Last week, Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group opened Pullman Market within San Antonio’s bustling Pearl district, a longtime destination for shopping and eating. An epic grocery store, food hall, and multi-restaurant facility, Pullman Market has already become the go-to place for understanding and experiencing everything Texas has to offer.
The plan was to build a grocery store where you could buy the same premium ingredients that chefs use at their restaurants. “[Our community] really deserves the best of the best,” says 2016 Food & Wine Best New Chef Kevin Fink, partner and co-founder of Austin-based Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group.
Just as Eataly is a one-stop shop for the Italian culinary experience, Pullman Market is Texan through and through, all built within one, gorgeous facility. On the same trip, shoppers can stock up on Sonoran-style tortillas, Barton Springs Mill flour, Texas wagyu, Gulf oysters, Texan wines, and bouquets of locally picked flowers.
The grocery store is the heart of Pullman Market, with all of the produce sourced directly from Texas farmers. The meat, fish, and every other product available goes through an internal audit to qualify for sale — while local, independent businesses/purveyors are preferable, the primary qualification is whether it’s something that could benefit the community.
Many of the areas of the grocery store are linked to quick-service concepts, demonstrating how to utilize the raw ingredients in thoughtful, interactive, and shockingly affordable ways. There’s a bakery that produces sourdough bread and croissants, a stand with fresh pastas, and a tortilleria making fresh flour tortillas. At the butcher, there’s a burger concept where you can get a Wagyu patty on a house-made milk bread bun for just $10. At the fishmonger, you can order ceviche, tacos (made on said flour tortillas), and platters of oysters. The deli counter, where they’re curing meat for charcuterie like bologna and mortadella, doubles as a sandwich shop. There’s also an ice cream bar and a coffee shop.
Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group
Go deeper into Pullman Market and you’ll find casual, full-service restaurants: Fife and Farro, serving pasta and Neo-Neapolitan sourdough pizza and Mezquite, which celebrates the cuisine of Mexico’s Sonoran region. There’s also The Mezcaleria, which, unsurprisingly, is a top-notch mezcal bar. And later this year, the Emmer & Rye team will open a fine-dining restaurant called Isidore alongside Nicosi, a dessert tasting menu from the mind of 2020 Food & Wine Best New Chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph.
But the real magic at Pullman Market is how all these many concepts come together, ping-ponging raw ingredients and dish elements from one concept to another as seamlessly as a dance performance. The flour tortillas, sold by the pack at the market and on tacos at Mezquite and the cevicheria, are made with Wagyu beef and pork lard from the butcher. The Wagyu beef also makes an appearance at Fife and Farro, where it’s made into a ragu and tops the tagliatelle. Leftover chicken parts are used to create one of the most innovative treats at Pullman — chicken stock caramel swirl ice cream in a crispy chicken skin waffle cone (cheekily coined the “Hey Bird!”). Any scraps that they can’t find a use for? It’s composted and sent back to the farmers.
Robert Lerma
While a concept like Pullman may be reminiscent of other multi-concept food halls like Eataly, there has never been something quite so locally-driven and community-minded.
“My dream is that [Pullman Market] becomes a replicable idea — not just by us, but by many,” says Fink. “An evolution that allows farmers to produce and gather together and be celebrated. To have food shift from that transactional space to one of deeper meaning, and to just allow people to really learn and interact with food.”
Fink also thinks places like Pullman Market can have the power to eliminate the taboo of working in the service industry. “I really hope that we’re able to make something that people can be really proud of working in,” he says. “People can be proud of being a vendor [here] and the community itself can feel the impact of it.”
The opening of Pullman Market marks a massive step forward in the grocery store industry beyond just San Antonio — one that will lead to more accessible, delicious ingredients and a more fun shopping experience overall. Perhaps a Pullman-like market is the future. All we can do for now (unless you live in San Antonio) is wait for one to arrive in a city near you.
