Where to Drink

Where to drink in Dallas right now: 6 new happy hours and bar specials

Pete's Dueling Piano Bar cocktails in their adorable souvenir tubs.

Pete's Dueling Piano Bar

The month of May has arrived, and when a new month arrives, our thoughts turn inevitably to cocktails. More specifically to CultureMap Dallas' monthly Where to Drink column, which gathers all of the new cocktail menus, drink specials, and happy hours in the Dallas area, in one convenient roundup. The May edition includes a new pop-up, a new patio happy hour, and two new wine deals, one of which requires great sacrifice to achieve.

Here's where to drink in Dallas right now:

Black Agave Cocina y Cantina
Mex-Tex restaurant at Mercer Boardwalk has unveiled a new patio happy hour, with special deals on food and beverages Monday-Friday from 3-7 pm. Snacks include classic queso and elotes on a stick featuring corn slathered in mayo-lime sauce, tres chiles, Cotija cheese, and Chamoy. On the drink side, there are four cocktails for $5 - Paloma, pina tequila sunrise, ranch water, and a pink flamingo - plus an expansive selection of frozen drinks, such as La Frojito with rum, lime, and mint; Havana: a Boozy Berry Shake with vodka, Baileys, and strawberry ice cream; Blue Lagoon with rum, coconut crema, and Curaҫao; Piña Loca with spiced rum, white rum, pineapple, lime, and coconut; and the Arctic Cosmo with vodka, blueberry, pomegranate, and Triple Sec.

Bourbon & Banter
Underground speakeasy in The Statler Dallas has a new menu of cocktails and bar bites, including a drink called the Lizzie with rum, guava, lime, and ginger for $19; and Summer Zen with Aviation Gin, matcha-mint cucumber essence, $19. New dishes include a charcuterie flatbread with prosciutto, tasso ham, salami, kalamata olives, manchego, roasted red peppers, Parmesan-rosemary flatbread, beer mustard; firecracker fried shrimp with spicy comeback dip; and Parmesan skin-on fries, priced from $19 to $22.

The Henry Hamptons
Hip Fox Restaurants concept located at the Union building near Uptown Dallas is famous for doing themed pop-ups on their rooftop bar, and their latest is the Hamptons, a nautical-themed seaside getaway with a skyline view. The menu features coastal bites & sips: pale blue cocktails, fruity cocktails, and a group drink with a blow-up pink flamingo floating on top. Food includes pretzel bites with queso, dumplings, and watermelon wedges. It'll be in place through July 7.

Lounge Here
Favorite bar-restaurant-hangout on Garland Road in East Dallas is throwing an amusing special in May. Every Sunday dinner, they'll give you a free bottle of wine - red, white, bubbly - per table, in exchange for your cell phones. The phones will be held at the host stand, and you'll get them back on your way out. It's not mandatory. You can totally keep your phone and pay for your wine if you want. The deal is good on May 5, 12, 19, and 26, and you can make reservations at www.theloungehere.com.

Pete's Dueling Piano Bar
Entertainment destination known for lively piano shows unveiled a kitschy-fun new drink menu earlier this spring at both its Frisco and Fort Worth locations. It includes 52-ounce Schooner drinks, designed to be shared by up to three people, such as the Lucky Duck, with Truly Mango Pineapple, Blue Curacao, muddled lemons, and lemonade; and The Purp’arazzi with 360 Grape Vodka, blue curacao, grenadine, cranberry juice, and Happy Dad Death Row Grape Seltzer. New martinis come in unique flavors such as Peanut Butter Cup Martini and Caramel Apple 'Tini, while their "Tasty Tub Drinks" feature new cocktails such as Cherry Limeade with Skyy Cherry Vodka, lime juice, sweet & sour, and cherry Sprite, served in a souvenir plastic bathtub for guests to keep. Yes it's more plastic, but it's still adorable.

Thirsty Lion Gastropub
New happy hour menu includes appetizers and drinks starting at $8, including Spicy Fried Chicken Sliders, Pork Carnitas Tacos, and the Spicy Tuna Roll. Beverages include the Lion Lemonade and Three Thieves Wine, both $8 during happy hour, as well as well drinks for $9, and $2 off draft beer, wine, and cocktails. Available at all five DFW locations - The Colony at Grandscape, Preston Hollow, Toyota Music Factory-Irving, Glade Parks in Euless, and Addison in Prestonwood Village - daily from 3-6 pm, and late night from 9 pm until close Thursday-Saturday. Thirsty Lion is also bringing back Wine Wednesday, with half-price on all bottles of wine, all day, every Wednesday.

cocktails happy-hours where to drink

Noodle News

YouTube critic Mike Chen ranks his favorite noodles in Dallas

Pho Pasteur

YouTube food critic Mike Chen, who travels the world spotlighting mostly Asian restaurants for his Strictly Dumpling YouTube channel, recently dropped into Dallas to rank his favorite noodles in town.

Titled "24 Hours Eating The Best NOODLES + DUMPLINGS Around DFW," the video follows Chen as he visits five restaurants, ordering noodles and dumplings at his favorite places as well as new discoveries.

The visit marked a return to DFW for Chen, who briefly resided in North Texas in 2021 and who has previously posted videos covering ramen, Vietnamese food, sushi, and barbecue.

Here's where he ate:

Chef Sun's Noodle and Dumpling
The video starts out with him noting that "there's a lot of new noodle places around the Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Frisco area," before entering Chef Sun's Noodle and Dumpling, a Chinese Halal restaurant that makes its own noodles, with locations in Plano and McKinney (which CultureMap covered in May — do you think he saw our story?!).

He raves over the extensive menu, featuring not only noodles but "a bunch of dumplings" and many other options like walnut shrimp and mapo tofu.

He also raves over the price. "Wow — $10 for Biangbiang noodles" [a dish featuring flat noodles with minced garlic, green onion, chili powder] — "only in Texas," he says.

He orders the Big Plate chicken, like a chicken stew with flat noodles, chunks of soft potato, carrots, yellow onion, green onion, bell pepper, and cilantro; as well as a variety of dumplings, including beef, pork, chicken & corn, veggie, and soup dumplings, heaping praise on their light chewy wrapper.

"My philosophy is always, eat the worst first and save the best for last, so let's start with the veggie dumplings," he said.

Pho Pasteur
On Day 2, he goes to Pho Pasteur, a longtime highly acclaimed family-owned chain with locations in Richardson, Arlington, and Carrollton, the location he visits.

"I've been thinking about this place for a long long time," he says. "I remember when I was living here, this was one of my favorites."

He orders pho with fatty brisket — "because here in Texas, whenever you see brisket, you get the brisket," he says.

After taking a sip of the broth, he proclaims, "This is the stuff — I've always said that this place has one of the best, if not THE best broth in America, with such a concentrated beefy flavor, and it's got so much depth."

"This might be one of my most-missed food items after I left Dallas," he says.

z.TAO Marketplace
His next destination is the z.TAO Marketplace, an Asian grocery store and food court in Plano which oddly has not updated its social media presence since 2020. He oohs and aahs over the supermarket's bounty including the many different Asian flavors of Pepsi, Coca Cola, and Fanta, then orders a bowl of hulatang, a traditional thick Northern Chinese soup, hand-pulled dan dan noodles, and a sandwich with chopped pork.

Moriya Shokudo Ramen & Curry
He also visits Moriya Shokudo, which started out in a food court in Koreatown before opening a stand-alone restaurant in Richardson in 2024, and which has won local awards for its ramen and curry.

He orders the garlic ramen and marvels at its garlicky-ness, with a black garlic-flavored tonkotsu broth along with roasted whole garlic cloves.

"This is a really intensely garlicky bowl — to call it intense would be an understatement," he says. "I would say this is a must-try."

Pho Big Bowl
His last place is Pho Big Bowl, a Vietnamese restaurant which started out in Watauga before opening a location in Carrollton in 2022.

He likes the lightness and yet potent beefy flavor of the broth. "I feel like when I'm here in Texas, I don't add nearly as much sriracha as I would at places in New York or Seattle," he says.

"I am really jealous of all the good pho places you have here in the Dallas area," he says. "I feel like, of all the cities in Texas, this area has the best pho, hands down."

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