Gabe Sanchez saved up for years to open the Black Swan Saloon. When he finally did, in 2010, he put it in Deep Ellum on West Elm Street and built it around a simple idea: artisan cocktails at working-man prices, served by someone who actually knew what he was doing. There was no menu. There was a velvet painting of Clint Eastwood behind the bar. The shelves were lined with house-infused liquors Gabe made himself — cold-brewed with farmers market fruit, nuts, coffee, whatever was right that week. You told him your spirit and your mood and he made something. People drove across town for it. Then they drove across town again.
The awards stacked up fast. Best Bartender. Best Artisanal Cocktails. Best Bar Trend. The nominations came in so reliably every year that winning stopped feeling like news. When a Dallas publication left the bar off a best bars list in 2013, readers made enough noise about it that the writers had to publish an explanation. That’s the kind of loyalty you don’t manufacture.
Then March 2020 arrived and the lockdown came and Black Swan, as a bar without a food program, had no legal path to staying open. Gabe held out as long as he could. In November 2020, he posted his goodbye on Instagram. “After 10 years there is not an easy way to say goodbye,” he wrote. “We’ve shared a lot together. High fives, hugs, laughs, cries, first dates, engagements, weddings, accomplishments, graduations, births of children, celebrating dear friends. Life.” He thanked everyone and said it was time. Dallas lost one of its best bars to a pandemic it had no part in creating, and people were genuinely sad about it in a way that doesn’t happen very often with a bar closing.
After the closure, Sanchez went on to run the cocktail program at Midnight Rambler inside The Joule, where the Headington Company came after him practically the week he announced the closure. Good bartenders don’t stay unemployed long. But Black Swan wasn’t done.
Black Swan Saloon opened again in 2024 at 1623 N. Hall St., Suite 101, in the space that used to be Fiction Coffee at Ross and Hall, just east of downtown. This time Gabe brought partners: Ryan Payne, who owns Saint Valentine with him; Brian Rutt of Alice and Columbian Country Club; and Pasha Heidari, who has his name on St. Martin’s, Bowen House, and Mike’s Gemini Twin Lounge. That’s a team that understands how Dallas bars actually work — not just how to open them, but how to keep them running.
The room feels like Black Swan is supposed to feel. Dim, unhurried, art on the walls, the velvet Clint Eastwood painting back behind the bar where it belongs. The infused spirits program is back — Gabe still cold-brews them himself, still changes them with the seasons, still makes them with whatever’s worth using. There’s no printed menu. You still just tell him what you’re drinking and what you’re in the mood for, and something shows up in a glass that’s worth whatever he charges for it. The freezer martini made with CrazyWater has become the drink people mention first, which is as good a recommendation as any.
The new location added a modest food program — gumbo is the dish regulars bring up — and a boilermakers section of the menu that pairs shots and beers for people who want to keep it simple alongside the craft side of things. It has also been doing the menu at Midnight Rambler, which means Sanchez’s fingerprints are on two of the better drinking rooms in the city at the same time.
Open Monday and Wednesday through Sunday, 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. Closed Tuesdays. 1623 N. Hall St., Suite 101, Dallas, TX 75204. Phone: (214) 749-4848. Follow @blackswaneastdallas on Instagram.
