"The Lino" Special

​"Want to eat me?"

"Excuse me?!"

It turns out I wasn't being sexually harassed, but rather I was being invited to The Fish Restaurant and Sushi Bar in Midtown to try a a new special on the menu named after a good friend of mine. I've often wondered how one becomes the namesake for a dish at a restaurant. It helps if you're a local celebrity like our very own Katharine Shilcutt -- but for the Average Joe, apparently you need to order an off-the-menu item, patronize the restaurant often, be gregarious and charming, ask nicely, and just maybe someone will name the dish after you

If you were going to try this anywhere, The Fish is probably your best bet. This has been my go-to sushi restaurant in Midtown since it opened around 2002 -- then known as BlowFish. There are others that have opened in the area -- all with the same trendy and sleek vibe sushi restaurants are known to have these days -- but in my opinion none are as consistently good, and the managers and servers at The Fish are perhaps the friendliest you'll encounter in this bustling area of Midtown.

So what is this dish?

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Pulled Pork Tacos

​When I think of Morningside Drive in the Rice Village, casual dining and late night bar hopping come to mind. So Chef Michael Kramer's (formerly of Voice and The Tasting Room) new restaurant, Felix 55, is somewhat of an anomaly in the midst of Irish pubs and casual cafes. I've been looking forward to trying Felix 55 ever since I first heard about Chef Kramer's new venture, and I found myself there for a happy hour recently.

The restaurant's interior is trendy, but still warm and inviting, perhaps because the space is small and intimate and the large window in the front brings a lot of light into the room. The decor is decidedly masculine with leather chairs and dark wood, but the feminine light fixtures, the flowers on each table and the paintings on the wall add a soft touch. Sitting at the bar gives you a great view out of the large window looking out onto Morningside and the large patio in the front of the restaurant. Once the weather cools off the patio will be a welcoming place for a few drinks.

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"Hey, I can call my ma from up here."

​The Place: Char Bar
305 Travis
713-222-8177

The Deals: $2 Pabst Blue Ribbon

The Hours: 5 p.m. to close Wednesdays

The Scene: We've only been to Char Bar a couple of times, but each time there were always at least a few women present. Wednesday after work, however, there were none, except when a delivery woman dropped off some food, but less than two minutes inside and no drinks doesn't count.

Most gay bars we've been to have had a stronger female presence. (Which can be tricky as a straight man, because that scenario naturally means less competition for any straight females present, but oftentimes those straight females have come to a gay bar specifically to escape you.) But Char Bar was man-filled in a much different way - mostly white-collar guys who'd just gotten off work, sitting at the galley bar, bullshitting over vodkas and Miller Lites.

The bar, which is a tailor shop during the day and has been for the better part of a century, is long and dark, even during the most blindingly bright part of the late-summer afternoon. It smells kind of like a non-smoking casino. We're not sure why that is. Could have been someone's cologne triggering a memory. Maybe we have a gambling problem. Maybe not. Maybe...never mind.

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Joanna O'Leary

Apple Martini.

​I was thrilled to see a promising new restaurant like Sorrel fill the near-empty corner mall on the West Alabama. Those lots were looking quite sad and lonely.

I was out of town for Sorrel's opening but salivated from afar over Mai Pham's lovely post and gorgeous photos. So, I put "Try Sorrel" on my back-to-school to-do list, right after "Buy stock in all companies selling A/C units."

Indeed, the heat has made me even more obsessed with beverages, so I decided to hit up Sorrel's happy hour before committing to a hotter (and pricier) meal.

Around 5:30 p.m. early in the week the restaurant was understandably quiet. A distinguished older gentleman (owner? manager) ran to hold the door for me and no fewer than three servers wished me good evening. The waitstaff overall seemed a bit skittish: you could tell they were anxious to be on their toes in light of the restaurant's fairly recent opening. I found this nervous, eager-to-please attitude quite endearing.

My first drink, an apple martini, was painfully, albeit wonderfully, cold. Sweet, uncomplicated notes of sour apple combined with bitter alcoholic undertones for a crisp, refreshing cocktail. I think I even said ahhh out loud.

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​The Place: Lone Star Saloon
1900 Travis
713-757-1616

The Deals: $13 buckets, daily $4 shot/cocktail specials

The Hours: 1 to 7 p.m. Mondays; 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; 2 to 7 p.m. Sundays

The Scene: The newly-off-duty bartender, who'd made a smooth transition to the other side of the bar, rang the bell suspended from the ceiling twice during the hour we spent at the Lone Star's Sunday happy hour. First when a guy who looked like an assistant high school football coach yelled "The [Dallas] Cowboys suck!", in response to nothing we overheard. And later when a short Metro employee -- who a few minutes ago had paid her five bucks for the privilege of giving her a friendly spanking -- declared that he owned three phallic sexual aids.

She'd also told us when we first sat down at a stool that we looked like we were in a bad mood. She may have been right at first, but it didn't last long.

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Despite the signage, this Christian's is a Washington Avenue bar in name only

​The Place: Christian's Tailgate
7340 Washington
713-864-9744
christianstailgate.com

The Deals: $2.50 wells, $2.50 domestic drafts and bottles, $7.50 pitchers

The Hours: noon to 7 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays

The Scene: If there's a reason to mention the adult-to-child ratio, you're probably not at a wild happy hour.

"I think there are more kids here than adults," my friend Casey said when we sat down at the Christian's Tailgate on Washington. He was barely wrong -- the distribution among the 14 people in the bar was exactly 1:1, unless someone was in the bathroom when I counted.

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​The Place: The Maple Leaf Pub
514 Elgin
713-520-6464
http://www.themapleleafpub.com

The Deals: $3 wells; $2.50 pints of Miller Lite and Bud Light; various other weekly and daily specials, including cheap shots of the day and $3 martinis on Mondays, which also feature bingo.

The Hours: 3 to 7 p.m.

The Scene: Two co-workers and I intended to check out Front Porch in Midtown for this week's Happy Hour Scene. It was too hot to drink yet (8 p.m. is ideal starting time in August) and the parking meters were on for another hour. The breaking point for one coworker was the fact that the nearly empty bar had "Reserved" tags that saved most of the indoor seating for people with names like "Cray-Cray." So we left. There was probably some available seating near enough to the air conditioning, but we've got our principles, even when there's already $1.50 in the meter.

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​The Place: Coaches Pub
2204 Louisiana
713-751-1970
www.coachespubmidtown.com

The Deals: $2.50 domestic pints, $3.25 premium pints, $7 domestic pitchers, $2.50 wells, $4 cosmos and $3 Bud Select (the Bud Select special is all of the time)

The Hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day

The Scene: It's a Thursday afternoon and a curious amount of golf fans are gathered inside of this Midtown bar at Louisiana and Webster. Flanked by Darque Tan on one side and Gotham Pizza on the other, about ten dudes have decided that it's too blazing outside to work on their man-tan lines and/or tear apart a hot pie.

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​
The Place: Hendricks Pub & Eatery
3320 Kirby
713-522-1500
www.hendrickspub.com

The Deals: $1 off drafts and wells

The Hours: 3 to 7 p.m.

The Scene: Have you ever tried repeating a word until it begins to sound like a series of meaningless noises? We feel like we're halfway there with the word "pub."

Hendricks probably isn't claiming that its food somehow makes it a pub, because that would be wrong, and it would make the "eatery" part of the name redundant. So it must be an attempt to denote some kind of warm, neighborhood feel. The bar is technically in a neighborhood. And if you stand in the parking lot, it gets pretty warm.

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"Classic whites" make up about 20 percent of the Bayou Bar wine list, and about 95 percent of Whole Foods' clientele.

​The Place: Bayou Bar at Whole Foods
701 Waugh
713-284-1260

The Deals: Daily specials Wednesday ($1 off Texas pints), Thursday ($1 off growler refills) and Friday ($1 off wine flights)

The Scene: Even if you don't like the idea of sitting and drinking between the wine aisle and the cheese department in a high-end grocery store, the Bayou Bar at the new Whole Foods in Montrose lets you pay around four bucks for a pint of good beer and wheel it around in your cupholder-equipped shopping cart. That makes the present day the pinnacle of human achievement. Better than ancient Greece, better than the Renaissance, better than 1993, when the first Jurassic Park came out.

For people-watching, you still can't beat Disco Kroger (we'll have to see if it retains its weird appeal after the remodel) and the Fiesta on San Jacinto. But those stores don't have bars. Bayou Bar, whether you get your alcohol to go or sit down and drink, isn't an afterthought -- it serves eight kinds of drafts and more than a dozen types of wine, including four on tap. There are cheese flights available as well. (And this being Whole Foods, there are apparently two stations in the parking lot at which you can recharge your electric car. We didn't see those, but a guy in a Yukon XL did almost run over us in the parking lot.)

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