Update: On April 3, the James Beard Foundation named Christopher Cullum of Cullum’s Attaboy a finalist for Best Chef: Texas. Winners will be announced June 10 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Christopher Cullum is right where he wants to be.
Most days, that’s at Cullum’s Attaboy, his tiny Tobin Hill restaurant one business over from Cullum’s Attagirl, the tiny fried chicken shack he’s run for the past eight years.
When he’s not working, Cullum spends his time with his fiancée and kids, making the youngsters dishes that, at ages 6 and 7, they often turn their noses up at. Cullum is unbothered by this inevitability.
“We did try blue cheese recently and it was not a success,” he said. “They just want pasta with nothing on it, so I cook ’em pasta. Honestly, I don’t really care what I’m serving as long as they’re enjoying it.”
Satisfaction with what is, as opposed to what could or should be, infuses everything Cullum does — or at least, how he talks about everything he does. That includes being named a 2024 finalist for Best Chef: Texas from the James Beard Foundation.
Cullum was one of five San Antonio chefs that were named semifinalists this year, along with Jennifer Hwa Dobbertin of Best Quality Daughter and the trio behind Curry Boys BBQ, Andrew Ho, Andrew Samia and Sean Wen.
The nomination is an honor, he said, and he credited his team for their hard work that led to the recognition. But he said honors like this are not what fulfill him.
“I already feel complete. I feel very, very, very whole, because Attaboy is open, it is what it is today, and we celebrate San Antonio history and tradition,” he said. “I’ve already won everything I need.”
Attaboy’s compact menu is focused on brunch; its handful of classic French dishes includes an omelet that can be ordered with both truffle and caviar. The Attaboy burger is a mainstay, as is a taramasalata, a “peasant paté” from La Louisiane, once the height of French cuisine in San Antonio.
Cullum’s contentment doesn’t mean it’s all smooth sailing. Despite Attaboy’s high profile accolades and a coterie of devoted regulars, the restaurant stopped offering dinner service more than a year ago, lacking the customers and the staff. He hopes to eventually start a dinner service again.
While he no longer cooks regularly — Alysha Brooks serves as Attaboy’s chef de cuisine — Cullum is at his restaurants every day. On a recent Thursday, he was at Attaboy to unpack and haul a new “low boy” refrigerator through the dining room and into the minuscule kitchen. He was also dealing with a lapsed liquor license, sending lunch patrons down the block to Attagirl, where they could buy a beer or glass of champagne and bring it back.
No matter the headaches, he loves the work.
“I need to touch the businesses every day,” he said. “I have to go in and talk to the crew, and look at the business and feel how it feels.”
A preservationist
A son of jazz cornetist Jim Cullum Jr., Cullum sees Attaboy as the culmination of 36 years of work in the restaurant industry, beginning at age 11 when he hand-washed dishes at The Landing, his father’s legendary jazz club on the River Walk. The Landing was a family affair: His father played, his sisters waited tables and his mother’s cheesecake was on the menu — the same cheesecake on the menu at Attaboy.
By the time he struck out on his own, Cullum had done practically every job at The Landing, from cooking, bartending and waiting tables to menu design, accounting and public relations. Jobs at other local restaurants and bars rounded out his self-taught journey.
When his father wasn’t on the road, he was ferrying his children — there are six, from several marriages — around San Antonio places that he loved, like La Louisiane, from which the younger Cullum learned to make the taramasalata now on the menu at Attaboy. The Cullums lived in the River Road neighborhood, which has become something of a family compound.
His sister Blanquita Sullivan now lives in the family home that once served as the San Antonio Country Day School. Cullum lives one street over, as does a cousin, George Nash. The family still gathers around the fountain in Sullivan’s front yard on Thanksgiving to share what they’re grateful for.
Like his father, Cullum sees himself as a preservationist, a protector of San Antonio history and culture. The River Road neighborhood “always needs protecting,” he said, while Cullum’s Attaboy is now home to some of the San Antonio ephemera he’s collected over the years, including an original sign from The Landing, an antique brass light fixture from The Landing’s original location in the basement of the Nix Hospital, and a map of the city that belonged to architect and friend of his father’s, O’Neil Ford.
“I was always in love with San Antonio,” Cullum said, and he’s thrilled that the recipes and memorabilia have a home. “I just want to show San Antonio that it’s amazing, it’s been amazing the whole time.”
Spinning plates
Before Attaboy occupied the renovated 1940 home at 111 Kings Court, it was briefly Golden Wat Noodle House and then Nola Brunch & Beignets, owned by Pieter Sypesteyn and his wife.
Sypesteyn and Cullum first met in 2012 at Alamo Eat Bar in Southtown, one of the city’s first food truck gathering spots. Cullum was running his first version of Attaboy out of a renovated Airstream trailer, serving lovingly crafted burgers; Sypesteyn had just launched Where Y’at? New Orleans Kitchen.
The pair hit it off immediately. While Sypesteyn didn’t immediately know Cullum was Jim Cullum Jr.’s son, as a New Orleans native, he was familiar with the elder Cullum’s music.
“We’re about the same age, and we both really have a love for jazz and music and food; we both grew up in the restaurant industry,” Sypesteyn said. “I think we’re both kind of old souls.”
Sypesteyn opened Cookhouse on Mistletoe Avenue in 2014, the same year Cullum bought Tucker’s Kozy Korner, a 1940s Eastside fixture where he had already been working for four years. A couple years later, he launched Attagirl.
By 2017, Cullum realized he was spinning too many plates. He sold Tucker’s later that year. But when the opportunity arose to open Attaboy in 2021, it felt right.
The restaurant opened the following year, at first with a limited menu. Today it includes a caviar and roe section as well as an updated version of the 1915 Spudnut, a potato-based donut sprinkled with powdered sugar.
The James Beard Foundation announced finalist nominees on April 3, and winners will be announced on June 10. First awarded in 1991, the restaurant and chef awards recognize exceptional talent and achievement, and are considered one of the highest honors in the industry.
Cullum remains focused on his restaurants; a former employee is returning soon, and he and his staff are thrilled. He used a metaphor that invoked his father’s legacy to describe what he’s after.
“When the band is tight, when everyone is on the same wavelength, and all the relationships are good, it’s more than just music, as you know,” he said. “When it’s all working, you’re able to make a beautiful thing, whether it’s traditional jazz, or tiny fried chicken or a hamburger. Everything is in harmony. … That’s what I’m most interested in — and the byproduct of that is what people get to enjoy.”
