Edible San Antonio Issue No. 18 (Aug/Sep 2016) — La Familia Cortez 75 Years
Bibliographic detail
- Title: Edible San Antonio, Issue No. 18 (August/September 2016)
- Featured article: “La Familia Cortez — 75 Years of Food and Family”
- Publisher: Edible San Antonio (an Edible Communities regional affiliate magazine)
- Year: 2016
- ISSN: TBD — verify in-hand
- Pagination: TBD — verify in-hand; H&H-relevant spread is page 48
- Format: Bi-monthly perfect-bound magazine; regional food-and-drink publication
Physical description
Standard Edible San Antonio issue format (regional food magazine, glossy stock, full-color editorial photography). Condition recorded as good in the accession register. Four gallery images captured for the artifact: the p48 frame, the article opener, the double-page spread, and a closeup of the H&H-relevant detail. The held copy is the print issue (Aug/Sep 2016, Issue No. 18).
Provenance
Acquired 23 August 2016 (acquisition_source: other per accession). Accessioned as HH-BOOK-2016-0001. The magazine was purchased specifically for the La Familia Cortez spread — H&H descendant outreach surfaced the issue’s Master Chef Coffee sign frame and the magazine was added to the collection as the print-source record.
See _posts/2016-08-23-h_and_h_master_chef_edible_san_antonio.md on the Jekyll site for the original purchase / find note, and _posts/2024-01-23-mi-tierra-75-anos-card-master-chef-coffee-witte.md for the related 2024 update tracking the painted-portrait imagery into the Witte Museum.
Why it matters
This issue carries the La Familia Cortez “75 Years of Food and Family” article on the Mi Tierra Café founding family (Pedro and Cruz Cortez, 1941). The spread includes a painted portrait of the Cortez founders standing in front of the Mi Tierra storefront — and on the building wall to the right of the Mi Tierra marquee, the Master Chef Coffee chef-mascot sign is clearly visible. This is research-grade evidence for:
- The Mi Tierra ↔ Master Chef wall-sign relationship — a long-standing, public-facing depiction of the Master Chef sign in Cortez-family iconography. The sign’s appearance in a 2016 commissioned portrait confirms its continuing cultural presence.
- Color question (open): the painting renders the Master Chef sign as green, while surviving 1950s black-and-white photographs of the same storefront show it as the project’s standard MASTER CHEF COFFEE sign. Is the green an artistic license by the portrait painter, a period color memory from the Cortez family, or evidence of an earlier color scheme later changed? This open question is flagged in brands/master-chef-coffee.md and is one of the actively-researched threads in the Master Chef brand lineage.
- Provenance for the painted portrait image — the same painted portrait reappears on the 2016 “Nuestra Cultura · 75 Años” Cortez-family anniversary lanyard pass (Al Rendón photography; later catalogued at the Witte Museum). The Edible spread is one of the two known 2016 publications of this image, the other being the lanyard.
The magazine ties together the Cortez-family centenarian-business narrative (Mi Tierra), the Master Chef brand history, the 601 Delaware Street downtown SA business district, and the Al Rendón / Witte Museum documentary thread — making it a research-multiplier artifact.
Notable contents
- Page 48 — La Familia Cortez article opener / lead image.
- Article spread — painted Cortez-family portrait in front of Mi Tierra; Master Chef Coffee sign visible (green-rendered).
- Closeup — detail of the Master Chef chef-mascot rendering on the building wall.
- Rest-of-issue: standard Edible SA food-and-drink editorial content (not H&H-relevant, but useful for date-stamping the SA food-scene context).
Open questions
- Master Chef sign color (see “Why it matters” above) — artistic license vs. period memory vs. earlier sign era.
- Painter attribution — who painted the Cortez-family portrait? The lanyard credits Al Rendón for the photograph; the underlying painting credit TBD.
- Magazine archive status — is the Aug/Sep 2016 issue archived/scannable from Edible San Antonio’s own back-issue program? Cross-reference any digital version.
Related
- brands/master-chef-coffee.md — the brand whose sign is documented.
- companies/mi-tierra-cafe.md — the Cortez-family business.
- people/al-rendon.md — photographer of the matching lanyard.
- places/witte-museum.md — where the lanyard image is later catalogued.
_posts/2016-08-23-h_and_h_master_chef_edible_san_antonio.md(on Jekyll site) — original find note._posts/2024-01-23-mi-tierra-75-anos-card-master-chef-coffee-witte.md(on Jekyll site) — 2024 Witte Museum update.- library/index.md — full library holdings.