A James Beard Chef’s Guide To San Antonio’s Best Restaurants And Bars

When’s the last time a restaurant name made you tear up?

That happened to me a few weeks ago. I was researching local restaurants after touching down in San Antonio, and discovered Best Quality Daughter by chef-owner Jennifer Hwa Dobbertin. Beyond the heaps of awards—Dobbertin is a semifinalist for Best Chef: Texas in this year’s James Beard Awards—craveable Asian-American cuisine, and unapologetically feminine aesthetic, it’s the name—a nod to Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club encapsulating the complex relationships many Asian-American women have with their mothers—that’s lived rent-free in my head since dining there.

Despite growing up with parents who owned a diner and “always being attracted to food,” Dobbertin got pulled in another directions much of her adult life, including a six-year stint in Bangkok to teach English and attend grad school. It wasn’t until she returned to to San Antonio in 2011 when things started clicking together. She took on work as a fry cook at The Monterey making nine dollars an hour and “lots of side hustles” like food delivery and catering, before being part of the opening team of the pop-up-turned-restaurant Hot Joy in 2014. From there, she went on to open Tenko Ramen at the Pearl’s Bottling Department Food Hall, before striking out on her own with Best Quality Daughter in late 2020.

“It’s a hard industry, and I put in a lot of hours,” comments Dobbertin of where she is now. “But having my own place was always my pipe dream. Now I get to cook the kind of food I want, that hopefully others will want to eat too.”…