizza & Wine Bistro, a Top 10 Stone Oak player with the city’s best Chicago deep-dish pizza. Urban Bricks is more like Subway for pizza, a production line that builds pizza to order from the crust to the crown, yet somehow manages to make it look and taste like it came from a freezer box next to the tater tots. 19141 Stone Oak Parkway, Suite 101, 210-967-0001, urbanbrickskitchen.com
Crossroads taco at Torchy’s Tacos: The first story I ever wrote for the Express-News was an Austin clapback called “10 reasons Torchy’s Tacos doesn’t suck as bad as you think (and 5 reasons it does).” Some of those good reasons are still in place: the green chile queso, the impossibly orange Diablo sauce, the cool vibe. But some of the other side of the equation remains equally true. Is it possible that the tortillas have gotten even worse? They were never in San Antonio’s league, and this time they seemed like those ones that you cook at home, except somebody forgot the “cook” part. Flour tortillas, or damp Communion wafers at Our Lady of Austin Tacos? It made the $5.75 Crossroads taco even worse than the stiff, house-fire brisket at its core, a brisket that a dogpile of avocado, cheese, cilantro, onions and tomatillo salsa couldn’t salvage. The menu said the Crossroads comes on a corn tortilla. But this one had flour, like it was daring me to like it. And losing. 18210 Sonterra Place, 726-444-9116, torchystacos.com
Shrimp Milano at Milano Italian Grill: No amount of flash-frying, no amount of garlic-lemon-butter sauce and no amount of angel-hair pasta can make up for funky micro-bites of shrimp wondering how they got there in the first place. If two of the four shrimp on your plate taste like they’ve gone past their prime, that’s an “F” in every class I ever took. I don’t know who started the “Shrimp (Your Name Here)” thing at San Antonio restaurants, but I do know this: I wish they would’ve quit while they were ahead. 19239 Stone Oak Parkway, 210-495-3663, milanoitaliangrillsa.com…