Pearl District

The most interesting neighbourhood in San Antonio for food, shopping, and street life, built around the handsome redbrick buildings of the old Pearl Brewery on the northern loop of the River Walk. Weekend farmers markets, a rotating roster of food trucks, the CIA cooking school, and a cluster of genuinely excellent restaurants make this the city's liveliest eating and drinking district.

The neighbourhood has filled in rapidly since the brewery reopened — apartments, hotels, and boutiques crowd the surrounding blocks. The Saturday Farmers Market (8am–noon) is the best in the city. The stretch of River Walk from Pearl north toward Brackenridge Park is calmer and prettier than the downtown tourist corridor.

things to do neighbourhood
A story
The Pearl Brewery closed in 2001 after 119 years of making Pearl Beer, then the official beer of Texas. The brewery complex sat empty for years before a developer transformed it into one of the most admired urban renewal projects in the American South. The distinctive water tower, grain silos, and red-brick warehouses were all preserved; the brewery taproom became a restaurant, and the former bottling hall became the home of the Culinary Institute of America's San Antonio campus.