Bar news
Legendary Dallas cocktail bar Black Swan Saloon to reopen near downtown
Black Swan Saloon
One of Dallas' most legendary bars is back: Black Swan Saloon, an epic cocktail bar that lived in Deep Ellum for a decade, is reopening in a former coffee shop near downtown Dallas.
The bar will re-open at 1623 Hall St. #101, in the space previously occupied by Fiction Coffee, from a team that includes founder Gabe Sanchez and Ryan Payne, who together own the bar Saint Valentine, along with partners Brian Rutt (Alice, Columbian Country Club) & Pasha Heidari (St. Martin’s, Bowen House, Mike’s Gemini). That is a big team.
Sanchez first opened Black Swan in Deep Ellum in 2010, where it earned great acclaim in no small part for its combination of high-end craft cocktails in a borderine dive-bar setting. It also launched Sanchez as one of the city's most popular and celebrated bartenders.
He and the bar won dozens of awards and accolades and were repeat nominees for Best Bar and Best Bartender in CultureMap's annual Tastemaker Awards, which he always seemed to win, no matter what the competition.
It closed as a casualty of the pandemic; as a bar only, without food, it closed initially as part of the March 2020 lockdown, before Sanchez pulled the plug in November 2020.
According to a release, its revival was sparked by a passing comment during a conversation among friends.
“Brian asked if I would ever do it again – and I thought he was joking,” Sanchez says. “Then he showed us the space next to Alice, and it’s almost exactly like the old one. I realized he was serious. He mentioned he spoke to Pasha, and I said ‘Sure.’ It was as easy as that.”
The reborn cocktail den will be located next to the Asian-inspired restaurant Alice and is set to open in the next couple of weeks.
Fans of Black Swan can anticipate small booths to go along with the spot’s previous mainstays of dim lighting, art-lined walls and the trademark velvet Clint Eastwood painting behind the bar.
One new addition: Black Swan will feature an abbreviated food menu, with Monday nights featuring Pacific Island classics prepared by Alice’s Guam-born, Filipino chef Randall Braud. Diners can expect mixed plates featuring chicken adobo and Chamorro red rice with finadene.
Cocktails, starting at $13, will once again be at the center of Black Swan’s offerings. Local beers, along with a selection of wines, comprising the bar’s offerings, operating nightly each Wednesday through Monday from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. The bar will stay dark on Tuesdays.
The goal of the return, Sanchez says, is for Black Swan’s initial ethos to remain unchanged.
“I’ll tell the Clint Eastwood painting story maybe a couple of times the first week – then probably take a break from it for a long while,” Sanchez says. “It is a good story, though."
