A long-cherished Uptown Dallas bar is getting a revival from a legendary mixologist: Thomas Avenue Beverage Company, once a quintessential Uptown bar at 2901 Thomas Ave., will open in mid-December under the reins of Eddie "Lucky" Campbell, the mixology master and Uptown bar veteran.
Campbell already owns two other successful bars in Uptown: The Standard Pour, the nostalgic upscale lounge; and Parliament, the cozy neighborhood bar with a hyper-focus on craft cocktails.
TABC will be an upscale neighborhood tavern that combines elements of its siblings: sophisticated yet casual, nice but not pretentious.
"We don't build bars for 21-year-olds," Campbell says. "Uptown is a young neighborhood, but I feel like we need more options for residents in the area. I want to provide a place for people who get excited about a Baby Amarone and not a fake ID."
FYI, Baby Amarone is a fancy wine.
"At Parliament, we have a small, upscale cocktail lounge, and The Standard Pour is our craft neighborhood tavern," Campbell says. "We were hoping to do something that combined elements of both — the lounge feel of Parliament with the neighborhood personality of The Standard Pour — a cocktail bar with great food."
TABC first opened in 1995 and quickly became a mainstay, drawing post-college YPs to the then-gentrifying neighborhood and helping establish Uptown as a nightlife destination. It changed hands before closing in 2013. Other operators came and went, with mixed results.
The space came with a history that Campbell and his partners could not resist.
"In the history of Uptown Dallas bars, you have two legends: The Loon and TABC," he says. "When we decided to open in this location and were thinking about a name, everyone would say, 'Do you mean the old TABC location?' and after a couple weeks, we said, why are we fighting this, TABC has to be the name."
Alas, there wasn't much about the space itself worth keeping, beyond the tin ceiling. In 2013, CultureMap's then-bar columnist called it a "chaotic dump," and the 2,500-square-foot space required a comprehensive renovation.
"It's a 100-year-old building," Campbell says. "At one time, it was an Italian-American grocery store in a then-African American community. We found an Italian flag buried behind a wall. We knew it needed a lot of TLC, but it felt so perfect and right at home for us, and we fixed every single thing that could be fixed."
That included brand new floors and installing "the nicest kitchen I've ever had anything to do with," he says. The interior design combines old Hollywood glamour with mid-century modern aesthetics, including a stunning mahogany bar and oxblood booths.
The space comes with a 2,000-square-foot backyard outdoor patio, and they rebuilt the deck, installed gas firepits — not propane tanks — with private seating areas, a Bose sound system under the deck, phone chargers, and cool table lights with an amber glow.
"It's every improvement I've ever wanted to make in a bar," Campbell says.
Food
The chef is Nathan Edwards, who has worked with Matt Balke, Tim Byres, and Peja Krstic. The menu will include shared plates, panini, flatbreads, and salads — based on their experience in the neighborhood and knowing what people want, Edwards says.
There'll be pulled pork sliders, a cute shared dish called "queso & friends" with black bean dip and salsa, and a whipped hummus with vegetable crudites. There'll be fried artichoke hearts with lemon tarragon, shrimp fondue, a tomato caprese panini, and a fancy Cuban. There'll be build your own flatbreads, made in stone hearth pizza oven, plus five entees including shrimp & sausage bucatini, spinach & poblano chicken alfredo, and steak frites.
Beverages
There'll be craft cocktails, beer, and wine, and for the first time at a Lucky-owned bar, there'll be seltzers. There'll be nine wines by the glass, and nine cocktails including the TABC 75 with thyme, apple bergamot, and champagne; a karma charmeleon with lime, cucumber, thyme, ginger, and green melon; a seasonal ranch water; and a cheeky homage to a signature Dallas cocktail.
"What is Dallas' most famous drink?" Campbell asks. "The Mambo Taxi at Mi Cocina. So we're doing our spin, called the morenge rideshare — a frozen fresh margarita topped with black cherry."
Because it's Lucky, he's unleashing a new twist on an old-fashioned. Get ready for a very technical explanation.
"It's called the Buttered Apple Old-Fashioned, flavored with baking spices," he says. "It involves a process called fat-washing, and there've been fights over who invented it, but you drop fat rendered from cooking bacon, or in our case butter, that's flavored with spices in liquid form and whisk it around. You do that for a day, maybe a couple days. You put it in the freezer and the fat freezes, so that anything biological is gone. The fat gets rendered but the flavor remains, and it gives the drink a viscosity that makes it richer."
They're planning a grand opening with big fanfare on December 12. Lucky likes the 12-12 synchronicity.
