The culinary journey of 2024 James Beard Award finalist Christopher Cullum started inauspiciously, towing a beat-up classic Airstream down the freeway from Houston to San Antonio.
That Airstream can be outfitted with a working kitchen and in 2012 turned the primary model of Cullum’s Attaboy, the informal brunch restaurant that has since earned accolades and constant prospects at its brick-and-mortar location in Tobin Hill.
In November, Attaboy turned a Bib Gourmand-designated restaurant within the Michelin Information, which highlighted nice meals at reasonable costs.
Cullum sat down with Bob Rivard for episode 83 of Rivard’s bigcitysmalltown podcast to speak about his deep ties to San Antonio’s meals and leisure tradition, current challenges confronted by small companies and carrying on the musical traditions of his well-known father, Jim Cullum.
Cullum advised Rivard he first fell in love with the restaurant enterprise whereas working as a dishwasher at The Touchdown Jazz Membership, his father’s River Stroll fixture.
At age 15, Cullum stated he sat down together with his father and advised him, ”Hey, Dad, I do know what I wish to do. I wish to open up a hamburger stand,” partially due to the staple American meals’s egalitarian attraction.
Jim Cullum selected the identify Attaboy, lastly realized as Cullum’s Attaboy in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, simply across the nook from Cullum’s Attagirl beer and fried hen restaurant.
As Rivard identified, Cullum’s revered musician father has a presence at Attaboy, in its brand and within the eating room soundtrack, culled from his “Dwell from the Touchdown” program that ran on Nationwide Public Radio from 1989 to 2015.
“So that you’re dwelling with the presence and spirit of your father daily on the restaurant,” Rivard stated.
The 2 additionally focus on issues attributable to seemingly infinite development on the North St. Mary’s Strip to the world’s many small companies, rising up within the River Street neighborhood, and Miss Salazar’s particular tarama pâté recipe that has grow to be one in all Cullum’s signature menu objects.
