San Antonio has held a rare, exclusive food title for years. Why doesn’t anyone know about it?

Tuscon, Ariz., the only other U.S. city to receive the UNESCO designation, leveraged the distinction seemingly overnight to forge an identity as a global culinary destination.

A blitz of investment led to new restaurants, breweries, food trucks, coffee shops and more. Chefs across the city were galvanized to cook traditional dishes with native ingredients. Signs promoting the designation popped up all over town, declaring Tucson to have “the best 23 miles of Mexican food in the U.S.”

Here, most San Antonians are still unaware of their city’s honor. In February, the World Heritage Office conducted a survey of about 900 San Antonians, and less than a third had heard of the designation.

The initiatives carried out by the World Heritage Office have not resulted in many noticeable changes to how restaurants do business or what’s on their menus. There have been few public events and not a single sign posted to challenge Tuscon’s audacious claim.

The World Heritage Office faces challenges, starting with the pandemic, which has left the city’s dining industry shaky. The office depends on volunteers, nonprofit organizations and other city departments to carry out its City of Gastronomy initiatives, and herding those tribes in a common direction has proved difficult. The glacial pace of the city’s bureaucracy hasn’t helped.

“That first four years, you’re doing a lot of figuring out how this all works,” World Heritage Office director Colleen Swain said. “It’s about getting our feet on the ground, establishing some basic parameters and figuring out how you move forward.”

The office, established in 2016, the year after San Antonio’s colonial-era Spanish missions were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has a lot of freedom in deciding what to do with the City of Gastronomy laurel. The designation celebrates the wide confluence of cultures, including American Indians, Spaniards, Canary Islanders, Mexicans, Germans and others over the last 13,000 years, who left an indelible mark on our food heritage.

As part of the application for the designation, the World Heritage Office listed several goals to be completed before the end of 2021. Among the most ambitious:

• Complete a $12 million redevelopment of Maverick Plaza at La Villita to build three restaurants and a demonstration kitchen, all showcasing San Antonio’s culinary history.
• Establish a trio of culinary trails — essentially curated lists — highlighting the best tacos, barbecue and margaritas at restaurants in the San Antonio area.
• Launch a film contest featuring submissions from young independent filmmakers focused on topics such as sustainable food production, benefits of local food, urban farming or other aspects of the culinary arts.
• Create a culinary exchange program in which local chefs serve as ambassadors for San Antonio’s food traditions at local, national and international events. The city would host chefs from other Cities of Gastronomy to participate in events here.

To date, two of those goals have been accomplished. The Chef Ambassador Culinary Exchange Program sent seven San Antonio chefs to Cities of Gastronomy in Asia and Europe between 2018 and 2020 to cook at food festivals and other events. The exchange program has hosted one chef here.

The film contest recognized a San Antonio-filmed documentary about a small, family-run restaurant’s COVID struggles. The film was entered in the 2021 Organization of World Heritage Cities International Video Production Competition.

The two most public-facing goals, Maverick Plaza and the culinary trails, have yet to materialize.

Despite that, Mayor Ron Nirenberg remains bullish on what the designation could mean for the city.

“The UNESCO City of Gastronomy designation puts us in rare air, and we now are backing it up with new restaurants and great chefs starting to do their thing,” Nierenberg said in an email. “It is still relatively new, and we had a two-year start when the pandemic dropped right in the middle of it.”

Although there’s little for San Antonio residents to see so far, key players in the city’s food world say the World Heritage Office has laid a valuable foundation over past four years.

Steve McHugh owns two restaurants here and was planning to open a German beer hall at the new Maverick Plaza, but has since pulled out of the project. He isn’t currently active in any City of Gastronomy efforts, but sees the designation as a valuable asset — even if most San Antonians are unaware of it.

He believes the UNESCO brand is stronger abroad and sees the designation as a way to promote San Antonio’s food culture on an international scale. McHugh said he believes the designation is helpful in inspiring restaurateurs from outside the city to invest in San Antonio as they look to expand into new markets.

Jason Dady, who owns five restaurants here, sits on the City of Gastronomy culinary advisory committee, a group of 20 members from every corner of San Antonio’s food community. He thinks the designation will give San Antonio a leg up in competing for conventions against cities like Las Vegas, New York or Orlando.

Dady also believes an overnight transformation like Tucson’s isn’t a realistic expectation in San Antonio, which already had a well-established food scene and a robust tourism economy.

“Everybody wants immediate results, and that’s just not the way it works. There’s not going to be a bright shining star to gaze at right away,” Dady said. “I think what you’re going to see in the next four years is all the seeds that have been planted come to fruition.”

What has been accomplished

In 2018 and 2019, the City of Gastronomy advisory group selected eight Chef Ambassadors, seven of whom traveled for the Culinary Exchange Program to China, South Korea, Turkey, Italy and Thailand. It was a diverse group, including 2M Smokehouse pitmaster Esaul Ramos, who went to South Korea, and Aldaco’s owner Blanca Aldaco, who visited Turkey.

Their goal was to showcase the culinary traditions of San Antonio within UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network leading to increased global awareness of the city’s unique food traditions.

This year, the advisory group selected a panel of six chefs who will be tapped as opportunities pop up over the next two years.

James Canter, who owns the catering outfit Guerrilla Gourmet, traveled to Shunde, China, and came away inspired to operate a zero-waste kitchen. While in China, Canter was served a meal that started with a single large carplike fish. Every edible bit of the fish was steamed, wok-fried and simmered into nine distinct and delicious dishes.

Canter took that spirit and translated it to South Texas. These days, when he makes barbacoa grilled cheese sandwiches, for example, the juices left behind become broth for simmering greens and the clarified fat is used for griddling slabs of Texas toast.

“It was inspiring to see them utilize this fish in so many ways and manners,” Canter said. “As a business owner it’s all about trying to get the most out of your product for the money you spend.”

The #FilmSA Contest launched in 2017 as a partnership between the World Heritage Office and the San Antonio Film Commission. With the new gastronomy designation, the contest evolved to include a City of Gastronomy category for food-focused films.

In May, Evan Materne and Amadeo Rivas won $1,000 and an entry in the Organization of World Heritage Cities International Video Production Competition, which will announce winners in November. Their short documentary was about the near South Side restaurant Maria’s Cafe and its business struggles during the pandemic. Stories about the documentary aired on local television stations, boosting business for the restaurant.

“It reminded people we’re here and really made a big difference for us,” said Leslie Beza, daughter of Maria’s owner Maria Beza and a longtime employee of the restaurant.

The World Heritage Office has launched initiatives beyond the initial set of goals.

In 2018, it partnered with the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center to create the San Antonio UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy Tamal Institute, an educational series bringing a how-to element to the annual La Gran Tamalada at Market Square.

Through the institute, the World Heritage Office paid to host chef Mexico City chef Raúl Traslosheros, a corporate chef and tamal expert. During the La Gran Tamalada, he gave a lecture about tamales from different parts of Mexico and how they’re made.

During the pandemic the program went online only as a series of free videos.

Swain said the main reason San Antonio hasn’t seen as many chefs visit here is that the city focused on sending chefs abroad during the program’s first year so her team could learn how the exchange program works. By the time they were ready to start hosting more chefs, the pandemic made international travel nearly impossible.

In February, the office spearheaded a pilot program dubbed Eat on the Street, which allows restaurants outside downtown to use parts of streets and sidewalks as outdoor seating in response to COVID-19. Downtown already has a Sidewalk Cafe Permit program.

Other cities launched similar programs early in the pandemic to help restaurants.

Here, the program began a year into the pandemic, and only two sites have signed on. One near the St. Mary’s Strip was shared by Golden Wat Noodle House, which closed permanently July 31, and Cullum’s Attagirl Ice House. The second site is a parking lot at 125 Lamar St. benefiting multiple restaurants and food trucks.

The Eat on the Street program has funding to place one site in each of the city’s 10 council districts through Sept. 30. The program’s benficiaries receive $5,000 from the World Heritage Office to pay for outdoor tables, chairs, fencing and other improvements, which the businesses can keep. The city provides movable traffic barricades, road barrels, signage and other equipment.

The pilot program gives restaurant owners 180 days to decide whether they want to make the setup permanent. If so, they must negotiate an agreement with the city’s Public Works Department over rent for the city’s right of way and other details.

In Boulder, Colo., officials closed several stretches of road in popular dining districts through its On-Street Patio Dining program, which will run through October. In Boston, several hundred restaurants are taking advantage of the city’s Outdoor Dining Pilot Program, which will run until least the end of the year.

The San Antonio program, although much smaller, did help business at Attagirl Ice House. Owner Chris Cullum said he nearly tripled his seating capacity at the tiny East Mistletoe Avenue restaurant with four extra picnic tables.

“It gives me a sense of comfort, for sure,” Cullum said of the program. “It’s really great being supported by the city. It’s also peace of mind moving forward with whatever’s happening with COVID. We know we can weather the storm.”

What’s not been accomplished

Still unrealized is the ambitious redevelopment plan for Maverick Plaza in La Villita. The $12 million project initially was set to be completed this year with three restaurants: a Mexican spot from chef Johnny Hernandez, a German beer hall from McHugh and an eatery focused on the native ingredients of Texas from Elizabeth Johnson, chef and owner of Pharm Table.

The pandemic interfered with that vision, and McHugh and Johnson both pulled out of the project.

Hernandez’s Grupo La Gloria is overseeing development of the restaurants at the site and is footing most of the $12 million tab by pitching in $7.6 million. An additional $4.4 million comes from the city’s Inner City Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone revenue.

Work on the project finally began in August, and Hernandez said it likely will continue into 2023. He said he’s looking for two additional operators to open restaurants representing the cultures that earned the city its designation.

The establishment of “culinary trails” highlighting restaurants serving tacos, barbecue and margaritas has the potential to be one of the most engaging City of Gastronomy initiatives, for locals and tourists alike. A website and a mobile app would showcase destinations along the trails. Diners could sample the best bites and sips the city has to offer, as judged by the City of Gastronomy culinary panel.

But the project was sidelined, first by the pandemic-driven closure of restaurants, then by a lack of staff to run it. The World Heritage Office has just hired a project manager to kickstart the project.

City vs. nonprofit

In San Antonio, the City of Gastronomy designation is managed by a municipal office instead of a dedicated nonprofit, a structure with strengths and drawbacks. Fundraising, Swain said, is the biggest challenge.

The World Heritage Office’s has an annual budget of $1.4 million; City of Gastronomy initiatives receive less than a quarter of that. After employee salaries and overhead are accounted for, only about $75,000 is left for programming and advertising.

That doesn’t leave much to pay for signs around the city, banners in the airport or ads on TV highlighting the designation.

“We always knew the City of San Antonio cannot fund all of this,” Swain said. “We’re still figuring out how to raise the corporate money we need to support this.”

In Tucson, the designation is managed by a nonprofit called Tucson City of Gastronomy with a budget of nearly $100,000 from public and private funds and donations.

The nonprofit’s lone paid employee, executive director Jonathan Mabry, said managing the designation through a nonprofit has several advantages. A nonprofit enjoys greater eligibility for grants, has an easier time attracting sponsorships and donations, is more visible in the community and is less likely to become embroiled in political squabbles, he said.

The impact of the designation in Tucson is hard to understate. In the years since receiving the honor in 2015, that Sonoran Desert city has gone from barely a blip on foodies’ radars to a culinary destination sought out by travelers around the world.

An early project was a certification program for restaurants and other food businesses that adhere to the City of Gastronomy principles, such as preserving food culture, using local ingredients and a commitment to sustainability. Certified businesses receive a large decal to display in their windows.

The enthusiastic use of ingredients native to Tucson is particularly noticeable in restaurants. The Tucson City of Gastronomy nonprofit has published a Baja Arizona Artisanal Food Products guide steering readers to items such as prickly pear jelly, beers brewed with mesquite, salsa made with chiltepín chiles and more. It stages free workshops for restaurants and other business interested in using heritage ingredients.

In San Antonio, Swain has faith the designation will play a key role in promoting the city as a global culinary destination. Taxpayers can feel assured it’s worth it in the long run, she said.

“I think there really is a lot of benefit for our city. It’s about leveraging this designation for social and economic change, and that includes sustainability, the food system, preservation of culinary heritage and pride in community,” she said.

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