Looking at the colorful, whimsical dishes surrounded by the bright, Instagram-worthy atmosphere of Box St. All Day, you probably would not guess that Edward Garcia III first heard his calling to cook in a U.S. Marine Corps firehouse. “I really started cooking for other people,” he says. “I was like, ‘This is pretty cool. This is fun!’”
The young chef had already spent time in restaurants before enlisting, working front-of-house jobs as a teenager. But when his four-year stint as a Marine firefighter approached its end, Garcia was weighing whether to reenlist, pursue firefighting as a civilian, or find another path, perhaps as a police officer or teacher. As he pondered one day in the firehouse television room, he saw a commercial for culinary school and wrote down the number.
The transition was jarring, to say the least. Within days of leaving the Marines in Arizona, Garcia was in Austin, starting classes at Le Cordon Bleu School of Culinary Arts. The military had given him structure and discipline; culinary school introduced a different kind of culture and drive. But the hospitality industry already felt familiar to Garcia, and he began building the back-of-house experience that would set him up for later success.
He once applied for a prep or line-cook job at Whole Foods but was offered a dishwasher position. Garcia took it without hesitation, promising the hiring chef that he would become “the best damn dishwasher” he ever had. That willingness to start wherever the work started became part of Garcia’s education. So did his mentors, managers, and chefs he admired not just for their cooking, but for their ability to lead a room, run a kitchen, and create hospitality.
Garcia later became fascinated by Nuevo Latino food after returning to Arizona, and discovered chef Rene Fernandez’s Azúca in San Antonio’s Southtown neighborhood while researching the cuisine. When Garcia called about work, Fernandez told him to stop by the next time he was in the Alamo City. Garcia didn’t wait for another reason; he made the drive back to Texas as soon as he could.
Around that time, Garcia recalls being enamored with fine dining and technically ambitious molecular gastronomy. But then, during a meal while backpacking through Europe, his philosophy changed forever. One night, he and his brother walked into a tiny restaurant down an alley and ate a modest bowl of seafood and clams with bread. Garcia may not remember the restaurant’s name, but he remembers what the meal taught him: “Simplicity just changes everything.” He returned home reconsidering the urge to make food overly elaborate. His approach became simpler: allow ingredients to speak, make food recognizable, and resist the temptation to become “too chefy.”
His tenacity and simplified philosophy became crucial when Garcia and business partner Daniel Treviño launched The Box St. Social food truck in 2015. The truck gained a following, but Garcia remembers the experience less romantically than customers might imagine. The food truck eventually grew into Box St. All Day, with its first brick-and-mortar location opening at San Antonio’s Hemisfair in 2021, followed by locations at La Cantera and on the Far West Side. Even after serving in Iraq and as a firefighter, he calls running the food truck one of the hardest things he has ever done. “You couldn’t pay me to do that again,” he says, laughing. “But I loved it.”
Today, Garcia spends less time cooking on the line. As Box St. has expanded, his creative work increasingly involves concept, operations, systems, and developing the people around him. He still guides menus and culinary direction, but he wants kitchen managers and chefs to offer ideas and feel a sense of ownership over what they create. “Everybody wants to be a part of something,” he notes. So for Garcia, leadership means building the next generation of leaders rather than protecting his own territory. The objective is not proving that the chef was right, he says, but “the goal is to keep people coming back.”
He applies his humble, service-oriented philosophy toward cooking outside the kitchen too. Garcia says he wants guests leaving Box St. to feel like they’re on vacation, a temporary escape that makes a glass of wine taste better simply because of where you are drinking it. “It’s the environment,” he says, “the whole feeling of everything.”
The personal and professional growth has taken Box St. well past the food truck Garcia once parked outside his house. Yet when he talks about the future, his ambitions sound less like empire-building than an extension of why he began cooking in the first place: serving. Garcia imagines living near a beach, perhaps running a hostel where he can cook barefoot for travelers. He jokes about wanting his own Dairy Queen so he can throw late-night ice cream parties. The details may change. The impulse does not.
Reflecting on the careers he considered—Marine, firefighter, police officer, teacher—he sees a common thread: he wanted to help people. Cooking, then, became his chosen way of doing it. Birthdays, weddings, celebrations, and even funerals eventually gather people around something to eat. Garcia knows guests may not remember every dish or even exactly what the room looked like, but he hopes the restaurant became part of a moment that mattered. “If I could be part of that,” he says, “I want to have at least that chance to make your day better.”
“Everybody wants to be a part of something… If I could be part of that, I want to at least have that chance to make your day better.”
Box St. All Day
What began as a food truck now has three Box St. locations across San Antonio. The original brick-and-mortar sits at Hemisfair, looking toward Civic Park near Yanaguana Garden. For Boerne-area residents, La Cantera Heights is a convenient spot. The newest location, The Portico at Shaenfield Ranch Center, brings the concept to the Far West Side near Alamo Ranch.
All three serve Box St.’s American-eclectic brunch and lunch favorites, specialty coffee, and cocktails daily from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
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