It’s hard to picture it through the dust and the controlled chaos of a top-to-bottom renovation, but there’s a new restaurant coming to the revitalized Sítio El Tropicano hotel on the River Walk late this year. It’s called Barberry, and it carries the momentum of the Michelin-recognized Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group with it.
Emmer & Rye is accustomed to dust and chaos and the things that can emerge from it, including Pullman Market and Ladino at Pearl, where the Pullman restaurants Nicosi and Isidore each have a Michelin star, and Mezquite at Pullman and Ladino both have Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition.
Barberry is scheduled to join the group’s San Antonio portfolio when the 64-year-old hotel reopens this year, with projections hovering around mid- to late November. Named for the shrub that bears tart, edible berries, Barberry aspires to be “a Texas Hill Country restaurant through the lens of the culture that’s here.”
That description comes from Emmer & Rye hotel food and beverage director Evan Allumbaugh, a veteran California chef who will oversee Barberry, along with Tavel Bristol-Joseph, Emmer & Rye’s chief operating officer and the inspiration behind the Michelin-starred dessert lab Nicosi at Pullman.
Their plans for Barberry include a menu with “100% seafood from the Gulf, 100% land animals from Texas and market-driven produce from local farms around San Antonio,” Allumbaugh said. Early images include chicken-fried quail, wagyu beef tartare, crab claws, a colorful Stetson chopped salad and pasta as puffy as a down jacket called raviole du Dauphiné.
The 140-seat restaurant will open with dinner and breakfast service, with lunch in the works. Emmer & Rye wine director Alicia Schmidt will curate Barberry’s wine program, with Houston Eaves handling the cocktail program.
It’s the top of the pyramid for a full suite of restaurant and bar services Emmer & Rye will operate at the hotel, including a casual coffee bar and cafe, a pool bar with a menu of its own, refreshments for the 5,000-square-foot spa, room service and the menu for the hotel’s private Sítio Club.
That pool bar is like an oasis on what they’re calling the city’s largest hotel pool deck, hidden from the street view of the hotel and its Vegas-deco El Tropicano sign. The hotel was celebrated as the first of its kind on the River Walk when it opened in 1962.
A destination for President Lyndon B. Johnson and celebrities including Dolly Parton and the Rolling Stones, the hotel faded in and out of the city’s cultural zeitgeist until it closed in 2020. A recent hard-hat tour revealed a floor-to-ceiling makeover in progress for the 315-room site, led by the development firm Trestle Studio.
