A chef who once ran the kitchen at New York's storied Le Cirque and earned two Michelin stars in London is now slinging sandwiches and pastries from a counter on San Antonio's East Side. Raphaël François has opened Ray and Joséphine, an intimate bistro at 1305 E. Houston St., serving rustic, family-style French food out of a converted century-old ice building.
The move marks a striking pivot for a chef with François's résumé. As reported by CultureMap San Antonio, François worked at Le Cirque and other Michelin-starred restaurants before landing in Texas, and according to Forbes, he earned two Michelin stars in January 2011 as head chef at Hélène Darroze at The Connaught in London before taking over as executive chef at Le Cirque in New York in 2014. He explored moving to Texas during the COVID-19 pandemic and was ultimately drawn to San Antonio for its vibe and approachability, per the same account.
François is no stranger to opening French-influenced spots across the country. He opened D.C. bistro Le DeSales in March 2017, followed by the West Hollywood spot Tesse in 2018 and Fanny's at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in late 2021, according to the Washingtonian.
A Tribute Baked Into the Name
The restaurant's name is not incidental. Ray and Joséphine honors François's grandmothers, Raymonde and Joséphine, the bistro's report notes, and the counter-service concept reflects the chef's stated wish for people to focus on having a good time over simple food. Right now, that simple food includes pastries, quiches, and a morning bun stacked with cheese, egg, and bacon in the early hours, followed by salads and sandwiches at lunch — among them a beef and horseradish sandwich, a burger, and an estivale tomate tartine topped with whipped ricotta and persillade.
All of the bread is made in-house daily, and François has found that French produce grows locally after shopping at H-E-B, per CultureMap's account. The bistro is currently open 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends.
Why the Doors Aren't Open Late Yet
Evening hours and a fuller, rustic family-style dinner menu are expected to arrive as early as September, once François receives a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission license to serve Texas beers and wines at three price points. That timeline lines up with standard state processing: TABC applications for new retail alcohol permits typically take 30 to 35 days to clear from the date of a complete filing, according to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, and Texas rules allow venues to operate with BYOB service in the interim.
The daytime-first, dinner-later rollout echoes François's own playbook. His Los Angeles restaurant Fanny's at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures similarly opened daytime café service before introducing evening dining in late 2021, according to Modern Luxury.
Setting Up Shop Inside a Piece of San Antonio History
François was drawn specifically to the Merchants Ice Building on Houston Street, a structure with deep roots in San Antonio's industrial past. Built in phases between 1909 and 1957 as part of what was once Texas's second-largest cold storage facility, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in September 2002, according to MySA.
The complex now sits at the center of a much larger transformation. The Texas Research & Technology Foundation acquired the Merchants Ice site in 2017 and has since turned the four-acre historic property into the $227 million VelocityTX bioscience and medical innovation campus, per the San Antonio Report. San Antonio's healthcare and bioscience sector generates an estimated $44 billion in annual economic impact and accounts for nearly 20 percent of all local jobs, supporting innovation hubs like VelocityTX, according to VelocityTX itself.
An East Side in Transition
Ray and Joséphine's arrival fits into a broader wave of investment reshaping San Antonio's near East Side. Just blocks away, a five-acre East End mixed-use redevelopment near Sunset Station is bringing office space, ground-floor dining, and public green space to the corridor, and the City of San Antonio's Eastside Community Area Plan calls for VIA Transit's planned Advanced Rapid Transit corridor along East Houston Street to improve connections between downtown and East Side commercial centers.
The neighboring Dignowity Hill historic district, San Antonio's first exclusive residential suburb dating to the 1850s, has felt the pressure of that investment directly: average single-family home appraisals there surged 554 percent between 2013 and 2023. For a chef who spent decades in the kitchens of Michelin-starred dining rooms, Ray and Joséphine now stakes its claim in a corner of the city defined as much by its industrial past as by the money and change flowing into it today.
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