There’s a martini for a dollar at Walloon’s next month, and the fine print is that you have to eat a dozen oysters to get there. Fair trade, honestly.
The restaurant is throwing its first Yacht Club Week starting Sunday, August 2, and the concept fits a room that was already halfway there. Chef Marcus Paslay opened Walloon’s in the summer of 2023 inside the old Fort Worth National Bank building on Magnolia Avenue, his fourth restaurant under the From Scratch Hospitality banner alongside Clay Pigeon, Piattello, and Provender Hall.
The name is a double borrow: Wallonia, the French-speaking half of Belgium, and Walloon Lake in Michigan, where a young Ernest Hemingway spent his boyhood summers. Paslay ran with the Hemingway thread, stacking the cocktail list with old-school classics and building the room around a horseshoe bar lit by milk glass sconces that throw everything into a sepia tint. The old bank vault survived the renovation too. It’s a wine room now, topped with an oyster shell where the door used to hang.
Yacht Club Week runs through Saturday, August 8, minus the membership dues and the judgmental commodore. East Coast seafood, coastal cocktails, live jazz, nautical décor, and a different special every day. Saturday and Sunday open with Lobster Avocado Toast for $22. Monday knocks $10 off Fish & Chips, Tuesday does the same for Fish Tacos. Wednesday happens to land on National Oyster Day, and Walloon’s doesn’t waste the coincidence: a half dozen oysters for $12, a full dozen for $24, and that dollar Absolut martini for anyone who orders the dozen. Thursday brings Fried Calamari at $12. Friday closes the week with a Classic Shrimp Cocktail at $15.
The cocktails carry the theme just as far. A Cape Codder runs $8, a Royal Hawaiian $12, a Blue Lagoon $14, a Dark & Stormy $16, a Tom Collins $13, and a Fish House Punch tops out at $18. None of it’s a reach for a kitchen already running a raw bar stocked with Prince Edward Island oysters and a seafood mac and cheese big enough that two people are supposed to split it.
Walloon’s has never quite decided whether it wants to be a serious seafood house or a room that’s in on its own joke, and honestly, that’s the appeal. Yacht Club Week just turns the joke up for eight days. Reservations recommended through Resy. Walloon’s is at 701 West Magnolia Avenue in Fort Worth’s Near Southside; call (682) 224-3230.
