25 More San Antonio Restaurants Worth the Drive

On August 26, Express-News restaurant critic Mike Sutter published a companion piece to his 2026 Top 50 restaurants list: 25 more places he considered strong enough to have filled out a list of 75. Honorable mentions, he called them. Tied for 51st.

We're not going to tell you what to order — Sutter has been doing that for a decade and does it better than we will. Go read his list; the writing is the point of it.

What we can add is the part that comes before dinner. We move executives, visiting teams, and private clients around this city every night, and a restaurant list read from a hotel room raises a practical question Sutter isn't in the business of answering: where actually is this place, and what happens when you get there?

So here are his 25, sorted by where they sit on the map.

Downtown and the River Walk

Four of the 25 are inside the downtown loop, which makes them the easy ones — and the ones where parking is worst.

Biga — 203 S. St. Mary's St., on the River Walk.

Chef Bruce Auden's kitchen, and a name that's trained a meaningful share of the city's current chefs.

Nonna Osteria — 401 S. Alamo St., inside The Fairmount Hotel.

Italian, chef Luca Della Casa.

Pinkerton's Barbecue — 107 W. Houston St., beside Legacy Park.

Central Texas barbecue without the drive to the Hill Country.

Tre Trattoria — 200 W. Jones Ave., at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Jason Dady's rustic Italian, river-adjacent, north end.

The logistics note: if you're staying downtown, these are walkable in good weather and miserable in August. If you're coming in from anywhere else, downtown parking on a weekend night costs more in time than in money — garages fill and surface parking lots price by event, and River Walk access points aren't obvious from street level. Door drop-off is worth more here than anywhere else on this list.

The Pearl and the Broadway corridor

The densest cluster on the list, and the one that rewards a driver most, because these places are close enough together to make a two-stop evening work.

Best Quality Daughter — 602 Avenue A, at the Pearl.

Chinese American in a cottage on the grounds.

Freight Fried Chicken — 312 Pearl Parkway, inside the Pearl food hall.

Nicola Blaque's project, from the team behind Top 50 pick The Jerk Shack.

Supper — 136 E. Grayson St., inside Hotel Emma.

Chef John Brand, who opened the room in 2014, is back as VP of culinary.

The Hayden — 4025 Broadway.

Jewish-influenced deli, pastrami, matzo ball soup, and one of the better brunches on this stretch.

Smoke Shack BBQ — 3714 Broadway.

Barbecue served all day rather than until it sells out.

Bistr09 — 6106 Broadway, Suite A1.

French and Continental, from Damien Watel and Lisa Astorga-Watel, in the 78209.

South Barbecue — 2100 N. Main Ave.

A converted service station north of downtown, brisket at both lunch and dinner.

Kimura — 1017 N. Flores St.

Michael Sohocki's ramen room, on the near North Side.

Lovers Pizzeria — 105 E. Ashby Place.

New Haven-style, and currently drawing the kind of lines this city normally saves for barbecue.

The logistics note: Pearl parking is structured and it fills on weekends and event nights. Hotel Emma's valet is for guests first. The Broadway corridor from downtown to Alamo Heights is one straight run, which means a car can drop at one address and collect at another twenty minutes later without anyone circling.

North and Northwest

The spread-out half of the list. These are the ones where a group of six in two rideshares turns into an operational problem.

Madurai Mes — 5152 Fredericksburg Road, Suite 125.

South Indian; Sutter's pick for the best Indian food in the city.

Moroccan Bites Tagine — 5718 Evers Road.

The only Moroccan kitchen in San Antonio, twice on the Food Network.

Chef's Table SATX — 1546 Babcock Road, Suite 102.

Oak-grilled halal Turkish from Zeliha and Kemal Kocak, who came here from Ankara.

Castlehill + Highland — 5138 UTSA Blvd.

Opened in July by Scottish chef Graham Campbell, who arrived with a Michelin star. A bar and grill in front, a multicourse tasting counter behind it.

Thai Dee — 5307 Blanco Road.

Twenty-five years in the same wood-paneled room. They'll open the wine you bring, no corkage.

Ro-Ho Pork & Bread — 8617 N. New Braunfels Ave.

Jorge Rojo's tortas ahogadas, the Guadalajara carnitas sandwich.

Mian Noodles & Dumplings — 19141 Stone Oak Parkway, Suite 509.

Shanxi cooking from Jihong Li and Xianhong Yang, and the northernmost address on this list.

Arirang Restaurant — 2154 Austin Highway.

Korean, and open late enough to catch the after-shift crowd.

The logistics note: Stone Oak to downtown is 281 the whole way, and it is not a fifteen-minute trip at 6 p.m. If you're staying downtown and eating up here, build in the drive. Thai Dee's BYOB policy is the one detail on this list that changes how you'd plan an evening — someone has to carry the bottle, and someone has to not drink.

East and South Sides

The Magpie — 1602 E. Houston St., Suite 106.

A small East Side room with a Korean point of view.

Pollos Asados Los Norteños — 4642 Rigsby Ave.

Mesquite-grilled chicken, and the place most responsible for pollos asados being a San Antonio genre at all.

Ray's Drive Inn — 822 SW 19th St.

Fifteen kinds of puffy taco and the crispy dog, in business since 1956.

Viva Vegeria — 1422 Nogalitos St.

Sutter's top vegetarian restaurant in the city, built on Mexican cooking rather than around it.

The logistics note: these four are the ones visiting executives never find on their own, because none of them are near a convention hotel and none are on the way to anything. They're also the four we'd point a curious client toward first.

If you're planning around this list

For a corporate dinner of four to eight: the Broadway corridor and the Pearl give you the most room to book late and the shortest recovery time if a flight slips. Downtown is fine if your group is already staying there and nobody's driving.

For a group of twelve or more: the north and northwest addresses are where splitting a party across vehicles stops being convenient and starts being a coordination problem. One Sprinter arriving at one door beats three cars finding three parking spots.

The restaurant knows you're coming. Every MM Transfers reservation runs through MM Concierge, our own dispatch system. On dinner service, it notifies the restaurant 20 to 25 minutes before your vehicle arrives — enough lead time for a host to have the table ready rather than discovering your party at the door. It matters most on the tighter downtown and Pearl rooms, and on any evening where a delayed flight has already moved the reservation once.

A note on the Hill Country: several of these are worth pairing with a day out west. If you're already booked for a Hill Country wine tour, a dinner reservation on the way back into town is easier to arrange than most people assume — the return leg passes through the northwest side anyway.

MM Transfers provides chauffeured executive transportation across San Antonio, Boerne, and the Texas Hill Country, including as-directed evening and dinner service. Request a quote or call (210) 793-0665.

The Top 50 and its honorable mentions are Mike Sutter's work, published by the San Antonio Express-News. Read the full honorable mentions list and the 2026 Top 50 at expressnews.com. Addresses above are as published; call ahead to confirm hours.