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Chicken-fried steak comes with cream gravy, mashed potatoes, Texas toast and green beans at Good Time Charlie's on Broadway.

Entrees at Good Time Charlie's on Broadway include Charlie's K-Bob, front, and steak con queso. 

Good Time Charlie's opened in in 1979 on Broadway near Mahncke Park.

Fried catfish comes with fries and a vegetable side with Texas toast at Good Time Charlie's on Broadway.

Nuts, Bolts & Rings is an appetizer sampler of fried zucchini, mushrooms and onion rings at Good Time Charlie's on Broadway. The drink menu includes a margarita and a Kentucky Mule made with bourbon. 

The Beanburger at Good Time Charlie's on Broadway incorporates refried beans, a beef patty, crushed tortilla chips, picante sauce and cheese. The bar menu includes a frozen piña colada.

Banana Split Pie incorporates a graham cracker crust, bananas, pineapple puree, whipped cream, cherries and pecans at Good Time Charlie's on Broadway.

Super Nachos come with beans, chili, cheese, guacamole and jalapeños at Good Time Charlie's on Broadway.

The menu includes a 16-ounce T-bone steak with loaded mashed potatoes and a Kentucky Mule made with bourbon at Good Time Charlie's on Broadway.

Good Time Charlie's has been in business since 1979 on Broadway near Mahncke Park.

Beef tenderloin anticuchos, front, are cubes of steak skewered with onions and peppers at Josephine Street, a cafe near the Pearl. The menu also includes chicken-fried steak with cream gravy.

Appetizers include hand-breaded onion rings and spinach-artichoke dip at Josephine Street, a cafe near the Pearl.

Josephine Street opened in 1979 just off Broadway near what is now the Pearl.

The menu at Josephine Street, a cafe near the Pearl in San Antonio, includes (clockwise from left) beef tenderloin anticuchos, a 16-ounce T-bone steak, the El Rey Burger, chicken-fried steak and fried catfish. 

Jack Daniels Pecan Pie can be ordered a la mode at Josephine Street, a cafe near the Pearl.

The bar menu includes a flight of Texas whiskeys at Josephine Street, a cafe near the Pearl.

The El Rey Burger incorporates a beef patty, cheese, jalapeños, rancheros sauce and more at Josephine Street, a cafe near the Pearl. It comes with a side of thinly sliced fried potatoes.

The bar menu includes a bloody mary and beer combo called Batman & Robin and a margarita on the rocks at Josephine Street, a cafe near the Pearl.

Josephine Street opened in 1979 just off Broadway near what is now the Pearl.

Good Time Charlie’s and Josephine Street might be the same restaurant.

Hear me out. Both of these San Antonio institutions started in 1979, the year Pink Floyd released “The Wall.” Both lie just off Broadway north of downtown, less than a mile from each other. Both cultivate a friendly roadhouse vibe where the staff already knows what the regulars want. 

It's a clash of the San Antonio cafe titans: Good Time Charlie's vs. Josephine Street. 

Both talk the Texas diner language of steaks, burgers, fried catfish and chicken-fried steak, with bar menus heavy on whiskey, beer and margaritas. And both have a version of steak con queso.

Josephine Street has popped up the Express-News’ “Top 100 Dining & Drinks” guide as one of the city’s best restaurants, and Good Time Charlie’s won our last Burger Madness tournament.

I like them both, but not the same amount. And it’s time to pick a side, the same way I’ve done with Whataburger vs. Burger Boy, Bill Miller vs. Rudy’s and Fred’s Fish Fry vs. Sea Island Shrimp House.

May the best roadhouse win.

On ExpressNews.com: Whataburger vs. Burger Boy

Good Time Charlie's has been in business since 1979 on Broadway near Mahncke Park.

When Good Time Charlie’s started in 1979, it cultivated more of a full-throttle roadhouse experience, with live music and the rowdiness suited to the neighborhood at the time. Now it’s more like the more sedate bar-and-grill side room of a honky-tonk, with a beat-up tile floor, a utilitarian bar and a Southern-style sunporch that feels like Sunday morning compared to the perpetual neon Friday night of the main dining room.

The food: Chicken-fried steak is the marquee attraction of a place like this, and Good Time Charlie’s pounds it thin, with steak that would be way too tough without a good whacking. But it’s the right texture for a dunk in hot oil with a surround-sound crust that knows when to be fall-apart crunchy and when to hold on for dear life. They finish it with sun-kissed cream gravy, dense mashed potatoes, Texas toast and green beans with bacon, the way our ancestors intended.

A 16-ounce T-bone steak comes with Texas toast and a side such as loaded mashed potatoes at Good Time Charlie's on Broadway.

Sides can make a lot of difference, and a pile of mashed potatoes loaded with bacon, green onions and cheese needed a plate of its own alongside a 16-ounce T-bone steak with the all-over salt-and-pepper sear that comes from a flat top grill, a sear that missed medium-rare on the way to medium-well. 

The grill was kinder to the sirloin cubes that formed the base of steak con queso, leaving them blackened on the outside and rosy on the inside, ready for a drench of straight-up Velveeta-style queso. With a side of sauteed zucchini, it was party food with a more refined attitude. The same sirloin cube treatment worked well for Charlie’s K-Bob, an off-the-skewer rendition of kebabs with caramelized onions and bell peppers.

The menu at Good Time Charlie's on Broadway includes, clockwise from top left, loaded mashed potatoes, chicken-fried steak, a Kentucky Mule, fried catfish and a 16-ounce T-bone steak. 

San Antonio loves a good bean burger, a beef patty slathered with refried beans, salsa and crushed tortilla chips. This wasn’t it. Even with picante sauce and cheese, it was too stiff, too dry and too reserved to live up to the legend.

Good Time Charlie’s bona fide bar-and-grill roots were showing every time they threw something in the fryer. A basket called Nuts, Bolts & Rings laid expert crunchy shag on zucchini, mushrooms and onion rings, and fried catfish lay pearled and fresh under a cornmeal crust, laid out in the shape of a hand ready to throw a high-five.

Barcraft here is pretty basic, with margarita that tasted like a mix and a piña colada that could have come from a shake machine. But I appreciated Charlie’s variety of Moscow mule variations, and it turns out that Rebecca Creek tastes pretty good with ginger ale and lime. They call it a Kentucky Mule.

The atmosphere: Co-owner Millard Stetler said it best in an interview with the Express-News in 2014: “People feel an ownership here, that it's their place. They can come in whether they're headed to the symphony or whether they've been out playing tennis or golf. They're sitting right next to each other, and there's no pretensions here.” That, and waiters who might call you “honey” whether you’re 13 or 93.

The intangibles: Charlie’s could have scored big points with its Tex-Mex sub-menu of nachos and enchiladas, but a plate of cheese enchiladas looked like a science fair experiment gone wrong, a shiny swamp of brown and red that left me to play — and lose — the “find the enchiladas” game.

Where to find them: 2922 Broadway, 210-828-5392, gtcsatx.com

On ExpressNews.com: Bill Miller Bar-B-Q vs. Rudy’s Country Store and Bar-B-Q

Josephine Street opened in 1979 just off Broadway near what is now the Pearl.

When I reviewed Josephine Street in 2018, I was mesmerized by the blue neon glow of the “Steaks” and “Whisky” signs in the front windows of this “low-key joint holding down the corner of Josephine and Broadway since 1979, since before the Pearl, since before the neighborhood grew cool around it.” Nothing has changed. And sometimes nothing is just what you need.

The food: There’s something about a steak cooked on a flat top grill that makes you love it or hate it. I’m in the first camp. It’ll never have the crosshatch or the smoky flavor of a wood grill, but the flat top conveyed a consistent shellac across a 16-ounce T-bone, almost like a glazed doughnut, that left the meat inside the same temperature from tip to top. 

I can’t sing the same praise for chicken-fried steak here, for the same reason CFS loses its way at so many places: the crust outran the meat. Sure, a big chicken-fried steak is a fine plate-hogging spectacle, but when enough of the crust is a hollow bite with no meat inside, all I can think is “all hat and no cattle.”

A 16-ounce T-bone steak comes with an onion ring and a side at Josephine Street, a cafe near the Pearl.

But nevermind all that with Josephine Street’s anticuchos, two skewers of grilled tenderloin cubes alternating with peppers and onions. It’s like a steak dinner on a stick, with a seasoned marinade weaving through the sweet onions, tangy peppers and rich coral-centered beef. Steak con queso delivered the same kind of eye-rolling satisfaction, this time with a tender-cooked ground sirloin patty drenched in queso that didn’t have to be fancy to taste great.

Josephine Street’s side game includes forthright steamed broccoli and decadent fries. They call them fries, but they’re really thin circles of crisp-and-fluffy potato that hit the sweet spot between french fries and potato chips. And here’s the part where I’d talk about the onion rings, so good they throw a ring on most every entree. Except they weren’t so good, rendered an unpleasantly greasy shade of fryer-oil brown with breading as sharp on the inside of the mouth as Cap’n Crunch cereal.

Chopped sirloin can be ordered with queso and a side of broccoli at Josephine Street, a cafe near the Pearl.

While Josephine Street isn’t a burger destination first, the El Rey Burger argued otherwise, a big and juicy argument layered with cheese, jalapeños, ranchero sauce and caramelized tomatoes and onions.

The big wooden bar from Hollywood casting isn’t just for show. Josephine Street doesn’t do anything original with a margarita, but it leans into its Texas heritage with a flight of Texas-made whiskey, served in little glasses that sound good when you tap them on the bar after a shot.

The atmosphere: Business partners Pat Molak and Mary Jane Nalley opened Josephine Street in 1979, inspired by The Hoffbrau, an 88-year-old blue-collar steakhouse on West Sixth Street in Austin. The building has the same shotgun-shack, blockhouse feel, but they’ve built it into something even better, with a saloon vibe that feels both rustic and self-consciously spare and modern at the same time.

The intangibles: The 115-year-old Fincke's Meat Market building leans a little to one side, the wood floors clomp like the set of “Lonesome Dove,” and the anticuchos give you a little taste of Fiesta all year long.

Where to find them: 400 E. Josephine St., 210-224-6169, josephinestreet.com

How does the song go? “Some gotta win, some gotta lose. Good Time Charlie’s got the blues.” While Charlie’s had better onion rings, chicken-fried steak and catfish and drew an even tie for margaritas and steak con queso, Josephine Street edged it out for steaks, burgers, fries, anticuchos and a saloon atmosphere as enduring as the tree trunk running through its heart.

msutter@express-news.net | Twitter: @fedmanwalking | Instagram: @fedmanwalking

Mike Sutter is the Express-News restaurant critic. Before joining the Taste Team in 2016, he served as restaurant critic for the Austin American-Statesman and editor of FedManWalking.com. He's appeared on NPR's "All Things Considered," ABC's "To Tell the Truth" and written for The Guardian, Bon Appetit and The Wall Street Journal.