The 89 Greatest Texas Bars
A guide without ferns (well, almost).
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Piggy’s Bar & Grill, 310 Congress. Jazz bar, I know. But what a fine one. Good music, tastefully appointed deco decor, drinks that’ll make your face shrivel up like a dried coconut after the first sip. Great late-night bar.
Central Texas
Ray’s Place, 1308 Chestnut, Bastrop. Worthy of mention because it is a classic of the Central Texas bait ‘n’ beer joints that kept an awful lot of barflies happy long before the Baptists let us have liquor by the drink. Key features are live bait, a terrific Formica-topped bar, and a rubber machine that dispenses Funny Fannie’s Dirty Dozen.
The Past Time Club, 200 block of W. Travis, La Grange. No, not that. This is an old courthouse-square bar, with the obligatory grandmotherly bartendress and a group of domino junkies for regulars. This name is appropriate. How old were they? So old that they were all drinking coffee. But they were there, and that’s what a bar bar is all about.
New Ulm Tavern, Taylor Street, New Ulm. This place has great matchbooks—the late-fifties kind with the Playboy-style photos on one side—and five beer clocks. As in all good bars, each clock shows a different time.
Knebel’s Tavern, 102 Pecan, Pflugerville. Sells beer, barbecue, and nail clippers. Also has two first-rate bar regulars: one, a half-dwarf with a Snoopy-type hat on; the other, a grizzly of a fellow whose head looks like it was shot with some kind of German steroids. Mr. Knebel behind the bar is a real charmer, as are the ice-cold beer and barbecue.
The Speedway Inn, Interstate 35, Jarrell. Between Georgetown and Temple, right on the access road, the best highway bar I visited. Other contestants welcome. Seedy shotgun-shack of a place, with four guys playing dominoes, a rest room that doesn’t really work, and an evocative behind-the-bar sign: “Come to the Taylor Fire Department Four-Wheel Drive Mud-Run.” If that doesn’t do it, how ‘bout 60-cent beer? Anyone who’s into highway bars should try the Shadowland, at the West exit off IH 35, too.
Bruno’s Curve, Texas Highway 87, Comfort. So named because it sits squarely on the curve out of town. Hill Country beer bar: dominoes, pool, and…a Pac-Man machine? Well, you can’t fight progress.
Arkey Blue’s Silver Dollar, 308 Main, Bandera. Name alone scores points here. Sawdust and shit-kicker honky-tonk. Lamp shades with elaborate Western scenes. Pool table. Arkey Blue is a semifamous musician in these parts. You can get a lot of Arkey souvenirs here, as well as a book called Up and Down With Elvis Presley, and pizza.
Bill’s Ice House, 528 W. Main, Fredericksburg. This classic of the small-town Hill Country icehouse genre closed its doors in March—gone but not forgotten. It had beer, junk food, ammo, bait, a lounge, and—to the very end—block ice.
Gallery Restaurant and Bar, 230 E. Main, Fredericksburg. Gets high rating for looks alone. Long antique affair lined with tables and booths. What whiskey drinkers there are in this area drink here. Period.
Sunday House Lounge, Best Western Sunday House Motel, 501 E. Main, Fredericksburg. Don’t scoff at motel bars. In places like Abilene and Amarillo, a motel can be an oasis in a Bennigan’s-and-beer-joints desert. Regulars here were playing liar’s poker as the evening passed on.
San Antonio
The Esquire, 153 E. Commerce. Best-looking bar bar in Texas. A musty, amber-shaded saloon with the longest stand-up bar this side of the Long Branch, high Victorian ceilings, and a row of old wooden booths. Regulars tend to be your elderly Mexican Americans, though at cocktail hour on a weekday you begin to see some suits and ties. A small patio overlooks the San Antonio River. The margaritas are hand-shaken and even better than those in the border towns.
The 5050, 5050 Broadway. From the folks who brought you the Stoneleigh P and the Greenville Bar & Grill in Dallas. This soda fountain bar doubles as a lunch spot, but there’s more soul here than you usually find in such places. It serves a terrific Bloody Mary and has the definitive neon sign—a simple old-fashioned treatment of “Tap Room.” Regulars tend to be young professionals and Alamo Heights hanger-outers, but in San Antonio this is the emerging bar.
The Beauregard, 320 Beauregard. This King William-area pub along the trendy nouveau deco line serves as watering hole for serious downtown drinkers who eschew the hotel bars along the river. Best features are the genuine deco meat locker and the beer garden, which works because it’s right on the street.
Little Hipp’s, 1423 McCullough. An irrepressibly funky beer joint that serves folk from the nearby Santa Rosa Medical Center. The exterior is orange prefab aluminum. The interior includes a spectacularly odd selection of bar crapola: a live Amazon turtle, numerous old four-color photos of food, and beach balls suspended from the ceiling in fishnet. Runs a close second to Kay’s in Houston as best beer bar.
Gomez Ice House, 8223 Broadway. Sells beer and ice and cuts keys. Need to know anything else? Sits amid a clutter of new office buildings on Broadway near Loop 410, a testament to its true bar bar heart.
The Navy Club, 123 E. Travis. A downtown spot known for years as a hangout for off-duty cops, the Navy Room retains its private club status, which is kind of quaint. You can get a membership card if you even look like you might buy a second drink.
Menger Bar, Menger Hotel, 204 Crockett. It may look like a tourist trap, but this is the place where Teddy Roosevelt tied ‘em on. A coterie of downtown regulars sip here amid the finely restored paneling and the wooden booths. If the lights were dimmed and the service improved, it might be my favorite downtown spot in San Antonio.
Corpus Christi
Elizabeth’s Cocktails, 902 N. Chaparral. Great old seamen’s bar downtown, with assorted other types, like journalists, thrown in. The place is only slightly larger than the pool table that dominates as you enter, but there’s a cozy stand-up bar. I knew it was a bar bar when Elizabeth, a sweet-faced bird of a woman, shushed some rowdy drinkers much more efficiently than any bouncer could have. Another keen feature is the glorious old rubber machine in the men’s room, selling something called the Cutie Nudie Puzzle, and its sign warning, “French Ticklers Sold as Novelty Items Only.”
Cooper’s Alley, 15 Gaslight Square. In Dallas or Houston this would be just another fern ‘n’ froufrou bar. But this is Corpus and despite all the brass and old railroad ties and piña coladas and lip gloss, it’s the bar for the young and upwardly mobile. Catch it at cocktail hour but don’t stay too long, because later the loudest in Texas cranks up. Watch out for the parking-lot beggar.
La Cantina, La Quinta Royale Hotel, 601 N. Water. The best of a meager lot among the hotel bars near the water. A walk-in closet of a place, but it had a great bunch of regulars at lunch the day I visited, and the lady bartender mixed the only legitimate (made from scratch) Bloody Mary I drank in my travels.
Cantina Santa Fe, 1011 Santa Fe. A Taos-style fern bar, but I could see being reasonably comfy here at cocktail hour. Worth noting if only for the niftiest rest-room gimmick I came across: a large wall unit that dispensed Brut, Aramis, or Musk Oil for a quarter.
Rod ‘n’ Gun Cocktail Lounge, 821 Tarpon, Port Aransas. Hard-core islander bar, with a great wall mural and the stoutest drinks in town. Nice behind-the-bar sign here: “Give credit to those over 80 only if accompanied by their parents.” Shorty’s Place right next door is an Aransas hangout of some renown. No question about it. Shorty’s has loyal regulars. When I glanced in, one of them looked up at me and then reached over and slammed the door. Whoever you were, I understand the feeling.
The Gaff, 409 S. Allister. Heavy-duty beer bar of the sort that silences instantly when a stranger walks in. It had the best bar TV I saw—a 1955 Truetone that was about the size of a Buick—and one of the better collections of behind-the-bar humor—”If you’re in the doghouse, you’re welcome here” and “Fishermen, hunters and other liars welcome here.” This was the only joint I found that had a six-legged barfly, a pesky critter about the size of the Truetone TV.
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