The 89 Greatest Texas Bars
A guide without ferns (well, almost).
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The Valley
Resaca Club, Fort Brown Hotel, 1900 E. Elizabeth, Brownsville. This hotel bar sits right on one of Brownsville’s famous resacas, and the effect is so pleasant that I don’t mind the windows. The margaritas are nearly as good as the Esquire’s in San Antonio, and there are numerous old guys at the bar—always a good sign.
Blanca White’s Matamoros Long Bar, 49 Alvarado Obregon, Matamoros. A survivor among the border bars’ dwindling lot. The Long Bar is just that: a huge bar surrounded by two seating areas. Decor is early cantina tacky. You’ll see your tourists in here but also locals from both sides of the border.
Austin Street Inn, 1110 Austin, McAllen. The equivalent of Cooper’s Alley in Corpus, a ferny pubby joint. Ditto for McAllen’s Quorum, which has the appearance of a singles bar but is dark enough to be a bar bar.
Lobby Bar, La Posada Motor Hotel, 100 N. Main, McAllen. Regular hangout for business types; unpretentious hotel bar.
The Veranda, 2300 Padre Boulevard, South Padre Island. Has a big-screen TV, and the night I was there the bunch at the bar was having a spirited argument about the rules to liar’s poker.
The Pirate’s Castle, 5401 Padre Boulevard, South Padre Island. What a find! The place is designed like a miniature castle, and the help wear little pirate costumes. Lots of unidentifiable pirate-looking crapola behind the bar. I heard some terrific, sorrowful holding forth here about the state of the border economy. The bathroom euphemisms were the best I saw anywhere: Pirates and Wenches. It’s a silly, tacky theme bar, but it manages to be the real thing by virtue of its island regulars. Put it this way: if there’s a lady drinking tequila and dancing the two-step by herself when you walk in, it’s a bar bar.
Louie’s Backyard, 2205 Ling, South Padre Island. As does the Resaca Club over in Brownsville, this joint gets by with windows because it’s right on the Laguna Madre. It also has the stoutest drinks on the island and the only acceptable munchies I encountered: simple crackers and cheese. My visit was marred by some pretty obnoxious live entertainment. A guy sang “Song Sung Blue,” “Moonshadow,” and then Jackson Browne’s “The Pretender” all in the same key and all in precisely the same rhythm.
Midland-Odessa
007 Room, 110 N. Big Spring. Best real bar bar that I found outside my own joints in Dallas. In Midland? You bet. Dingy little spot with several great crapola touches, like the huge fake scallop shell around the pay phone, and one of the better behind-the-bar sign combos I ran across: “This Is a Reputable Establishment. Try to Act Like It” and then next to that “F—— Communism.” A great lady bartender was presiding over a particularly fine assortment of bar barflies, including this one fellow who seemed to be on the last leg of a transcontinental drunk. I forget his name even though he introduced himself to me approximately 78 times. He wasn’t just crying drunk, he was kissing drunk. In the midst of his forty-sixth or forty-seventh introduction, he planted a big wet one on top of my head. In that noble bar bar tradition, I took no offense. The bartender stopped serving him though and sent him home with a friend. The holding forth was top quality too. “You know,” mumbled one regular, “this bar’ll be here long after we’re all dead and gone. A sobering thought, huh?” If all that doesn’t convince you, then get this. When I tried to leave, the guy next to me told me I wasn’t going anywhere and bought me another one.
Discovery, Hilton Hotel, Lorraine at Wall. I’m not sure it’s that, but this modest joint at the downtown Hilton is a creditable hotel bar. An English bartender and a darkest-bar honorable mention.
The Bar, 606 W. Missouri. Slips in on name alone, even though I spotted a few too many ferns. Downtown joint with heavy-duty TV sports crowd. I overheard a young guy in a gray suit making the call home using an interesting variation of the lie. He told her he’d be home soon, but first he had to drop off his friend Wayne because he was too drunk to drive.
Wall Street Bar and Grill, 115 E. Wall. Has symptoms of the New Orleans oyster bar trend, but its solid hard-drinking regulars of the white-collar variety save it.
Montana Mining Company, 1 Oak Ridge Square. This is part of that awful steak-and-salad-bar chain, but in Midland its lounge is okay. An old cowboy next to me was a barfly supreme: he drank bourbon straight up at three-thirty in the afternoon.
Picasso’s, 220 N. Grandview, Odessa. A safe joint in Odessa? I think so, but I can’t tell you for sure because I went in the daytime. I was willing to make a lot of sacrifices in my quest for bar bars, but going to an Odessa bar at night wasn’t one of them. Occasionally has live entertainment and other no-noes, but it’s a solid little place with good stiff drinks.
El Paso
Moriarty’s Bar & Grill, 500 N. Kansas. Most authentic pub I ran across. An exceptional bar sign here: “People who think they know everything are particularly aggravating to those of us who do.” A couple of pool tables, a small grill across the room from the bar, those fine old chrome-and-vinyl barstools, and that seldom-seen bar tradition, a regular who just stands in the middle of the room by himself and looks around. He wasn’t at the bar, he wasn’t near a table, he was just smack in the middle of the room. When he’d finish a drink, he’d signal to the barmaid and she’d deliver a fresh one at his outpost.
Jaxon’s, 508 N. Stanton. A downtown spot along the Santa Fe—chic lines, but it’s not overdone. Good stout drinks are served in huge lowballs—a rare touch.
Kentucky Club, Avenida Juárez 629 Norte, Juárez. Still the best in this shell-shocked border town, it’s my favorite border bar of all because local drinkers, not tourists, hold sway here. Serves a lip-smacking version of that oft-abused libation, the Tequila Sunrise. Genuine saloon trappings and marvelously tacky mural. As you might expect, it sets the record for parking-lot beggars.
Pine Knot Jr., 2224 E. Yarnell. Hole-in-the-wall beer bar; one that serves only Old Milwaukee and Bud on tap has got to be the real thing. Regulars are old blue-collar types with hands that look like heavy drilling equipment and with seemingly endless capacities for beer. Fairly interesting holding forth here by an old guy on Vietnamese refugees. “Those people’ll work anytime, anywhere, any hours. Never seen anything like it.”
Central Cafe, 109 N. Oregon. Slick, New York-style lounge that must be in the running for stiffest drinks in the state. I knew it was right when the bartender answered the phone, turned to the guy next to me, and said, “Are you here?”
Graham’s Corner, 5959 N. Mesa. Shopping center bar with friendly bartenders, good jukebox, and some old-lady regulars.
Amarillo
The Rugger Pub, Steak and Ale Restaurant, Interstate 40 at Paramount. Yeah, I know, but this is Amarillo, remember? Watering hole for lawyers, pols, and others who still mourn the loss of Lucy’s and Rhett’s. Nothing special, but the drinking is serious, and I was the only stranger in the crowd.
The Mad Hatter, 2600 Paramount. Alternative bar for serious Amarillo drinkers. Remindful of the Point After in Dallas: dark, cool, with a depth charge in every drink. Located in a strip shopping center near Interstate 40, it had to overcome a lot to reach bar bar status, but it’s made it.
Sipango Club, Interstate 40 at Western. Amarillo’s only real bar for years, this is easily the best motel bar I visited, a distinction owed in no small part to its location in a Howard Johnson’s. It’s a bit shopworn, and the blaring C & W music gets old, but the place adds a new dimension to the term “dark.” Neat cowgirl bartender knows her sign language. I ordered a second one merely by catching her eye and raising my eyebrows; she wordlessly and efficiently mixed another vodka tonic and took two bucks out of my change on the bar. At the Canyon Club at the other Howard Johnson’s, on Interstate 40 at Grand, things are pretty much the same.
The Office Lounge, 506 W. Sixteenth. Old Amarillo beer bar with blue-collar clientele. One fellow was just starting into the final descent of a transcontinental. “I know I’m a drunk,” he kept saying, “but I’m an honest person.” That’s world-class holding forth, as was the subsequent session of trying to guess one another’s age, a favored bar pastime.
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