Spicy San Antonio: Jerk Chicken Street Tacos from Barrel and Bloom at Weathered Souls

Bottom Line: The Jerk Chicken Street Tacos from Barrel and Bloom at Weathered Souls deliver fresh, island flavor and a nice burst of heat.

San Antonio has plenty of breweries to choose from–and I have visited many of them–but I often find myself sipping on the suds at one of my favorite locations, Weathered Souls Brewing. They regularly have quite a number of brews to choose from, and you can get most of them in 3 oz, 10 oz, or 16 oz pours, which gives you the option to sample several and/or enjoy a larger glass of your favorites.

This brewery also has a kitchen on the premises, and it has gone through several sets of menus over the years, with the current one put together by James Beard-nominated Chef Nicola Blaque (who created local restaurants The Jerk Shack and Freight Fried Chicken). The Barrel and Bloom menu she developed has several choices of interest (which you can see here), and I decided to try out the Jerk Chicken Street Tacos. These include marinated and grilled jerk chicken with pineapple pico de gallo, onions, peppers, cilantro, and lime wedges layered across three mini corn tortillas.

Chef Blaque’s Jerk Shack serves up Caribbean food, and it is a place I have been meaning to visit for years, but I haven’t made the trip to that side of town yet. So when I heard that she had put together the new menu at Weathered Souls (which is much closer to me), I knew I had to stop by and pay a visit. The order of street tacos comes loaded with the chicken and the fixins, and it is a hefty amount of food for a ten-dollar price tag. (Hey guys, please don’t take that as a reason to raise the price.) You can try to pick these up and eat them like tacos, but that seemed like it would descend into a pretty messy affair, so I dug in with my fork instead.

The strips of chicken are perfectly cooked, delivering a nice tenderness and juiciness with each bite. The jerk marinade brings a peppery kick along with the Caribbean kiss of allspice as well as the myriad of other seasonings added to the mix. I have sampled some really good jerk in my day, and this stands up well without overpowering the taste buds with an assault of spices. And the pineapple pico works quite well with the tacos, delivering a nice bit of sweetness, but not going overboard on the fruity flavors. The order came with a cup of fresh salsa that was quite tasty, but I preferred the pico as my topping for the chicken and instead used the leftover tortillas to scoop that up.

Heat-wise, this jerk chicken will not send you running for the exits, but it has a decent kick. I would put it close to Medium on my scale, and there was definitely a tingling in my mouth when I finished up with my order. The Guava My Way Hazy IPA paired particularly well with the tacos, and helped to cool things down once I was done.

They don’t include the nutrition information on the menu, but I am going to guess these tacos will not break the calorie bank, even though you get a decent portion. My estimate is that they are somewhere in the 600 to 700 calorie range because they are mostly just chicken and fruit and veggies along with three tortillas on the smaller side. So an order of these and a beer won’t set you back too much, but you better stop there if watching your waistline because the Sweet Heat Brussels Sprouts and Beer Cheese Macaroni sure look tempting and will only run up your calorie tally!

Weathered Souls is open every day of the week, but the kitchen is a little bit trickier on the hours (part of the reason it took me a while to finally try the new selections). The Barrel and Bloom menu is only available from 3 PM to 8 PM Thursday and Friday, Noon to 9 PM Saturday, and Noon to 7 PM Sunday. And that could vary if they happen to have a guest food truck visiting. But the Jerk Chicken Street Tacos were definitely worth my persistence (it took three tries to get there when the kitchen was open), and I plan on going back to sample other items on the menu. (I also have a goal to hit The Jerk Shack sooner rather than later.) And you always know that some good beers will be available on tap, so if you are in the neighborhood, I highly recommend stopping by.