Parliament opened in August 2014 in the old Four Lounge space on 2418 Allen Street, in the State Thomas Historic District, and more than a decade later it is still the same low-lit, red-walled room where Eddie “Lucky” Campbell built his name pouring drinks most bartenders would need a cheat sheet to remember.
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Henderson Avenue has a new bar with a twang, and it landed in exactly the right spot.
Stay Darlin’ opened this summer at 2929 N. Henderson Ave., in the old Sissy’s Southern Kitchen space, right where Tecovas, McKinney Hat Company, and Rancher Hat Bar have all set up shop within a block of each other. Put a boot store on three corners of an intersection and eventually somebody opens a bar to match. Stay Darlin’ is that bar.
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Waterloo Gin just had its best showing yet at the SIP Awards, one of the few major spirits competitions where the judges aren’t industry insiders but ordinary consumers tasting blind. The Hill Country distillery walked away with Platinum for its flagship Waterloo No. 9 Gin, Double Gold for the Prickly Pear & Rose Gin, and Gold for the Barrel Aged Gin, a clean sweep across the brand’s three core expressions.
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Sarti Rosa is the new one. Unlike the classic anise-flavored Sarti Sambuca, which traces back generations, Sarti Rosa is a genuinely modern addition to the lineup from Casa Luigi Sarti & Figli, the Bologna distillery that’s been making spirits since 1885. The liqueur itself first launched across European bars and restaurants in the summer of 2023, then moved into retail for home consumption not long after.
It’s now part of Campari Group’s portfolio, sitting alongside Campari, Aperol, and Crodino as the newest addition to that lineup, and it only made its UK debut in March 2025, arriving there already established across other European markets. That timeline makes Sarti Rosa about three years old as of now, young enough that most bars pouring it are still figuring out what to do with it.
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Some tequilas are built for sipping and some are built for mixing, and Don Julio Blanco happens to do both without breaking a sweat. It’s unaged, double distilled, and made from 100% blue agave, which means you get that clean agave snap up front and a dry finish that doesn’t fight with whatever you’re mixing it into. That’s exactly why it works so well behind a home bar. You don’t need six ingredients or a torch to make something worth drinking. You need good tequila and a little restraint.
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A hundred degrees in Dallas calls for one of two things: air conditioning or a drink cold enough to make you forget the heat for a few minutes. The bars that understand this are not the ones handing you a sugary frozen drink out of a machine. They’re the ones that have thought about what summer actually tastes like — citrus, herbs, smoke, stone fruit, something bright — and built their menus around it. Here’s where to find them.
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The glass arrives without ice, without a salt rim, without a wedge of lime. It’s a small, wide-mouthed clay cup called a copita, and what’s in it is the color of water and smells like the earth after rain, plus something older and wilder underneath that. The bartender says nothing. She’s done her job. Whatever happens next is between you and the agave.
That’s mezcal at its best — and it’s a very different animal from what most people think they’re ordering when they ask for it. The smoke is real, but it’s not the whole story. The complexity goes so much deeper than that, and once you understand what you’re looking at on the label and what’s actually in the bottle, you stop reaching for the lime entirely.
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In 2011, a bartender named Joaquín Simó was working a shift at Death & Co, the celebrated cocktail bar on East Sixth Street in New York City, when LCD Soundsystem came on the speakers. The song was “Drunk Girls.” He was messing around with equal parts — a bartender’s shorthand for a drink built on four ingredients in identical measure — and had Aperol, yellow Chartreuse, mezcal, and fresh lime juice on his station. He put them together. It worked better than it had any right to. He named it after another LCD Soundsystem song, “Naked and Famous,” and put it on the menu.
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