New Uptown Bar
Popular Uptown Dallas hang makes way for meet-up friendly new bar
After two years in the Uptown Dallas jungle, the end has come for Boxwood T&G, the bar that some will recall as the former TABC space. But an even better new bar will rise in its wake: City Council, so named for its ambition to be a meeting-friendly place.
Owner-manager J.R. Reyna is an experienced F&B industry hand whose resume includes the W Hotel, Del Frisco's Grille, and The Dram, where he worked with owner Tommy DeAlano, who was an owner of Boxwood T&G.
Reyna was itching to do a place he could call his own.
"A friend and I had been looking for the right situation and the right location," Reyna says. "With things so hot right now in Dallas, it's harder than you'd think. Spaces don't come up that often."
The name might be hard to google, but it reflects Reyna's goal of bringing people together.
"City Council was my idea that I wanted it to be a meeting place, a place you could hold meetings," he says. "A place where you can meet coworkers or other people. That's what I envisioned when I thought of that name. And then coming into election year, there are a lot of ways we can play on that."
Our review of Boxwood called it "grown up," but it also felt a little neglected. Reyna's aspirations are to revive the spirit of its previous occupant, the popular TABC.
"One of the main things about that spot is we feel like it should be a neighborhood bar," he says. "We want to take care of the people in State Thomas. I feel like that's one of the things TABC did well, and we want to bring that back, the love people had for TABC when it was there."
One of the spot's main assets is its patio, an award-winning stunner with a tree sprouting in the middle, which provides shade for the flirting singles who pack the place, no matter what it's called. Reyna is working with designer Christie L. Smith to enhance that asset and further update the space.
For eats, he's envisioning something not like the usual bar menu, and has recruited everyone's favorite consulting chef, Rodman Shields.
"We're still working on it, but we'd like to do a little healthier menu, different from what you usually get at a bar," he says. "If you're in that area, you see people working out, jogging, and Yoga City is two blocks away. They eat healthy, and then drink on the weekends. We have some ideas about what they'd like."
