San Antonio Express-News, Wednesday, April 6, 2005
Eatery has down-home attitude, gourmet results
John Griffin
Express-News Dining Editor
Naylene Dillingham-Stolzer and her husband raise goats. Their neighbors down the road, the McKinnerneys, also raise goats.
Trouble is, the market for goat meat has never been that great compared with beef or pork. So, Naylene and her neighbors started up a little roadside restaurant back in 1999 to market it.
They made a little more money by selling their goat meat to their own restaurant than they would have otherwise, but they made something else. Their little shack, named Mac & Ernie's Roadside Eatery — after the McKinnerneys, get it? — has put their hometown, Tarpley, pop. 50, on the map. Well, on the foodies' map, at least.
People from miles around show up for the cabrito burgers that Naylene makes each Wednesday, Friday and Saturday for lunch. But the crowds on Friday and Saturday nights want something more than burgers. They want her seared Yellowfin Tuna with Wasabi Mayo, her Mustard Grilled Pork Tenderloin with Salsa Verde, her fried catfish or whatever Naylene's had a hankering for.
"I cook what I want to eat," she told a sold-out Central Market cooking class recently.
It's as simple as that, and so are her dishes. Though the end product may taste gourmet, her approach is too straightforward, too sensible and not fussy in the least.
Her yellowfin tuna, for example, is cooking at its most undemanding. Just brush sesame oil on tuna steaks and grill to desired doneness. (You should cook tuna the same way you want your steaks cooked, she said.) At the same time, mix together mayonnaise, wasabi, teriyaki sauce and water to make a sauce. That's it. Yet the sweetness in the teriyaki plays off the heat of the wasabi, and both work well with the nuttiness of the sesame oil.
It's easy and complex at the same time.
Naylene is like that, as well. She may have a hyphenated last name, but she's too free of pretensions to be called anything but Naylene.
She also has the gift of remembering the name of everybody she meets, even after a lapse of several weeks, according to a few of her regular customers who attended the class as a means of avoiding the 90-minute drive to Tarpley, which lies to the west of Bandera. As each student entered the room, Naylene would walk over and introduce herself; for the rest of the class, she addressed each questioner by name.
Naylene got her culinary start as a child. Her mother let her use the "Betty Crocker Boys and Girls Cookbook" and "we could cook whatever we wanted to," she said with her usual deadpan manner. "It was pretty exciting."
When she was older, she worked her way through the kitchens at Liberty Bar and Grey Moss Inn among other restaurants.
She learned the value of using produce at its freshest to achieve the brightest and best flavors. "I try to go as seasonal as I can," she said.
She also learned that recipes are not meant to be carved in stone. If you're unfamiliar with a certain style of cooking, you should probably "try a recipe the way it's written once — and then go for the gusto," she said.
To Naylene, that could mean adding more wasabi to her tuna sauce when she's making it at home or adjusting the amount of anchovies or capers in her salsa verde. "If you like 'em," she said of capers, "then add more. If you don't like 'em, don't add 'em."
That attitude carries over into one of the eatery's signature desserts, coconut cream pie. It's made each week by her assistant, Kelly Bradshaw, who sits at the window at Mac & Ernie's taking orders. Neither woman cares for meringue, so there isn't any on the pie.
"We do not cook what we do not eat," Naylene said.
Kelly demonstrated how easy it was to make the old-fashioned favorite, the recipe of which was adapted from one her mother taught her. In the meantime, she had a few words to say about her boss: "Naylene is a very adventurous person. She gets bored very easily. Hence, the reason she changes the sauces every weekend."
Kelly, on the other hand, enjoys making the same pies week after week. "Naylene goes, 'Can't you make something other than coconut cream pie or chocolate cream pie?' And I go, 'No.'"
The regulars are glad of that, as the pies sell out every weekend.
For those San Antonians who want to save themselves a trip to Tarpley, Naylene returns to Central Market July 11.
