San Antonio's Near East Side is about to get a taste of something the city hasn't seen before: chef James Canter, once a fixture of the local food truck scene, is coming back for one night only to cook a menu built from years spent studying in South Korea. He'll headline the October 1 edition of the St. Paul Square Dinner Club at Cherrity Bar, serving a menu that blends Korean fermentation and butchery techniques with the Texas comfort food he built his name on.
Canter, a former owner of Guerilla Gourmet, has spent several years working with local chefs in Korea and studying traditional cooking techniques and regional cuisine there, according to the San Antonio Express-News. The Oct. 1 dinner will combine his cooking with those Korean-style fermentation methods and other techniques he picked up abroad, the paper reports. CultureMap San Antonio describes the concept as Korean-Tex, a style blending traditional South Korean butchery, fermentation, and regional cooking techniques with Texas comfort food traditions.
Kimberly Suta, who organizes the St. Paul Square Dinner Club through her Sutapants Productions, said Canter's return provides an opportunity to experience what he discovered in South Korea through his culinary perspective, according to a news release cited by the Express-News. Suta wrote that Canter is constantly learning, traveling, and evolving, and he wrote separately that cultural food and its traditions can help people understand a culture's people, per the same release.
From Food Truck to Flavortown and Back
Canter's path to this dinner runs through more than one state. He was classically trained in Florida's Tampa Bay area, where he served as executive chef for the St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts cafe, and he also worked with organic farm-to-table concepts in San Francisco before landing in Texas, according to the Tampa Bay Times. Guerilla Gourmet opened as a food truck in Victoria in 2014 before expanding into a brick-and-mortar restaurant the following year, fusing South Texas flavors with global cuisine.
Canter later turned Guerilla Gourmet back into a food truck and moved to San Antonio in 2018, per the Express-News. That shift followed a stretch of hardship in Victoria: Harvey-related business disruptions and local economic conditions had forced the closure of his brick-and-mortar space, according to the Victoria Advocate.
Before that closure, though, Canter's kitchen became something the community leaned on. When Hurricane Harvey hit in August 2017, he opened Guerilla Gourmet to the community and offered a free hot meal to anyone affected by the storm. The Victoria restaurant was one of the few in the seven-county region with restored power and water, and Canter turned it into a disaster relief center, serving smoked kimchi chicken stew and thousands of free meals to displaced residents and first responders, according to Food Truck Operator. He had stockpiled supplies ahead of the storm's landfall specifically to make sure he could feed his neighbors.
A National Spotlight and a Local Fanbase
Canter's profile got a boost not long after he arrived in San Antonio. He appeared on Food Network's Guy's Grocery Games in a December 2018 episode built around an ultimate beef battle, competing in Guy Fieri's Flavortown Market with his signature monster chicken-fried burger, as CultureMap San Antonio reported at the time.
Now Canter returns to a dinner series built around exactly the kind of showcase that made his name. The St. Paul Square Dinner Club meets monthly and celebrates local chefs, pairing them with rotating host venues across San Antonio. Past features have included Hell's Kitchen runner-up Mary Lou Davis, according to Flicks and Food. The series has not yet announced the specific menu for Canter's dinner.
Dinner at a Bar Built to Give Back
Cherrity Bar, located at 302 Montana St., will host the one-night-only dinner. The venue operates under a philanthropic giving model created by real estate investor David Malley, where patrons drop token votes with drink and food purchases to direct monthly and quarterly bar proceeds to local non-profit charities, according to MySA. Hoodline previously covered a fundraising mixer at the same bar benefiting Habitat for Humanity of San Antonio.
The Near East Side, encompassing St. Paul Square and the area around Cherrity Bar, has seen steady restaurant and nightlife growth as local business owners work to establish the district near the Alamodome as a distinct dining destination, according to the San Antonio Express-News. Tickets for the Oct. 1 dinner are listed online starting at $100 per person, with total checkout costs reaching $117.51 with fees. The multi-course dinner starts at 7 p.m., with drinks available for purchase separately, and seating is limited for the one-night-only gathering.
