Every year, the San Antonio Current bottles up the city and dares you to take a swig.

The Best of San Antonio issue is our annual reminder that “hot” isn’t a one-note flavor — it’s a spectrum. It’s the zing of a taco that sneaks up on you three bites in, sure, but it’s also the buzz around a bartender who remembers your drink, a vintage shop that feels like a secret or a music venue that turns a Tuesday night into something feral and unforgettable.

And just like the best hot sauces don’t come from some mega-factory owned by a faceless food conglomerate, neither do the winners you’ll find in these pages. They’re the culinary tinkerers, the DIY lifers, the stubborn dreamers working out of converted houses, food trucks and blink-and-you-miss-it storefronts.

The folks grinding chiles in small batches have a lot in common with the indie bookstore owners, tattoo artists, baristas and technicians who dominate this list — people who care enough to obsess over the details, who’d rather be distinctive than scalable, and who give this city its unmistakable flavor.

Of course, the real joy of hot sauce isn’t sticking with the same bottle forever — it’s grabbing something new off the shelf just to see what it can do to your taste buds. So, to spice things up, we brought back our Critics’ Picks selections to add a few of our own favorites into the mix.

That same curiosity is what makes Best of San Antonio more than a victory lap. It’s an invitation. Flip through, circle names you don’t recognize and go chase them down. Because the only way to really know your city — and to feel its heat — is to keep tasting.

All the best,

Sanford Nowlin

Editor-in-chief, San Antonio Current