The Plaza Hotel & Spa San Antonio and the Faded Jewel in the Alamo City's Crown

They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but when it comes to hotels, the cover better damn well match the price tag. And that’s the problem with The Plaza Hotel & Spa by Marriott in downtown San Antonio. It is a property so well-groomed it looks like it was waxed by a team of Korean aestheticians, but beneath the polish, there’s a rot creeping in.

Let me be clear up front: this place is beautiful. The kind of place your aunt from Houston would call “real classy.” The landscaping is dialed in like a presidential debate stage. The lobby smells like citrus and ambition. The linens are tight, the tiles are gleaming, and the marketing team deserves a raise. But the problem with an Autograph Collection hotel is that you expect more than surface-level charm. And when the curtain lifts and the show starts—meaning the food comes out and the service kicks in—you realize you’ve been bamboozled by the hotel equivalent of a glossy Instagram influencer with nothing to say.

The Big Misses: Corrine and Anaqua

Now, here’s where the wheels fall off. Corrine and Anaqua are the two culinary flagships inside this otherwise immaculate vessel, and both are about as useful as a steering wheel on a mule. They’re not just bad—they're confusingly bad, in a way that makes you wonder if the executive chef is trapped in a hostage situation.

Anaqua: Designed for the Influencer Class, Not Grown Men

Anaqua is a beautiful idea. It wants to be your stylish backyard porch with modern Asian minimalism. But in execution, it’s a social media trap set for the 5’9”, 135-pound tech bro from California who eats seaweed salad and calls it "fuel." If you're a grown-ass man over six feet tall or have the audacity to possess shoulders, prepare to sit cross-legged like a Boy Scout at his first powwow.

The drinks menu is another exercise in existential frustration. No SoCo and lime? No Vesper? The bartender blinked at me like I asked for a unicorn egg. Everything on the menu was sugar-rimmed, juice-heavy boat drinks designed for someone who thinks a "bourbon rickey" is a baseball player.

The burger and the poke guac were the sole redeeming features. Talk about a flash of competence in an otherwise TikTok-fueled fever dream. But the furniture kept whispering, you don’t belong here, old man. And I agreed.

Corrine: Service So Slow, You'll Meet God Waiting

Corrine, bless its heart, tries so hard. But trying ain’t doing, and this place does not deliver. We had the same server two nights in a row—Ryan—who was clearly stuck in a performance art piece about the death of urgency. On New Year's Eve, it took 36 minutes to get our drinks. The next night? Forty-one. At this point, I started measuring time in dog years.

The food? All elevation, no execution. A menu that talks a big game but arrives at the table like a high school theater student doing Shakespeare: loud, undercooked, and painfully self-aware. A chocolate bread pudding that looked like it had been yanked out of the oven mid-sentence. A huevos rancheros that felt more like “Eggs in Purgatory” (and if you know, you know). Black beans straight from the can. A red sauce that could double as a low-tier marinara from a gas station sandwich.

Breakfast? Slightly better. Emilio, our server, was a young man trying to fight the good fight in a restaurant that was built to fail. But even he couldn't save the cuisine from itself.

Expectations vs. Reality: The Marriott Autograph Disconnect

This ain’t just any hotel. This is a Marriott Autograph Collection property! It is supposedly handpicked, boutique, and dripping in personality. You expect a little fire. You expect real service, not corporate cosplay. What you get is a half-formed concept that wants to be hip and historic all at once, and fails at both.

And this is coming from a local. I live here. I breathe this city’s funk and flavor. I’ve done the staycations, the weekends downtown, the food crawls through the River Walk. I know when a place has soul and when it’s just playing dress-up in grandma’s wedding dress.

This hotel doesn’t know what it is. And if it does? That might be worse.

Hilton Is Eating Their Lunch

Meanwhile, just across town, Hilton is setting the bar with properties like The Monarch, leaning into modern elegance without cutting the throat of local culture. If Marriott’s strategy in San Antonio is to chase influencers and turn the Riverwalk into a bad parody of Miami, they’re in for a rude awakening. The people coming here want substance. They want history. They want tacos that didn’t come out of a test kitchen in Seattle. If Marriott wants to compete, they better wake up fast and realize you can’t build loyalty on good lighting and decorative succulents alone.

I plan to talk to Marriott’s media team about this. Not out of malice, but out of hope. This place can be great. The bones are there. But if they don’t fix their food program and bring some goddamn authenticity back to their operations, they’re going to lose the very audience they’re trying to woo.

Final Verdict

The Plaza Hotel & Spa is a well-groomed thoroughbred running with a broken hoof. It looks great. It smells great. And the marketing team deserves an award. But as soon as you sit down and expect something real like a cocktail, a meal, a moment of honest comfort, that is where it crumbles under the weight of its own illusions.

It’s a $300-a-night seduction that ends in a lukewarm kiss and a flopping basic burger you wouldn’t feed your dog.

San Antonio deserves better. And so do the travelers coming here.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 broken promises.
Service: Slow.
Ambiance: Slick but soulless.
Food: A culinary catfish.
Potential: High, but only if they get honest.

Stay tuned. I’ll be following up with Marriott's PR crew. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a reckoning on the horizon.