San Antonio’s Saint City Supper Club returns, featuring head-to-head crawfish boil battle

Three San Antonio gastronomes are facing off in the Battle of the Boil. A crawfish boil, that is.

On Saturday, April 24, Southtown’s dinner pop-up series Saint City Supper Club will host its first 2021 event, pitting restauranteur Chad Carey, chef James Canter and longtime epicure Hugh Daschbach against each other for the coveted title of Crawfish King.

Carey is the proprietor of Alamo City hotspots Little Death Wine and Barbaro, while Canter is the mind behind Guerilla Gourmet catering and Motel Fried Chicken. Louisiana native Daschbach is chief operating officer of the nonprofit Saint City Culinary Foundation, which stages the pop-ups.

The event will take place at a yet-to-be disclosed south-of-downtown location and will benefit Saint City Culinary Foundation and its subsidiary mental-wellness program Heard.

“We want people to get to know who some of the chefs and culinary personalities are here, and that can be hard to do when you’re at a 1,000-person food festival,” Saint City founder Joel Rivas told the Current. “We want to showcase people who are already cooking, up-and-coming cooks and chefs that are doing cool stuff in the city — or people that are about to open a spot that want to preview it — and do it in a way that supports the nonprofit.”

Supper Club dinners typically host 30 to 40 guests.

Beyond generating funds for Saint City, Rivas said the gatherings raise awareness in the hospitality industry of the assistance it provides, including mental health resources and telehealth services targeted to foodservice workers.

“When there’s a suicide in our industry, immediately, the National Hotline for Suicide Prevention can raise $1 million in 24 hours,” Rivas said. “When the pandemic hit, Southern Smoke was doing emergency micrograms and raised $3 million dollars in, like, a week. But for organizations like ours that are on the prevention side and try to get ahead of the problem before tragedy strikes, raising funds is extremely difficult.”

Tickets for Saint City's April 24 Battle of the Boil will go on sale Thursday morning at 10 a.m. They run $40 and include food and drinks. The pop-up itself starts at 4 p.m.

Folks interested in learning more about the Saint City Culinary Foundation can visit the organization’s website.

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