Picnikins Patio Cafe is a restaurant in North Side, San Antonio.
Why locals love it: A Blanco Road cafe locals send each other to for fruit salads and sandwiches, easy to drive past and worth a proper stop.
Tip: The fruit salad and the sandwiches are the draw on the shaded patio. A quiet lunch find tucked off Blanco Road.
Address: 6901 Blanco Rd, San Antonio, TX 78216
Why locals love it: A Tobin Hill spot that is also a car wash and laundromat, so visitors assume it cannot be good. The fish tacos prove otherwise.
Tip: Do your laundry while you eat fish tacos and grass-fed burgers. The live-music nights are the locals' secret.
Why locals love it: A West Side weekend ritual that tourists never reach, where families queue for barbacoa by the pound before Sunday breakfast.
Tip: Come Saturday or Sunday morning for the pit barbacoa and a dozen tamales. This is how San Antonio families eat the weekend.
Why locals love it: A roastery hidden inside a converted West Side sewing factory, with no street presence and some of the city's best single-origin coffee.
Tip: Follow the signs into Warehouse 5 to find it. Order the single-origin filter and buy a bag of the house roast.
Why locals love it: A West Side cafe doing horchata lattes and cafe de olla that the third-wave coffee crowd often overlooks for the Pearl spots.
Tip: The horchata latte and cafe de olla give the coffee a local accent. A West Side cafe worth the detour.
Why locals love it: A cocktail bar in an unmarked 1920s cottage on a quiet Dignowity Hill street, easy to miss and worth finding.
Tip: Look for the cottage on a quiet east-side street; there is no flashy sign. The charcuterie and cocktails reward the search.
Why locals love it: An east-side cocktail-and-comfort-food spot whose every tab funds a local charity, a giving-back model few visitors know about.
Tip: Your visit funds a rotating local cause. The vegan plates and live music make it more than a gimmick.
