Noshing Out – Get Cured

The work week is over. Whatever else is left to do, can be dealt with Monday morning. A simple salad from lunch, consumed hours ago, has left you hungry for a substantial meal and with no work tomorrow, craving a cocktail. A co-worker and I took this opportunity to explore our temporary transplant city and headed to the Pearl District of San Antonio for dinner. The area is a refurbished brewery, complete with quaint shops and industrially décor-ed apartments above them. A variety a restaurants and bars are sprinkled throughout the complex, including a hotel adorned with steampunk-esque cogs, pipes, knobs and dials from the old brewery. Our destination however, was what looked to be an old bank, the restaurant Cured.

                Stepping into the yellowed brick building, the first and most prominent feature is the meat case. Off-white fat striped and dotted the hanging cuts in the temperature and humidity controlled locker, standing in the middle of the room. We were seated and once handed the menus, my attention was immediately drawn to the restaurant’s namesake, the charcuterie section. With our knowledgeable waiter guiding us through some of the more unique cuts, we ordered the largest sampling platter.

                We needed a guidebook to navigate the white ceramic plate that was set before us. The charcuterie was accompanied by a garlic mustard, slightly chunky with the ground bulbs and heady with the roasted garlic scent. Maple mustard was also painted across the plate, grainy with mustard seeds and providing a dark sweetness to any meat of our choosing. In the upper left, the cannel of chicken liver mousse had a sweetness on its own, creamy with the texture of whipped butter. Just above the bowl of berry preserves was our smoked duck ham. Not gamey at all. The meat was moist despite the cure. While the skin was not crispy, the flavors of the breast came through simple and clean, a meat best used to play the condiments. To me, the most interesting offering was the offal sausage (bottom right). Having sampled organs before, they can be tough, tasteless, gamey, bitter, or some combination of all of them. This sausage had none of those things. It was soft and succulent, its pink striped with white appearance betraying a more expensive cut of meat. Mild saltiness and meat flavor like a tartar came through and paired well with the berry.

                Though mostly full from our meaty meander, I did order something lighter that piqued my interest for novel cuisine: Shrimp pastrami. Using the same seasonings that one would use for the cut of beef, the shrimp were cooked and pressed together in a circular log, then sliced thin and displayed with watermelon radish and a spicy remoulade that tasted not far from a kicked up Russian dressing. The shrimp texture was most apparent, and the slices were only lightly held together from the spider web of red spices that laced throughout. Slightly briny, mildly salty, and clean on the palate, is was a nice, light end to what was otherwise a deliciously fatty meal.