The Village at Camp Bowie
6115 Camp Bowie Blvd, FW. |
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Happy Hour Camp Bowie Crawlin’
One bummer, among many, about living in Arlington (stop laughing!) is that, when friends plan an evening of drinking, it’s usually far, far away. Like in Dallas. Earlier this month, the site was lowest Greenville Avenue and a joint that was unforgivably skanky, not swanky. The kindest thing I can say about the Sugar Shack is that the beer was a buck. I’ve never learned to like beer, but I do value a clean bathroom and some actual food to sop up the excess alcohol. The Sugar Shack had neither, so I won’t be going back.
A week later I found myself on the opposite side of the world, Fort Worth’s West Side. With two hours to kill before a dinner date and no desire to trek all the way back home, I decided to look for a place that might combine some killer happy hour prices with decent service and a non-sticky floor. Driving west up Camp Bowie Boulevard, I passed the Village at Camp Bowie, a name I freely mock because, plainly, there are no peasants in this part of town, and can you have a village without the peasants? Village idiots? There are some here, no doubt, just like everywhere else. But peasants? Not on the West Side, no sir.
However, happy hour starts early in the Village, and if you’re planning a happy-hour pub crawl, this business complex of bars, restaurants, and retailers sure is amenable, letting you park your car safely for free in the vast parking lot and wander around on foot, unlike on Lower Greenville, where free parking is kind of a myth and walking the streets can sometimes be a touch-and-go affair. And sometimes too heavy on the touching.
I was surprised and somewhat pleased to learn that Eurotazza Coffeehouse has a happy hour that really has nothing to do with coffee. Instead, there are a half-dozen kinds of beer and wine available, and on Fridays from 4 to 7 p.m., they’re all half-price, which makes bottles of imported and domestic beer about $2 apiece and puts the generous servings of pleasingly tart chardonnay at a little over $4 per. I got there around 4:30 p.m., and having been to Eurotazza many times around the same time of day (though never on a Friday), I thought the place was less crowded than usual. The advantages, though, are manifold. The quiet vibe and that great fresh-brewed coffee smell make for a delightful setting for rampant oenophilia. And there also are those comfy chairs.
Overall, the Eurotazza experience wasn’t cheap but was inviting, and the service was great. Eurotazza founder and president Keira Moody is a smart cookie, and if she’s working happy hour, there must be a market for it (or at least there should be).
Slightly farther west on my Camp Bowie crawl was a happy hour sign outside Duce. Though under new management – former owner Tim Love sold the place eight months ago -- the restaurant has retained its beautiful patio bar, and I would have sat out there had the weather been less scorching. Plus, the guy tending bar was cute, and my motto’s always been: Why sit on a hot patio when you can sit near a hot guy? Turns out that Daniel the bartender is also Daniel the manager, and he makes a killer “Martinez Martini”: Patrón añejo tequila, Grand Marnier, and Rose’s lime juice, with salt rim. Although it falls into Duce’s “Happy Hour $7 Martini Special,” it’s pretty pricey. The restaurant also offers $3 wells, $2 domestic beers, and $3 imports, as well as a wine menu with 70-something choices on it. During happy hour, several of the appetizers, like the calamari and quesadillas, also are half-price. At around 5:30 p.m., the place wasn’t exactly crowded, but if I could learn to like beer, it might be perfect for me.
At that point, I was, as the Stones say, a little bleary and worse for the wear and tear. Meandering over to my dinner destination, I passed the Baker Street Pub and Grill. There was a healthy crowd of a few dozen folks in and around the indoor-outdoor patio, so I thought, “What the heck?” I still had 15 minutes to kill, and as we nightflies know, a lot can happen in that amount of time.
Every Village has to have a pub, I guess, and this chain establishment is decorated in hearty turn-of-the-20th-century London style. Strike one. The décor clashes with the gal servers in short shorts and t-shirts that say stuff like “English Muffin.” Strike two. But Baker Street has the most generous happy hour in the Village: Monday through Saturday from 2 to 9 p.m. and all freaking day Sunday. Home run. In addition to the wide variety of pub grub on the (slightly sticky) menu, Baker Street also offers $2 glasses of vino, $1.25 wells, $1.75 drafts, and $6 pitchers, all during happy hour.
By the time I got there, a draft beer looked magically good to my “faraway eyes,” especially at under two bucks. I didn’t even mind the muffins. – Laurie Barker James
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