Los Apaches Café has gone

Well! Is there some dread disease moving among the Mexican cafés of San Antonio? Last month my favorite Mexican café closed its doors, and only by serendipity did I get to have a final meal at Salsa Mora's, on its final day.

As this month of September in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Six began, I was dismayed to read in the newspaper that Los Apaches Café likewise was about to shut down! After all, it was among the first places at which I ate when I arrived here in the Alamo City in January of A.D. 2002.

During that first week of living here in San Antonio, I took the bus downtown one evening to get re-acquainted with landmarks I remembered from earlier eras in my life. (Specifically, during my tour of duty at Ft. Hood, north of Austin, in 1981-83, and then while living in Devine, southwest of here in 1992-94.) One place I checked out was El Mercado, the Mexican Marketplace. Since I found everything there closed, I started walking east on Commerce Street toward Main Plaza. And thus I came to Los Apaches Café, and found it still open on this chilly January evening. I went in and had a small supper there. The food was delicious and definitely NOT mass-produced like a chain cafe's! And all over the inside, as well as on the sign outside were many Native American figures & figurines: "Indian" heads, paintings of "Indians" on the warpath or hunting, etc.

Really, it was a very pleasant place to dine! Alas! shortly afterward, Los Apaches did what most Mexican cafés here do: it began to close in the mid-afternoon. But I still had a breakfast taco or two occasionally there. LAst Sunday, my after-church dinner was at Los Apaches. And I probably would have eaten there more often, had I not encountered such other delightful Mexican restaurants as the now defunct Salsa Mora's.

And alas! now Los Apaches is defunct, too! Who's next, I wonder. . . .