RESTAURANT NEWS | TEXAS
Alex Paredes Gets Back to Seafood at El Fish Demon
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By Rebecca Thompson
6:25 a.m. CT, June 24, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Rebecca Thompson has held many jobs over the years, from newspaper writer to middle-school teacher. As a restaurant critic, she’s reviewed Michelin-starred fine-dining to gas station barbecue.
San Antonio chef Alex Paredes has always seemed most comfortable when the idea is sharp enough to explain in one ingredient.
At Carnitas Lonja, that meant pork. At Fish Lonja, it meant seafood. Now, at El Fish Demon, Paredes is back in that second lane, working through Gulf catch, ceviche, aguachile, tostadas, and fish tacos in San Antonio’s Deco District.
The restaurant takes the place of Tacopolis, the barbacoa-and-birria restaurant Paredes ran in the Deco District. Medical issues affected the restaurant’s hours, and rising meat prices made the format harder to sustain. So the pivot toward seafood is less a rebrand and more a practical decision from a chef who has never needed much ornament around a good idea.
Paredes earned a James Beard Award semifinalist nod for Best Chef: Texas in 2020, back when Carnitas Lonja had turned a modest South Side restaurant into one of San Antonio’s great food obsessions. Fish Lonja later proved the point could move from pork to the coast. In 2021, The New York Times named it one of the 50 restaurants in America it was most excited about. Texans agreed.
El Fish Demon picks that thread back up in a different neighborhood. The menu leans into fresh Gulf seafood and the bright, acid-driven side of Mexican coastal cooking: ceviches, aguachiles, tostadas, and fish tacos rather than the heavier pleasures of Tacopolis.
There’s a useful kind of clarity in that. Paredes’ restaurants work because they don’t try to be everything at once. El Fish Demon knows what it is: a seafood counter from a chef who has already shown San Antonio how much can happen when a small restaurant keeps its focus.
This is all part of a taco trend I’m always happy to find now: the place that goes narrow and then goes deep. Birria-Landia built a following in Queens by staying close to birria tacos and consomé. Sonoratown in Los Angeles made people care deeply about Sonoran flour tortillas and mesquite-grilled beef. Paredes did it in San Antonio with Carnitas Lonja, where the point was pork and not much needed to get in the way. El Fish Demon belongs to that same school, which is probably why it’s so promising. Give me a small restaurant that knows exactly what it wants to be, and I’m already halfway there.
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