Chef Andrew Weissman, pictured at his Mr. Juicy burger restaurant in the Monte Vista area, plans to open a second location on the North Side.
Jessica Phelps
Chef Andrew Weissman, pictured at his Mr. Juicy burger restaurant in the Monte Vista area, plans to open a second location on the North Side.
Jessica Phelps
Chef Andrew Weissman, pictured at his Mr. Juicy burger restaurant in the Monte Vista area, plans to open a second location on the North Side.
Jessica Phelps
Chef Andrew Weissman, pictured at his Mr. Juicy burger restaurant in the Monte Vista area, plans to open a second location on the North Side.
Jessica Phelps
Andrew Weissman’s career path as a chef, which began with training jobs at some of the finest restaurants in the Auvergne and Burgundy regions of France, has now led him to a former Whataburger on the North Side.
He recently revealed plans to open a second location of Mr. Juicy, his popular and critically praised burger joint, in a repainted Whataburger on Northwest Military Highway; the first Mr. Juicy is in a former Jack-in-the-Box at the intersection of San Pedro and West Hildebrand avenues. He is searching for a spot for a third location, he said, with a long-term goal of opening eight to 10 locations.
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He sees his work at Mr. Juicy as a natural progression from his background in high-end French cuisine. He points out that he uses many of the principles he learned in France in cooking the burgers, chicken strips and fries, as well as making the milkshakes and chocolate cookies that feature Belgian chocolate.
“What I wanted, to be a disrupter in this segment, is to try to cook á la minute, which is essential in French cuisine,” he said. “The moment you order it is when we cook it. We’ve never had an extra burger sitting to the side that we reheat. It’s all stuff that just is philosophically based in French cuisine — making product in-house. Our sauces are real sauces. They are not made with any kinds of bases.”
A San Antonio native, he briefly pursued a career in journalism, working as a reporter in Mexico City, before deciding to be a cook. The pivotal moment came when he cooked dinner for a visiting NBC News crew, he said; the now-retired anchor George Lewis told him afterward that it was one of the best meals he’d had during his world travels.
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He went on to study at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. During his roughly 25 years cooking in San Antonio — he opened his first restaurant, La Reve, in 1998 — he and his wife and business partner Maureen have launched numerous concepts offering a wide variety of cuisines, ranging from the Mediterranean street food joint Moshe’s Golden Falafel to the Italian restaurant Il Sogno Osteria at Pearl.
He recently sat with the Express-News to discuss what he learned from his training in France, how he has tended to get bored with his prior restaurant concepts and whether he thinks that will happen with Mr. Juicy. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Chef Andrew Weissman, pictured at his Mr. Juicy burger restaurant in the Monte Vista area, plans to open a second location on the North Side.
Jessica Phelps
Q: I see a “wet burger” on your menu. What is that exactly?
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A: “Wet” is kind of our twist on things. A lot of the foundational stuff here is based on French cuisine and technique. So I added, when we first opened, a sauce au poivre, which is a French peppercorn sauce. And that’s what our wet sauce is.
Q: You did training in France, right?
A: I worked quite a bit as what’s called a stagiaire. I traveled around France. Basically, learned the dynamics of a well-organized kitchen. It was just eye-opening. I learned about total utilization of product in kitchens and cleanliness aspects. Just how to present food.
Q: You’ve done so many restaurants, offering all kinds of cuisine. But do you consider French cuisine as your home base?
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A: Yeah. I love that art of the table and serving people. French cuisine allows you to express a lot of different food categories, but in a very stripped-down presentation. It’s kind of the less-is-more school of thought. And I just love it. It’s all about technique, and that’s really where I think I excel. I don’t excel in creating new dishes. I just like the organization of French cuisine. You don’t hide stuff under sauces. If it’s fried, it’s got to be perfectly fried. If it’s seared, it’s got to be perfectly seared. Nothing’s hidden from the guest; it’s all out there. I find that really fascinating.
Q: Apart from this Mr. Juicy and the second location, what else do you have going on?
A: My name is licensed at the airport (for Sip Brew Bar & Eatery). But I shed everything, closed the remaining restaurants, so that I could focus on growing Mr. Juicy.
Q: You’re 100% Mr. Juicy right now, then.
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A: I am so devoted to this concept. I’ve never just had one place. It’s like this little spark that I’m really trying to protect and grow.
Q: What has made you devote yourself so strongly to it?
A: It’s kind of a juggernaut, you know? The QSR (i.e., quick-service restaurants) segment is something I’ve never done before. And as I mentioned earlier, no one’s doing what we do, cooking á la minute and making stuff in-house. If you go across the street to Taco Cabana or McDonald’s or Wendy’s, or even some of the smaller chains, they don’t have the ability to cook to order. Most of their stuff is frozen; we have nothing frozen. There’s a reason why they’re not doing it — it’s extremely difficult. The truth will come out when I try to do multiple units if I can continue to do that.
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This is like a hybrid restaurant where we’re cooking with the highest-end ingredients that we can find, á la minute, and trying to present it in a fashion that people are getting more than what they’re paying for. And we’re doing it at a price point where we’re not much more pricey than a McDonald’s or Wendy’s. And we’re not using any hydrogenated fats or added sugars or MSG or things like that. I always say we’re the best of the worst. If you’re going to eat a burger, this is one that you can feel relatively good about eating.
Q: Looking back at all the other concepts you’ve done, I would assume some didn’t work out for economic reasons?
A: I don’t think so — all of them were successful. I just got bored. You know, Il Sogno and Sandbar at the Pearl — Il Sogno was a 10-year-old restaurant; Sandbar was a second location of it, so combined it was almost 20 years old. Sip, my coffee shop, was 22 years old. The only one that was short-lived was Moshe’s Golden Falafel, and that had a fervent following, but I have three children, and I always told myself that if I didn’t make a certain amount of money, it wasn’t worth my time away from my family.
Q: Do you think you’ll get bored with Mr. Juicy?
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A: I don’t. I wasn’t pigeon-holed, but to a certain extent I was a little bit in all my other concepts, because whether it was French or Italian, those are the kinds of foods I had to do. Here, I started chicken fried steak. If I wake up one morning and say, “Hey man, I want to do a T-bone steak out the window of a fast-food joint,” I do it. I can do whatever I want. So it’s exciting. Other fast-food places can’t do that.
Q: Where did the inspiration come from for the concept?
A: We were in Colombia, my wife and my children. We were walking around the downtown area, and I saw this place; there was a line wrapped around the building. And I’m like, “What is that place?” We went over and looked, and it was just this little burger place. They only had a hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, fries and milkshakes. It just kind of hit me. At the time we were struggling with Moshe’s because of course I didn’t want to keep it simple. We were doing 25 different salads every day that you could stuff in a made-to-order pita with falafel or shawarma. And it was just overwhelming. We were selling it for 10 bucks a shot, and I was just like, “Man, this is ridiculous.”
Q: Is it hard to let your concepts go?
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A: Yeah. Some no; some I’m like, “Oh my god, I’m so happy.” I’ve had two or three offers to buy just this one unit, and they’ve been pretty lucrative, so I’ve thought about it, but then I was like, I’d be selling myself short. I think to get multiples of this would be more lucrative.
Q: It’s been financially successful, then?
A: We have been truly blessed. I think it’s partly due to the fact that we’re willing to go above and beyond. Right now, when there’s a lot of restaurants struggling, I hate to say it out loud, but we’ve been really busy. I just attribute that to the fact that we’re diligent in what we do. My wife and I really want to please the guests. We slip up on a daily basis, but we always try to correct it. I always tell people, “Hey, complete 100% money back guarantee if you’re not satisfied.”
Q: Did you see the film The Menu? It seems relevant because the chef makes all these high-concept dishes, but at the end the main character asks him, “Could you just make me a burger?” And it’s his favorite thing to cook.
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A: Yeah. What killed me about that movie is he didn’t melt the cheese on the burger. It drove me crazy. It’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. But yeah, it’s kind of like that. I worked at a Michelin-starred restaurant, a number of them, in France. After a while, you just want something really simplistic.
Q: So you actually do cooking here? Flipping burgers?
A: Every single day, yeah.
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Q: I have to ask. Does that get boring for an accomplished chef like you to flip a burger?
A: That’s why I think I have all this menu creep. I started with just burgers. Then we went to chicken sandwiches. Then we went to desserts. I’d like to kind of skew it back down, but that’s what keeps me engaged. Otherwise, I don’t think I could do it.
Dining and Cooking