Startz Cafe of Startzville

Startz Cafe is a quaint restaurant in Starksville, a small community south of Canyon Lake.  Here is a photo of their grits and egg yolks.

The cafe serves a country breakfast seven days a week, and its never difficult getting a table here.  Startzville is out of the way, way out of the way unless you live in Startzville.   I regularly drive from Canyon Lake to eat breakfast here.  It is north of San Antonio, but there is no direct route to this wonderful find.  It is west of New Braunfels and east of Blanco.  It's just off of County Rd 2643.

Corrected directions by my friend Regan:

If coming from US 281 on TX 46, turn north (left) at the light onto FM 3159, go about 5 miles, then left on Startz Road (at Gennaro's Trattoria), and down to Startz Cafe on the right. Or go all the way to FM 2673 (not 43), turn left at the light, then west to the Wells Fargo ATM on the left, and the cafe is behind it.

Or, from New Braunfels on TX 46, take the FM 2722 exit. Follow FM 2722 to the end, turn left onto FM 2673, go straight through the light and left at the Wells Fargo ATM.

From FM 306, turn onto FM 2673 and go about 7 miles, through the CVS/Lowe's Market/Shell intersection light, and left at the Wells Fargo ATM.

Guillermo's Huevas: 

                                                Eggs your way topped with melted cheddar-jack cheese and bacon chunks.  Above eggs are over easy (runny yolk ... how do they do that?) and below are scrambled.  This is the only place I have found cheese and bacon topped over easy eggs.  And it's only five minutes from my condo!

Bacon Omelet:

Someone else ordered this.  I would have had cheese.  But the bacon and onion do make a good flavor combination.



Chicken-Fried Steak:

Scrambled eggs, hash browns, and biscuit -- my favorite accompaniments to chicken-fried steak with cream gravy.  This is a must have dish at the Startz Cafe.



Big Egg Breakfast:

This breakfast comes with eggs, choice of meats, choice of breads, and hashbrowns or grits.  The plate will not leave you hungry unless you're a lineman or linebacker for a local football team.   Look at that biscuit!
Biscuits-n-Gravy:

You get two biscuits with this plate ... that's four biscuit halves covered with cream gravy.  And it comes with two eggs.  At 11:00, you can see the plate of sausage that I ordered to go with the biscuits and gravy.


Farmer's Omelet:

Great omelet: bacon, cheese, tomato, and onion.  The onion makes the omelet.



Pancakes-n-Bacon:

Flashout!  Flashout!  Warning, my pancake pics are horrible.  The room is dark and the shots kept flashing out on me, for both the pancakes and bacon.  The bacon is cooked better than that.  Pancakes are thin the way I like them, and go great with bacon or sausage.  Thick pancakes, I put maple syrup on; thin ones, just butter.  But that's just me.

Coffee:

Good coffee here whether its regular or decaf.  I love a good cup of coffee with my breakfast.

Abel's Diner of Schertz

Look at that biscuit!  The biscuits are the reasons why I come to Abel's.  I know they have toast, and probably wheat toast as well, but that will never happen as long as the biscuits are this good.  

Abel's is in Schertz on I-35, just north of San Antonio.  Take Exit 174B.

Though the menu is not extensive, the choices are really good.  For more info on Abel's, go to www.abelsdiner.com

And no problem getting a seat on Saturday ... don't know about Sunday.  The Saturday that I came there were a ton of people outside.  The wait staff told me it would be a 10 minute wait, and I probably displayed a look of disbelief.  The wait was five minutes.




Eggs & Ham:

Eggs and ham, Sam-Sam I am.  But these are fresh not green.  The size of the ham deemed that the eggs be placed on top.  Better to have a crowded plate with a lot of food than loose plate with a smattering of food.





Mystery Omelet:

My girl friend Jewell ordered this dish about two months ago, and we both forgot what it was.  There's white cheese on top, and she ate it all.  So ... it must have been good.  Look at those home fries, how nicely they're browned.  That's a must for my palate.





Biscuits, Sausage, & Gravy:

Their sausage is slightly spicy so you might not need the black pepper on the dish.  I put it anyway.  Spicy sausage on Abel's biscuits -- that's a difficult combo to beat.   And the gravy was good as well.





Traditional Egg Plate:

Sausage, slightly spicy; home fries, slightly browned; biscuit's, perfectly baked ... all three with eggs the way you want, makes for a great starter for the morning.  You can sub the sausage for bacon or ham.  And you can sub the biscuit for toast ... but why?




Pancakes & Sausage:

Nice fluffy cakes that taste great with butter and syrup.  The spicy sausage is a must with this dish.

Denver Omelet: 

Bell peppers, onions, and ham make the Denver omelet.  And look at those home fries, brown the way I like them.

Clear Springs Restaurant of New Braunfels

Fried oysters and shrimp ... Clear Springs knows how to fry up the seafood.  And to me their speciality is their shrimp.

Clear Springs used to have five locations in Texas, but the one in San Antonio closed.  This is the one outside of New Braunfels on TX-46, between I-10 and I-35.  The other ones are in Nacogdoches, Midland, and Tyler.

Have you ever seen such an inviting entrance?  This is my favorite place for shrimp ... cooked anyway.



Appetizers

Fried Mushrooms:

Here is one of my favorite appetizers: fried mushrooms served up with this spicy sauce.  A great dish to share with someone special before one of Clear Springs great meals.

Fried Cheese Sticks:

Don't try this at home.  The only dish more difficult to prepare is deep frying a turkey.  You start this dish with breading the cheese sticks.  Next you freeze them.  Yes, freeze them or you'll have this pot of greasy goo, and you may still get that.  Then you get your oil hot.  Now comes the hard part and I have yet to master it:  deep fry the cheese just long enough to heat the center.  Too little time in the fryer, the cheese is cold; too much time, and you have that greasy-gooy mess.  My guess is there is a three second window for fried cheese which is ideal.



Entrees 


Blackened Catfish with Crawfish Ettoufee:

Here is a combination of two of my favorite entrees: blacken catfish, which Clear Springs does so well, and one of my favorite dishes ever, crawfish ettoufee.  This is an eat-it slow dish.  Savor each bite.

Shrimp-n-Catfish Platter:

Clear Springs's other speciality is their catfish.  One of the best plates they serve is the fried shrimp-n-catfish combo.  Their cooks know how to fry up seafood.




Seafood Platter:

Just take the previous dish up a few notches and add fried oysters to get their seafood platter.  And look at those hushpuppies next to the bowl of beans.  I always ask for extra hushpuppies or swap it out for salad.






Fried Shrimp with Side of Shrimp Brochette:

The shrimp brochette is shrimp grilled with jalapenos wrapped in bacon.  Need I say anything else.




Shrimp Trio!

This is the masterpiece platter: deep fried shrimp, shrimp brochette, and grilled shrimp.  There's almost a dozen shrimp on this plate!  See the tub of melted butter.  That's for the grilled shrimp.

Schobels of Columbus

Look at this sausage and egg.  It's one of Schobel's new Benedict dishes.  If you haven't been to Schobel's in a few years, then you need to make the stop in Columbus off I-10.

If you have never been to Schobel's, the restaurant is in Columbus between Houston and San Antonio.  Take Exit 696 off I-10 and go north for a block and you will be staring at the front entrance.   This is a must stop for breakfast or lunch.

Thea Rose:

Just your standard Eggs Benedict (poached eggs, ham, English muffin, and Hollandaise sauce), but with a kick ... salsa and jack cheese.  This is a great dish to start the day with.

Western Omelet:

My cousin BJ snagged this dish on our road trip to DC.  Ham-tomato-onions-bell pepper-chaddar cheese.  It's one of four omelets that they make.

The Hudson:

Here is Eggs Benedict going down a different road: biscuits, sausage, poached eggs, cheddar cheese, all topped with cream gravy.  I had this dish at another restaurant (now closed), and they called it Eggs Benedict Arnold.  This mutation of Eggs Benedict is a favorite of mine.



French Toast:

The bacon was an add-on.  The French toast was great: homestyle bread, powdered sugar, and cinnamon.  I added the butter and syrup.



The Bengal (aka Chicken-Fried Steak):

Nice size steak perfectly fried.  I had to have it with biscuits and more gravy.  The dish comes with eggs, grits/hash-browns.  This plate will provide you with your calories, carbs, and fats for the day.




The Weekend Buffet

The buffet is served up to 10:30 on Saturday and Sundays.  This is one of the more extensive country-breakfast buffets that I have come across.  I did not show pictures of the cereal and fresh fruit options.

Ham-Sausage-Bacon

Biscuits & Sausage Gravy

Fried Chicken Strips & Gravy

Potatoes & Scrambled Eggs

Bread Pudding

Cafe on the Square, San Marcus

Look at how perfectly cooked this bacon is.  This is one of the great wonders at the Cafe on the Square in San Marcus, TX.

From I-35, take Exit 204 and turn on TX820.  Drive west toward the county courthouse.  Just circle the square until you see this door or their name on the glass.  It's right next door to this awesome bakery on the corner.




Pancake and Egg Plate:

My friend Dennis put me onto this place, and this was his order.  Now the cafe's pancakes are on my bucket list.  Thanks, Dennis for hooking me up to this place and thanks for breakfast as well.  Being the Breakfast Bro, I often end up buying.  It's great to be treated from time to time.




Cafe's Omelets:

Above is the inside of a ham and cheese omelet.  All omelet plates come with choice of bread, home fries, and refried beans.  Note the the home fries have been browned (and that's the way I like them).

Chicken-Fried Steak Plate:

Chicken-fried steak is a favorite of mine for breakfast.  This one is smaller than some, but tastier than most.  I'll take a tasty chicken-fried steak over a huge insipid one any day.  The hashbrowns were browned on both sides, and that's a good thing to me.  I don't like undercooked potatoes.





Traditional Egg Plate:

Scrambled eggs, home fries, bacon, and flour tortilla (see 1:00 in the photo).   See the salsa and the slightly beaten eggs.  With beans, salsa, and home fries on so many plates, my guess is that one or more of the cooks are Mexican.  And that works for me.





French Toast:

OMG!  I could have been satisfied with the toast and sausage alone!  This place makes a mean plate of French toast.




Ham and Eggs:

Look closely at that ham steak.  It has a bone in it.  This is a real ham steak and not one of those insipid slices of lean ham.  Though their bacon and sausage is really good here, I recommend the ham steak.    Look: the hash browns are brown!   What part of brown don't the other restaurants understand.  Hash BROWNS are supposed to be BROWN!