177. Staying Small in San Antonio: How Clementine Found Success Without Expansion

Foreign. Welcome to Big City, Small Town, the weekly podcast all about San Antonio and the people who make it go and grow. I'm Corey Ames, just here for a brief moment because this week's episode is something special. We recorded it on site at Clementine, a family owned restaurant in Castle Hills known for its intimate atmosphere, locally sourced ingredients, and outstanding service. Bob sat down with Chef John Russ, who opened Clementine with his wife Elise back in 2018. Enjoy the conversation. Let me just say how excited we are to have Big City, Small Town at Clementine. Absolutely. And to be with you, Chef John Russ. This is one of my all time favorite restaurants in Texas. So it's great to be here and little unusual to be here in the middle of the day instead of at night for dinner. Yeah, it is. It's a. It's a fun place to be. And thank you for the kind words. Appreciate it. Well, for people that haven't been here in our audience, and I assume there's going to be a few of those, you're in an unassuming strip center in Castle Hills on Northwest Military Highway. Not downtown, not at the Pearl, not in South Town. How did you and your wife Elise, who's a pastry chef and a. And a restaurant professional in her own right, how did you decide to put Clementine here? What? Probably I don't know how many years ago. We've been here for eight years. Eight years. So September would be when we took the lease over nine years ago. Okay. We opened up January 17, eight years ago, and it's just been a wonderful journey since then. But to get to this point, Lisa and I both worked downtown. We had worked with the Cocktail Conference. We had worked in a lot of different spaces in San Antonio. And we truly felt like we knew what it was going to take to be successful as a restaurateur. And so instead of making money for other people, we decided we wanted to take that gamble, that leap of faith, whatever it is, to make money for ourselves and create a family and create our own brand. And to get there, we went through all the people that are like, hey, whenever you're ready, I'll give you $100,000 or I'll give you a million dollars. We went through that whole list of people. We went through several banks, we went through a couple of different architects. We got all these processes set up and business plans done. And then by the end of it all, it was just one of those things where my wife said, if you don't find a location, I'm gonna divorce you. And I was like, well, there's a deadline. Yeah, yeah. She's like, you got 30 days. And I was like, okay, well, this is. We'll sort this out. And we had been to this location, I don't know, a year prior to that point. Ish. Was it empty or was there something else? It was Rossini's Italian Bistro. And, and we had come for a champagne dinner based on, I think, the final meal of the Titanic. It was just like, okay, someone invited us. And we were like, all right, let's go. And we had a great time. It was a fun time. And I remember looking at the space in my head going, it's too small, it's too small, it's too small. We can't do that. There's no amount of revenue that we can produce in that space that would be sustainable for us. And we met with a banker through our journey and essentially he was like, look, let's whittle this down. What do you really need? What do you really want to do? If you take a million dollars out, obviously you're paying more than million back. Do you want to work Sunday mornings? Do you want to do brunch? Do you want to do every holiday? What is it going to take to get to crack that nut, to pay back your loan plus whatever interest is there, and then also figure out how to make money for yourselves as ownership. Does it take a million dollars to open up? Not a Clementine, I think a top end restaurant. No, no, you're well over a million now. You know, unless you're going into a second generation space, you're well over $2 million to kind of hit that nut now. It is, you know, the prices have gone up, labor is so high. Just building the brand set is just so expensive now. And so when we see things, you know, that open up and close within a year and we know how much money to go into them, it's just in my mind, it's just shocking, you know, which will go into like a, on another note, a sustainability conversation. But, you know, the space for us was. Bill Anderson with Lift Fund was like, look, you don't want to work Sundays. You're going to have kids, you're going to have more kids, you're going to have a whole life ahead of you. Do you really want this? And kind of whittled it down, said, this is what we actually want. He said, why don't you go revisit some of those spots that were too small. This will fit. This idea will fit into some of those Spots that were too small. We revisited this one, and about three weeks later, we were signing all these documents and kind of just ready to go for it. You know, there's a bus depot downtown or the old bus depot downtown. It's right next to one of the AT&T buildings. And in my mind, that was one of the, like, the coolest buildings in San Antonio. It's got a rooftop space. It's got a basement space. It's this gorgeous old building. And my heart had been set there. And that's where, you know, the million dollars was kind of based. And when we had to kind of whittle down and looked at the final numbers, looked at the final space, could not be happier and more thankful to our banker for whittling everything down, getting everything to a safer space for us. You know,$157,000 to open up, including inventory for the first set. That's discipline, and honestly, that's all my wife. I am the spender. She's the saver. But we were able to pay off everything without Covid money, during COVID because we knew that if we were going to be small, we could pivot, we could change. We could change any direction. If they didn't like this on the menu, we could change the menu item. It wasn't going to be an act of Congress to change a menu item if the concept wasn't working. It was small enough. You know, what, hey, we can turn it into a sandwich shop. We can turn this into a taco joint, essentially overnight. If things weren't working, we knew that, you know, it's essentially like a little speedboat. You can turn and go wherever you want to go. Because we both came from huge operations that you could not pivot. It was like an oil tanker. You know, it's just going and tough shit. Everything else is going to get mowed over if it doesn't work. And here it's. We didn't have a second choice in my experience. And I've lived in New York, Philadelphia, overseas, I. Dallas, Some of my most favorite restaurants. The most memorable meals I've had were in smaller restaurants that have a neighborhood character but have very ambitious, elevated culinary and service standards. And that's what I would say Clementine is. You know, we completely agree. That's, you know, growing up for me in New Orleans, my wife in Atlanta. You go to neighborhood restaurants in a neighborhood, and they're not in the city center. They're not, you know, 10,000 square feet. They're not, you know, 400 bucks ahead. It's just these little neighborhood restaurants that are phenomenal. And unless you kind of live in the neighborhood, you might really not even know about it until someone introduces you to it and brings you in. And that's what we really wanted to create here, was that kind of neighborhood model. And, you know, over time, our hope was that other people would understand that in San Antonio you can have a mom and pop neighborhood restaurant that is successful. You don't have to open up four other restaurants. You don't have to do all these other things. You can still have a life, you can still do all the things that you want to do and just have your 1550 square feet and$157,000. And that to us was what kind of we remind ourselves of every day. I'm impressed with how cool, calm and collected you and Elise both are. You have three little ones at home. So you, you've built your family here. This is a hard business. Even in the best of times. It's hard to make a profit. It's hard to keep up with inflation and not put all that on the shoulders of your customers. Right. It's hard to keep and to build and keep a good staff. And that was, that was exacerbated during the pandemic when we saw everything about your industry change and everything about the people that had long been in the industry, many of whom left. So how has it been on that side of the challenge? We talk about this a lot, my wife and I. It's, we have, we have, we have an incredible mentor. Who's that? My father in law. He literally grew up in the industry. His grandparents had a restaurant in South Florida and, you know, as soon as they were old enough, they were working in the kitchen or in the front of the house at this, you know, these big, huge restaurants in South Florida when South Florida was really kind of growing. And then he went to hospitality school, he went to college, you know, for hospitality. He was a GM of incredible hotels across the country. He knows how to look at the numbers, he knows how to look at the minute details and say that's exactly what's wrong right there. That one thing change that. And when we're looking at the books, we both have 8 years experience here and, you know, years prior to that, but he's got 50 years of experience looking at books. And so he reminds us every day, worst case scenario, you're going to be fed, you're never going to go hungry. People are always going to need to eat. You just got to figure out who to feed and how to feed. That's. That's simple advice, you know, on the whole. But when it comes down to it, we recognize that we're a neighborhood restaurant. And when our neighborhood is, you know, in pain, like it was in Covid, like, things change in the environment. People get really anxious. You know, we see that when they're ordering preferences, instead of ordering the expensive wine, they're ordering the oaky chardonnay that they know and love. And it's. They're not trying to be adventurous anymore. And once we start seeing those kind of patterns grow and change, we are able to kind of pivot and kind of go in the other direction. Covid challenges, you know. Oh, you closed the lunch, for starters. We closed lunch. We went to all to go. We did our five course feed me 100% to go for God knows how long, and it was 25 bucks because we knew we were competing with Whataburger. We knew we were competing with pizza places. How do we get those people to come in here instead of spending their money with the publicly held corporations? How do we get them to stay in the neighborhood? So we worked really hard to build a space where, worst case scenario, at least we have cash flow and keep it running, keep it running until the. Was it like three weeks, four weeks? It was all going to be over at some point. And then we got to months on end. And in reality, to talk to people in the insurance world, we're still not recovering. If you talk to people in the hospital world, things have not gotten back to normal in the finance world either, because it's up and down, up and down, up and down. The economy is so chaotic. And, you know, for us, whether you have a bad day on a Tuesday, you know, or you have friends to celebrate that are in town, we're here for you. And we know that that's our space in life. And that's how we kind of approach our staff. That's kind of how we approach our guests. That's how we approach the menu development is being there for our staff and for our family and for our friends and for our guests, whether they're celebrating or they're commiserating. Because it's. When you feel like shit, you don't want to. You don't always want to go home and cook. You know, you want to go get something that you know and you love. That's where the boring, oaky chardonnay from California comes in. But when you want to be adventurous, there's octopus and sardines and all the other Crazy things that we have for you, but it's building that relationship where they trust us and we trust them. I don't know about that oaky chardonnay chef, but several of my friends who have great wine cellars love coming here with their own wine. They do. And staying for very long meals when, when you're retired, you know, it's do whatever you want. Right. But it's, it's. It's that kind of place where people come back to again and again. Yeah. I want to talk about sustainability a lot with you and, and the whole ecosystem of food production locally and people that are doing really quality things out in the area, farms and ranches. But before I do, let me just ask one more question about the economy of restaurants. Given the number of people that left the industry during the pandemic because they didn't have health care, they didn't have insurance benefits, they may have been overly reliant on gratuities if they were front of the house people or whatever. Can you run a successful restaurant business and also treat the staff with equity and fairness? Or are the two contradictory? You cannot run a successful business if you cannot treat your staff and your guests and yourself with integrity, with empowerment, with love, with compassion. We're still a business, right. You know, we still have to make money. We're not a charity. But if your staff doesn't trust you, they're not going to stick around. They're going to turn over very quick. If your staff doesn't feel empowered to do the right things, they're not going to stick around. Back of the house or front of the house. Our staff is the most important aspect of what we do. They're stable. It seems to me. I always have the same waiter when I come here. We have very, very low turnover. And when we do, it's people who are going to bigger jobs, better jobs. They're not just moving sideways. They've learned with you and are moving up and out. And I'm about to lose two servers at some point in the next year or so because they're graduating from University Texas in San Antonio to go do bigger things. And it is. It pains me to know that within nine months, I'm going to lose these two people who are incredible employees. But it's like, well, one's going to go be a psychologist, one's going to go work for the federal government. I mean, cool. Sounds great. You know, if they were going to go schlep pizzas at Peter Piper Pizza, then I would have felt like I Failed people. But when they go bigger and better, it's. They probably learned a lot about the human dynamic anyway working here, and they'll probably bring a strong service culture to whatever they do professionally. We hope so. The other side of the sustainability, you know, for businesses, though, in 2025, 42% of restaurants in America reported not being profitable. In the state of Texas, that number was closer to 50%. And if you take out the publicly traded, the McDonald's, the franchisees, that number is higher. And, you know, that means that there's so many restaurants that are just running on cash flow, they're running on credit. They're hoping that things will turn around. And it's tough, you know, for us. We, we've been very lucky. We work very hard to build that luck, to create that luck. But, but in the same instance here we're surrounded by people, peers of ours, that we know that there's going to be a day where they've decided we're not going to do this anymore. Whether it's their lease comes up or someone wants to buy their property, whatever that answer is for them, as soon as they see an easy way out, they're done. Because it's a tough space to be in right now. Does it matter in San Antonio if your core clientele are locals versus people in the visitor industry? Because tend to myself, when I look around at where my, my wife Monica and I go, we go to neighborhood places and it's mostly the clients are locals. We don't really find a lot of appeal in the places that cater largely to. To visitors. There's a couple of exceptions, but not many. And I, I wonder if being up here in Castle Hills, you might not get much we have from the business. We have a certain form fluctuation in that space. Probably foodies visiting from other cities. It takes the time. It's usually that there is a little bit of the transient people when they're, when they're seeing, you know, when they're doing a little bit of research, they're coming in for. Our favorite is always, it's the high school coaches. You know, they come in every summer and you're like, what coaches are going to come to Castle Hills? And I see, you know, these men and women show up and you can tell that they're coaches, but they've also found time in their lives to go look for good food, to go look for good wine, to go say, I don't want to eat that buffet at whatever hotel they're having the banquets at. They're making that decision to come out here, and that's always a joy. But for the most part, these are neighborhood folks. These are people in San Antonio. Our landlords are nice enough to do the Geo fencing for us every year. And it's. If you're from San Antonio and you know, San Antonio, we have a lot of people from the 09 who come all the way out here to the 1 3, a lot more than would admit it. Not such a long trip class. I understand that, you understand that. But for a lot of folks there, it's like they're leaving the state of Texas when they leave the 09. So bringing their passports with them. Oh, my goodness. But, you know, it's. We're thankful that we have. Our location is amazing. You know, right off of 410. We're right in between, you know, the bigger interstates. You know, for us, this is kind of the center of the city. You have plenty of parking, which in San Antonio, we're obsessed with whether or not there's parking. Yeah. Even if you're gonna ride share, still need to have parking. So we're very thankful for location. For us, it's, it's that. What about the. The ecosystem that you rely on that's largely invisible to most of us? Occasionally, you know, those of us that are menu readers will read, oh, this chicken's coming from a certain place or this meat or these vegetables. And of course, you can see it very visibly if you go to the Pearls farmer market or the farmer market at the quarry on the weekends. But you rely on a whole network of places that are probably within 50 miles, I'm guessing of maybe 100 miles. Of about 100 or so, you know, when the farmers in South Texas, central Texas are growing, it's wonderful. It's incredible produce. It feels like you're, you know, in California. And then all of a sudden it gets hot and it stays hot for there go the tomatoes eight more months. But it's, you know, our farmers have learned what to grow, what makes sense for them. And it's not always what consumers want to eat, but it's what grows here. And so our job, if we want to support our local economy, is essentially to say, how do I get my consumers to eat yellow squash, zucchini, okra, tomatoes and eggplants for. And some peppers for about five months, you know, as the local vegetable crops. Because grains are shot in the next week or so, strawberries will be done very quickly. Peaches will be seemingly a longer season this year. But blackberries are going to be very short. Blueberries can be very short. The potato crops, all the root vegetables are already all moving away from season. And so how do we get our consumers to kind of go to those vegetables that they're not in love with? So our job is to make those vegetables lovable, to be exciting about them, to do things with them, to make them fun, to make them feel like, this is not the nasty zucchini that your mom made for you. That was gray. And I don't know what was that? The mud that was left on it, or is that actually pepper? But our job is to really kind of take those vegetables and kind of grow them into something that our guests love. And we've learned over the years that that's a good, safe space for us when we kind of go out of the bounds and start getting, you know, crazy produce. People don't really. They don't identify with it. They don't really pick it up. They don't really see it as exciting for them. It's when things are a little bit familiar, they can kind of pick out one or two ingredients, say, all right, I'm willing to try that and see how it goes. That's where we kind of get our biggest wins, is when we're being excited, when we're kind of growing in the kitchen side. But then we're allowing guests to invest in a small amount of money into a plate and says, hey, this really speaks to me. That's what makes it fun. Given your background as a New Orleans native, where it's. It's so lovely to go there and eat oysters and seafood and fish and just everything. Everything. They do so well in New Orleans. Do you bring that same approach here as the Gulf of Mexico? A source of. Of. Of, you know, material for you, or. It is, certainly. We have a fishmonger called Minamoto. They're out of Austin, actually, but they service a lot of restaurants in San Antonio, and they have some investments from people at the Pearl to help them grow their operation down on the Gulf. And so they have a couple of boats that they're working on. They have their reefs, so snapper is part of their core offerings. Do they shrimp? They. They partner with shrimpers, but it's when shrimp season's happening. But they also. My favorite thing about them is they have relationships at small docks all around the country. East coast into Florida and the Gulf coast, and a few on the West Coast. And those relationships that they have with a small docks means that they have small fishermen. And these are People who are, you know, going out on day boats, who are going on two or three day trips and they're able to say, hey, this is what I'm going out for. This is what I'm shooting at. Line caught. I am trying to. Exactly. I'm trying to bring home, you know, 1,000 pounds of swordfish or whatever it is. They make that call and on the way back in, they make another call. This is how much I have. This is what I have. And so by the time they get to port, There is a FedEx truck that is ready to ship to Austin or there is one of their trucks that is ready to go straight to Austin, process and get to us very quickly. And that's been fantastic because it's, it's not always the fish that are recognizable, so to speak. You know, tilefish is a fantastic fish, but not everybody knows it. There's a lot of things like that that allow us to really have good relationships with seafood. But they introduced us to a gentleman in South Texas, that's AJ From Blackjack. Oysters. They're farm raising oysters in Texas. The agricultural department, Texas Wildlife fisheries finally recognize that oysters are invasive, but we can also farm them. And as long as you do it correctly, it's not going to be a problem for anybody. And those aren't Gulf oysters, they're golf oysters. They are golf, 100% Gulf. And if you do it correctly, this can be helpful for your environment. It can also be helpful for your tax base. It can also be helpful for just keeping the money in Texas because we know if people want east coast oysters, they're going to send their money to Massachusetts or Maryland or. So there's awful Chincoteague oysters in Virginia. You don't like those? I'm sorry. I'll eat a Louisiana golf oyster over at Chincoteague every day. But once the state of Texas figured it out that they could have, you know, a monetary benefit, an environmental benefit and keep some wonderful things here, they invested in a tax credit for restaurants for people who recycle the shelves. They have a tax credit for people who buy Texas farm raised oysters. So it incentivizes restaurants like us to do it, is a very, very small incentive. I'm doing my taxes today for last month and it's like 200 bucks, right? It's nothing, but it's still 200 bucks. And that's kind of nice. But it's every time I serve them to people who only east coast oysters, they're Shocked that this little beautiful thing, briny, it's salty, it's not milky, it's not rich. It's. It's just these wonderful little oysters coming from the Gulf, coming from a farmer down there that is making incredible products. That's good to know. And that's near Corpus, I assume, somewhere. Port Aransas. Yeah, Port Aransas. I'm not entirely familiar with Texas Gulf, but yeah. That's interesting stuff. Do you and your wife need to be here, one of you at least every night? Can you take a week off and go somewhere? Or do you. Is this a hands on world where you're tethered? It's tough because, like, need and want are two different things. Right, Right. I don't need to be here every night. In fact, I probably don't really need to be here every day or every week or every month, but I want to. I have a great relationship with Uriel and Lorena. I love working with Dina. I love working with Jenny. I love working with my staff. These are wonderful people. They have great ideas. Ideas. They have great enthusiasm for what we do. But I really also like hanging out with my kids and my wife and my family. And so those needs and wants kind of come together. And we decided coming out of the pandemic that we need to be parents to our kids, because if we aren't the parents to our kids, someone else will be. Not that I want to be parents, but I need to, and I need to show that my relationship with my kids is important. So how do I balance that with the restaurant? And that's. That's a different scale. So we were just in upstate New York last weekend, and I think we had two phone calls with our staff just to check in, make sure everything was okay. Our sous chefs are incredible. Our front of the house manager is incredible. Our administrative assistant program managers, incredible. And our job is to make sure that the restaurant is sustainable enough to be able to afford our incredible staff. And that is probably a harder job than it needs to be, but it's because we appreciate the work, we care about them, and we love what they do so. Well, I would, as we come to a close here, I would say to anyone in our audience who's a creature of habit and is only dining at the Pearl or in South Town or downtown or far northwest San Antonio, that they need to come to Castle Hills and, and try Clementine. And I think if they do, they'll. They'll come back. But if somebody with money came to you and Elise, John and Said, we love Clementine and we don't want to uproot you, but could we bankroll you coming into the Dominion or coming into downtown or the Pearl? What would be your response to a second outpost? Absolutely not. There's no chance in hell. We have calls like that every day. We have friends of ours who are trying to get that done. And right now I have a four year old, a six year old, and an eight year old. So for the next two, three years, this is. That's a lot of soccer practice. Oh, yeah, it's soccer, it's karate, it's ballet, it's tumbling. I mean, it's the whole gamut of life with kids, but it's. We don't see that we would make any more money. We don't see that we would be any less or more stressed. We don't see any. So what's the. Where would our benefit to be except for our egos and for our. And that's if it works out right. It doesn't always make sense to open a second restaurant. So part of our decision is to put our love and care and joy here and to keep it here. That answer might change, you know, after my youngest is in full school and he's kind of progressing in that space. But for now, there's no chance now. Well, it's also very. It's hard to maintain quality when you have more than one spot. In my experience, I've seen some wonderful chefs really expand as business people, but I'm not sure the quality or the experience is the same for the client. I really feel like that's a San Antonio thing. You know, growing up in New Orleans and Atlanta, that's a different answer in those cities. San Antonio just doesn't seem to be able to allow chefs to mint second and third restaurants. And so that's the kind of. The base of our approach is saying, you know, it would be difficult to do that to our guests. And for our guests, it'd be difficult to do that to our staff and technically against our staff. So why would. Why would you go into that position? Let's just. Let's put all of our energy into this one and to our kids. Let's have as much fun as we can. Let's see where things go before we close. Let's take a look at the menu. For people that are listening or watching on YouTube and have never eaten here, what do you like on the menu? You're famous for your tart. It's tough because a lot of these things are things that we built and we love and we know really, really well. But one of my favorite things here is our mushroom salad. And it's kind of like a. It's built on a New Orleans style mushroom salad and people who hate mushrooms, people who are not willing to eat raw mushrooms or I'm not gonna do it. And we always say, just one bite, just give us one shot and see how it goes. And it's this salad that's just, it's filled with umami. It's got nice citrus, it's got nice olive oil, nice bounce of salt and pepper. The pomegranates are just kind of striking in their sweetness and the texture. And the pecorino cheese just kind of takes it to the right spot. Makes you feel very, very comfortable. Ms. Julie's beet salad. She's a farmer that we've been working with for years. We met her at the Pearl Farmers market, I'd say 12 years ago. And we've watched her kids go through high school now and college and then now into like their full adult life. And it's just, they're wonderful family. And so for a long time we were buying all of our beets from her and so we decided to name it after her. And it's just a simple little salad with. We call it no granola because it's a gluten free granola and it's a little bit of chocolate in there, lots of, lots of nuts and seeds. But it's just really simple and beautiful. Some aged balsamic. The grapefruit really brings it together with the gorgonzola dolce. The quail is amazing. The oysters are amazing. All those things are great. The flame tart, I think is what you referenced. The flamenkuchen. Yeah. It's a German dish, is it not? Alsatian? Yes. Tart flambe. So when you're in the streets of those winter festivals in Germany, you'll find someone who has a shopping cart with a little oven on it. There's fire coming out of the oven. Strausberg. Yeah. It's just, you know that there's trouble there because you've been drinking a little bit and it's just, it's kind of fun. And it's these little kind of German pizzas and it's usually very simple. It's got like a white sauce and their white sauce is bechamel that's been thinned out with either heavy cream or pork or yogurt. That's a Emmenthaler or some Swiss Cheeses, they usually don't put a whole lot more on it. My favorite one, though, that I ever had was it had the fiferlingen or, like, the chanterelles. And that to me was just, let's do this. But they're all soggy, right? And so it's all down your shirt, and you don't want to mess with it. So we crisp our shell here, so it's a little bit easier to eat. It's a little bit more texturally exciting. And it's just. They're fantastic. We love them. Every time I try to think about taking it off the menu, because my feelings about it, you know, I need to make a change here. A change. There we go. From bacon to chanterelles and back to bacon, and that's it. That's the only change we make on it, because, you know, when chanterelles are in season, that is just. It's peppery, it's rich. It's just spot on. Right now we've got this fried yam from Texas, and so we bake them, we smash them, we deep fry them, you know, because it's healthier that way. But there's a little kind of like a coconut salsa verde kind of thing that happens at the bottom of it, and it's just rich. It's delicious. We do a black tahini butter with a little bit of black garlic in there that just kind of goes over the top and melts in. There's a little bit of dukkah that finishes that dish off with some cilantro. And it's just. It's wonderful. It's rich and delicious, but it's also, I don't know, fried potatoes. Nobody hates that, so kind of fits really nicely. Our cavatelli is something that people truly love here. We started it as a throwaway dish. Cavatelli are simple to make. There's. There's no teaching someone the complexities of making pasta. It's just, this is the texture, this is the recipe. Go for it. But I really wanted to get to gnocchi. I love making gnocchi. I love teaching gnocchi. I love eating gnocchi. I love everything that is gnocchi. But I knew that cavatelli was going to be, like, a little bit easier when we first opened, and I think it was the third night, my wife looked at me, and she's like, you know, this isn't coming off the menu, right? Yeah. So every now and then, we'll put some gnocchi on the menu just for fun. But it's the cavatelli is here to stay. It's the Sichuan peppercorns. It's the pecans. It's the really nice parmesan, the broccoli pesto. It's just. It's a fantastically fun dish. And then our chicken. Everyone loves our burger, but our chicken, that's the one where my heart is. Spatchcock chicken. We brine it for four hours in a chamomile brine, and they cook it on the plancha, skin side down, for almost the entirety of it. It's crisp up the skin, put a little chimichurri, and it's just. No, I'm getting some. I'm getting some kitchen tips here. Yeah. Well, you talk a great menu, Chef John. And this is my first and I hope last trip to Clementine, where I don't eat, but it's been a good one. Thanks for coming. I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on to Big City, Small Town. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks so much for watching this episode of Big City, Small Town. And a special thank you to our sponsors, Geekdom, Weston Urban, and swbc, for helping us bring stories just like this to life. If you want more San Antonio stories just like this one, we've got two newsletters for you. My San Antonio Something, written by me, Corey Ames, and Bob Rivards midweek. Both are linked in the description below or you can find them@bigcitysmalltown.com we'll see you next time.