THE ONLY THING THAT STAYS THE SAME HERE IS CHANGE

WORDS BY NATHAN MATTISE I PHOTOS BY FREDERICK’S

Calling Frederick Costa a lifer feels like an understatement. For the 70-year-old namesake of Frederick’s Bistro and Frederick’s Restaurant, some of his earliest memories involve his parents’ kitchens in the 1950s. After running a French restaurant in Vietnam (then Indochina), they ran a Vietnamese restaurant in France for decades. The family’s Paris kitchen, La Petite Tonkinoise, earned a Michelin star.

Costa has worked as everything from valet parker to busboy to chef, and everywhere from Basque Country to Washington, D.C. He’s helped serve bigwigs like Henry Kissinger and Clint Eastwood and more recently hosted Spurs legends — Tim Parker, Tony Duncan and Ginóbili.

Neither Frederick’s Bistro nor Frederick’s Restaurant is stuck in the past, though. Costa takes incredible pride in the dishes he’s serving now, and the food reveals why his restaurants remain San Antonio staples.

The Vietnamese dumplings — steamed, filled with pork and mushroom and served with the house sauce — showcase Costa’s roots. They’re from his family’s cookbook, same as the spring rolls and the baby back ribs at Frederick’s Restaurant. Though black and white photos of the family restaurants adorn the walls of the dining room, Costa and his crew still find ways to modernize the process.

“The dumplings are gluten-free because they’re made with rice flour, and we used to buy rice flour and mix it ourselves. It’d take two minutes to make a single dumpling,” he says. “But the place I found for supplies now, they sell pre-made rice sheets. That means we can do them fast and keep up, because we sell a lot of them.”

The Parmesan-crusted Alaskan halibut with avocado relish at Frederick’s Restaurant reflects the relationship between Costa and his longtime staff. “I’ve had some people working for me for forty years at this point,” he notes.

Costa no longer lists himself as a chef and stays out of the cooking outside of catering, but he and his chefs collaborate on menus. At times, he’s had such trust in them he’s followed their lead even when it doesn’t fit the restaurant’s blueprint.

“Francis Perrin worked with us at L’Etoile [Costa’s first San Antonio restaurant], and one night he made a guacamole. We’d been doing Parmesan-crusted fish, and he put this guacamole on top,” Costa recalls. “So I went into the kitchen and said, ‘We’re not a freaking Mexican restaurant, why are we serving guacamole?’ But as I was visiting tables, they all said, ‘This is the best fish we ever had.’ I had to go back and say, ‘You’re right, you made a great call.’ Now I can’t get it off the menu. I’ve tried, but people keep ordering it.”

The pizza at Frederick’s Bistro is obviously neither French nor Vietnamese, but it speaks to Costa’s flexibility and pursuit of evolution. When preparing to open in 2000, the pizza oven was already in the kitchen but Costa’s chef didn’t think they should use it. “So I said, ‘OK, let’s take it out,’” Costa says. “But we ultimately found out we’d have to redo the whole kitchen to do it — so, no, no way, let’s keep it. Now? That pizza has paid for a lot of bills.”

The toppings largely come from Costa and his travels. He loves duck and calls it his number one food, so why not try it on a pizza? The bolognese is something he tried while visiting Mexico and never forgot. “You have to constantly learn and, sometimes, copy and add a little bit,” Costa says. “I watch Beat Bobby Flay, and I don’t know how he does this all the time. But I love that show and as a chef, you must learn from each other.” He has ambitions of soon toying with a variation of a fig, brie and prosciutto toast he had recently in Mexico.

Costa has no immediate plans to retire. As the bistro turns 15 and the restaurant nears 25 years, he’s extremely proud of them and their impact on San Antonio at large. He insists the work keeps him young as he bounces from a popular bistro happy hour (including Monday) to a restaurant dinner service in the same night. If there’s a single mission that still drives him, it might be the simplest one: Costa wants to convince more San Antonians to make local restaurants part of their life.

“I say this all the time to my staff, ‘Why do people want to go to Frederick’s? They have plenty of choices, so why come to our restaurants?’” Costa says. “‘Oh, because I kissed their hands!’ Bullshit. We give good service, we finish the job. My waiters use their bread crumber, they pick up the empty glasses, and we call patrons by name. After 25 years, we have a lot of repeat business.”

“So when I see mom-and-pop restaurant folks put all of themselves and their savings into it, and they’re closing after six months or a year, I feel the pain. I know they put their sweat and money into it. So every day, I say, ‘Support your local restaurants — Italian, French, whatever it is.’”

About the Contributor

Nathan Mattise (@nathanmattise) is always working to perfect his sourdough bagels. He also enjoys bocce, amaro, road trips, and a good playlist.