13 November 9 - 15, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Deep Squeeze As high-dollar clubstaurants flourish nearby, the dive bars, music venues and restaurants that give Deep Ellum its old-soul character are hurting. BY LAUREN DREWES DANIELS I n 2017, a single business triggered a tsu- nami of booze along South Good Lat- imer Expressway, just outside Deep Ellum. Tired buildings, some with boarded windows and fences around them, sprung to new life. In a span of a few years, Google Map images show the area go- ing from Pam on The Office to Kardashian — all of them. The first to settle the area, creating this transformation, was the high-energy bar Bot- tled Blonde. When it opened, it was the only spot along this short strip (less than 400 yards long), and it was an instant hit. On weekends it’s standing room only: upstairs, downstairs, inside and out. There’s an entire map on the website for bottle service, which is commoner lingo for “getting a table.” Want to sit in the middle of the bar? Cool, got a spare $1,000? Super parched? How about a $3,000 magnum of Aces of Spades brut? Oh, you’re a purist, a simple vodka guy? Then get a bottle of Tito’s for $375. Not a typo. Soon after its opening, Bottled Blonde got new neighbors, similar clubstaurants also looking for a good time: Citizen (2019), Green Light Social (2020), Blum Sporting Club (2021), Harper’s (2021), The Saint (2023) and Saaya (2023). This year two more opened at the nearby Epic development: Mi- ami-born hotspot Komodo and La Neta, from Las Vegas. All of these are within a quarter-mile of Good Latimer, ending with an exclamation point at The Epic. In September 2023, Bottled Blonde pushed more than $835,000 in booze across the bar, making it the second-highest-gross- ing bar in Dallas, behind Baby Dolls. Its highest-grossing month ever was $1.57 mil- lion in October 2021. It is consistently one of the highest-grossing bars in liquor sales in Texas, all of this according to the state comptroller’s reports on mixed beverage gross receipts. In September of this year, those eight res- taurants plus Bottled Blonde — let’s call them High Ellum — collectively pulled in just north of $3.6 million in liquor sales. Les Corieri is the co-owner of Evening Entertainment Group, the parent company of Bottled Blonde, based in Scottsdale, Ari- zona. The company owns multiple bars and restaurants across the nation and will soon open a $50-million Bottled Blonde on the Las Vegas Strip. Everybody wants some. Corieri says when he was looking for real estate for Bottled Blonde in Dallas, one of his business priorities was to own the land. “With nothing suitable and for sale at the time, we honed in on this pocket, which of- fered a site perfect for us,” says Corieri. “It was a similar situation in Old Town Scotts- dale years earlier, where the Bottled Blonde concept was born. When we bought that building, the surrounding buildings were boarded up, and now it’s a very successful entertainment district.” In a previous interview, Corieri imparted some advice to anyone wanting to get into the restaurant business: know your market. When asked what that looked like in Dallas, Corieri says, “You never really know until you know, really,” adding that at some point you have to take a gamble and go. Sounds cheeky at $5.2 million in bar sales so far this year, but he adds that he looked at the site’s proximity to Deep Ellum, Uptown and Downtown, “Being close to all three just made a lot of sense to us,” he said. Clearly. But as this area thrives, just a block away Dallas’ venerable 150-year-old entertainment and cultural district, Deep Ellum, is hurting. There’s been a shift, a clear downturn for many locally owned places, and while the reasons vary slightly from spot to spot, one thing is clear: a chokepoint created by the new neighbors that turns Good Latimer into a parking lot on the weekends isn’t helping. Live music venues, dive bars and charis- matic watering holes are taking a back seat to the bougie High Ellum with DJs and bot- tle service. And while local bar owners in Deep El- lum don’t begrudge these newer spots their success, they can’t help but feel it’s hurting them. More than anything, though, they want people to know: these new bars are not Deep Ellum. T he Saint is a head-swivel spot. The high- end steakhouse out of Las Vegas is on Gaston Avenue, just a block from Deep Ellum proper. It has a doorman in a suit and a slick bar at the front with a portable speaker on top that plays a lot of Kanye’s Be- fore Era. The first item on the menu is a wagyu candle with housemade Parker rolls. The candle is made of the rendered fat from wa- gyu steaks. The off-white candle sits in the center of a small black plate. The idea is that the heat from the lit wick slowly melts the fat, creating a pool of opulence to dip your warm bread in. That’s the idea anyway. Like a pot of boiling water, a wagyu can- dle never melts when you watch it. We waited, our hands knotted in our laps, as the fat pooled on the plate, one drip at a time. After more than a few minutes, we waved down a server for another go with the mini- blowtorch they carry around to move things along; the 5-inch flame is aggressive and showy, like a bunch of sparklers held to- gether. Once there was finally enough fat to run our rolls through, the bread was no lon- ger warm and the candle didn’t have much flavor. The show was great, though. A short walk down from The Saint — a long walk if you’re wearing red bottoms, which hopefully you are, you loaf — Komodo is dressed in Saturday-night hot pink. Two doormen stand between the velvet ropes here, inspecting everyone who walks up. In- side, at around 8:30 p.m., diners fill all the ta- bles, but the bar has a few spots available; by 10 p.m., though, it’s three deep as bartenders sling drinks as quickly as they can. The cocktails from Komodo’s menu are a bit overplayed. An $18 East Meets West has Tito’s, sparkling sake, ginger, passion fruit and yuzu. A chilled shot of Don Julio Blanco was a safe bet after a couple of misfires. We’ve written previously about the $16 wa- ter here. (On a previous visit we didn’t real- ize that sparkling water for one was served bottle-service style. Silly us.) Food we or- dered at the bar hadn’t arrived after an hour or so, probably lost in the shuffle, which was fine. Eager people behind us wanted (or needed) our bar seats more than we did. Plus, Brick & Bones down the road in Deep Ellum has this addictive fiery-hot fried chicken. And there, we could take our vice- like shoes off and no one would care or no- tice. Before we asked for the bill, one final sip of tequila left on the bar was swiped away by an over-eager barback; at $15 a shot, every sip counts. This very same thing hap- pened with our food on a previous visit. Turn and burn. Leaving Komodo and The Epic and head- ing toward Deep Ellum proper, we notice the manicured new spots that are seeping into the grungy neighborhood. Where the revered live music venue The Gypsy Tea Room once stood is now a Velvet Taco and Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, both fast-casual chains with a lot of bright lights. A bit farther down, past Electric Shuffle (a fun shuffleboard bar from the UK that sometimes has a DJ), we arrive at Brick & Bones. Drinks are in front of us quickly, and we even get a free fried chicken leg as | CITY OF ATE | t Dish Mike Brooks At the Epic, what’s parked by the valet is as important as what’s on the menu. >> p14
