Don’t miss: If you want something original, try the Ticking Boxes: Riesling, vodka, spiced guava shrub, lime, and tonic, unexpected and improbably cohesive, or simply tell the bartender what you’re in the mood for. They’ll build something around it.
Photo courtesy Four Seasons Hotel
Bandista
Four Seasons Hotel Houston, 1300 Lamar St, Houston
@bandistahouston
A hotel concierge meets you in the Four Seasons lobby, escorts you through the kitchen via a service elevator, and leads you to a shelf of menus. Take your book, enter a code on a keypad, and push the bookcase open. Behind it: twenty seats across a bar and lounge clad in silver oak, with an onyx back bar, hand-stitched blue leather trim, and more than 200 spirits glowing under custom mushroom lights. The concept draws from the tequileros—Prohibition-era smugglers who transported agave spirits illegally across the US-Mexico border—and the spirit selection runs accordingly: tequila, mezcal, sotol, bacanora, raicilla. Every cocktail has a presentation story. A Ranch Water arrives with a Collins cube imprinted with an agave field; a Bermuda Triangle-inspired drink comes with an airline coaster and wings; a Polaroid camera appears for the Almost Famous mezcal cocktail to capture the moment. Keep in mind that reservations are required; 90-minute seatings, Wednesday through Saturday.
Don’t miss: The Ménage à Trois—Cognac fat-washed with cacao butter, topped with liquid nitrogen ice cream made tableside, and fogged with a spritz of Krigler perfume—is $68 and absolutely ridiculous in the best possible way.
Two Headed Dog
3100 Fannin St., Houston
@twoheadeddogtx
Award-winning bartenders Lindsay Rae and Billy Boyd built their bar the way they wanted to drink: no egos, no attitude, no bad music, and something for everyone from the Oaxacan Old Fashioned folks to the Lone Star-and-shot crowd. The white brick exterior gives way to a honky-tonk interior with tables fashioned from salvaged shiplap, penny-tiled bathroom floors—a 36-to-48-hour DIY labor of love—and a bar Boyd built himself and. The real draw is the 12,000-square-foot patio, one of the city’s best, which fills up on nights when the playlist drifts from Charley Crockett to Lizzo to the kind of New York hip hop that makes Boyd secretly dance at the register. The cocktail list bridges craft and dive beautifully: frozen slushies, draft cocktails, a rotating cast of bottled specials, and power hour deals (5–6pm). The Guava Slayer—guava nectar, mezcal, passionfruit liqueur, cinnamon, and house-made orgeat—is dangerously drinkable, and the Boot Knife, a Bloody Mary served in a glass boot, because Boyd bought the glassware before anyone could stop him, is the answer after a long night out.
