Bar Abilene
We ate dinner at Bar Abilene ("The Texas Margarita Grill") in Uptown last night (Saturday July 30). The place served "cowboy fusion" cuisine -- think fancy Southwestern, like what Bobby Flay of the Food Network specializes in. The decor is all hipser cowboy, with lots of wood and cowhide. I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.
We'd gotten drinks and appetizers there once before, and this time we were set on really exploring the menu. I had the Chile-Marinated Flank Steak Fajitas, and B had a sample platter of four bocaditos (appetizers): Potato-Pepper Jack Flautas w salsa verde + pico de gallo, Spicy Picadillo Empanadas w whipped plantains + lime sour cream, Tacos al Pasto w pineapple relish + queso fresco, and Albondigas (spicy meatballs) w guajillo chile- tomato sauce. (I copied all that from the website in case you're wondering!) We really enjoyed all of it, with the Tacos al Pastor being my favorite and the flautas being B's.
We didn't get there til 8:45 or so, and we remarked that at that relatively late dinner hour there was quite a wide age range among the diners. But then around 10 a DJ started playing and the younger all-dolled-up crowd started trickling in. We went downtown to a couple bars the previous Friday, and 10pm seemed the time that many of them start to fill up. Well, the hip ones anyway. As we were walking back from Bar Abilene, we passed a relatively new Uptown bar/restaurant called "Drink." The place had been empty when we walked by it at 8:40, and was absolutely packed at 10:20. So my new theory is that you can tell how good a place is by how full it is at 9:00, and you can tell how hip a place is by how full it is at 10:30. Of course, places (like Bar Abilene) can be both.
City Pages review of Bar Abilene
We'd gotten drinks and appetizers there once before, and this time we were set on really exploring the menu. I had the Chile-Marinated Flank Steak Fajitas, and B had a sample platter of four bocaditos (appetizers): Potato-Pepper Jack Flautas w salsa verde + pico de gallo, Spicy Picadillo Empanadas w whipped plantains + lime sour cream, Tacos al Pasto w pineapple relish + queso fresco, and Albondigas (spicy meatballs) w guajillo chile- tomato sauce. (I copied all that from the website in case you're wondering!) We really enjoyed all of it, with the Tacos al Pastor being my favorite and the flautas being B's.
We didn't get there til 8:45 or so, and we remarked that at that relatively late dinner hour there was quite a wide age range among the diners. But then around 10 a DJ started playing and the younger all-dolled-up crowd started trickling in. We went downtown to a couple bars the previous Friday, and 10pm seemed the time that many of them start to fill up. Well, the hip ones anyway. As we were walking back from Bar Abilene, we passed a relatively new Uptown bar/restaurant called "Drink." The place had been empty when we walked by it at 8:40, and was absolutely packed at 10:20. So my new theory is that you can tell how good a place is by how full it is at 9:00, and you can tell how hip a place is by how full it is at 10:30. Of course, places (like Bar Abilene) can be both.
City Pages review of Bar Abilene
posted by James at 8:11 PM
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