Houston's Hottest Happy Hours

The 10 hottest happy hour deals in Houston: Eat well while drinking up

May's Top 10 happy hour list —offering a deal on both food and drinks — includes several new restaurants and bars, and a few updates from some old favorites.

DOWNTOWN

BATANGA
The Place: Batanga, one of a new crop of restaurants and bars that have opened downtown including The Original OKRA Charity Saloon, Goro & Gun, Captain Foxheart’s Bad News Bar, and Clutch City Squire, serves up Latin American tapas and has a great outdoor patio.
The Food: Catalan Style Pork Ribs, Patatas (potatoes) Batanga and Grilled Chicken Pinxtos (the Basque word for tapas) for $4 each during happy hour.
The Drinks: Ice-cold beer, sangria, and red or white house wine are priced at $3. For a dollar more, order a mango or traditional flavored mojito.
The Times: Weekdays from 4 to 7 p.m.

THE SAM BAR
The Place: The Sam Houston Hotel may have gone back to its original name, but with a fresh take on the space that includes renovations from the 100 guestrooms to the The Sam Bar.
The Food: The happy hour menu features both shareable and small bites. On the shareable list: $8 white truffle mac and cheese and $7 Jury Fries tossed with duck fat, grated parmesan and chives. Small bites include $6 stuffed mushrooms with chorizo and a $9 grilled steak skewer.
The Drinks: Wet your whistle with $3.50 domestic beers, $4.50 imports/micros, $5.50 well drinks, $6 call drinks, $6 house wine, and $7 premium drinks.
The Times: Weekdays from 4 to 7 p.m.

MIDTOWN/ MONTROSE

ELEVEN XI
The Place: Eleven XI, Midtown's newest restaurant, features a menu by chef Kevin Bryant and a cocktail program by general manager and mixologist, Joe Welborn. The duo’s combined talents make Eleven XI worth your dime, especially with discounted prices during happy hour.
The Food: The Hand Ground Prime Burger on slow dough Challah bread with fries is a deal at $6. An order of fried smoked pork shanks (think buffalo wings with twice the meat) tossed in your choice of a myriad of house sauces is just $8 and Gulf Oysters are $1 apiece.
The Drinks: $2 of of all spirits.
The Times: Tuesday through Saturday from 3 to 7 p.m.

THE GOOD LIFE
The Place: The latest from co-owners Jeff and Darren Van Delden, also of Saint Genevieve, Wonder Bar and Red Door, is The Good Life Kitchen & Bar. Chef Kevin Naderi of Roost consulted on the bites menu. The drink list features edible cocktails (aka gourmet Jell-O shots), which while not on the happy hour menu are hard to pass up.
The Food: $6 Dаіlу Fооd Bохеѕ change daily. Expect to see regular menu items as well as innovative ideas from the kitchen.
The Drinks: $5 wеllѕ, $5 wіnеѕ, $3 dоmеѕtісs plus a daily drink special. While there's no official happy hour on the weekends, specials include $5 Grey Goose Bloody Mary's, $5 mimosas, $2.50 draft beers, and $12 sangria pitchers on Saturdays. Sundays, enjoy $1 mimosas and $7 Bloody Mary's.
The Times: Happy hour is Tuesday through Thursday from 4 to 8 p.m. Weekend drink specials are Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

PISTOLERO'S
The Place: The just-opened Pistolero's, from Shawn Bermudez of Royal Oak and Boondocks, spotlights tacos and tequila.
The Food: 2 for $6 full size tacos.
The Drinks: $5 frozen & rocks house 'ritas, $4 sangria and $1 off all drafts.
The Times: Weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m.

WASHINGTON AVENUE

LITTLE J'S
The Place: This neighborhood sports bar, complete with an ample amount of flat-screen TVs and games, is located in the space formerly occupied by Salt Bar on Washington Avenue.
The Food: Mondays, crawfish and all the essentials are $5.95 per pound. Wednesdays, Little J’s offers $6 bacon food pairings to go with whiskey drink specials (see below). Example fare thus far: blackened shrimp with bacon grits, and Andouille sausage with roasted potatoes and mac and cheese.
The Drinks: Mondays, mini pitchers and big beer specials to go with your crawfish start at $6. Wednesdays, whiskey drinks are $5.
The Times: Monday from 6 to 10 p.m. and Wednesday from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m.

AROUND TOWN

TEXAS DE BRAZIL
The Place: New at CityCentre, Texas de Brazil, an 8,500-square-foot Brazilian steakhouse, offers a happy hour deal in the bar and lounge areas.
The Food: Get your fill of protein with a small plate of chicken breast, garlic sirloin or sausage for $8.50 each (or two for $12.50).
The Drinks: Domestic beer is $3, wines by the glass are $5, well drinks, martinis are $7, and the house specialty, the Brazilian Caipirinha, is $5.
The Times: Weekdays from 5 to 7 p.m.

AMERICAS
The Place: Cordua Restaurants has a new beverage director, James Watkins, and a new social hour menu available at both locations, The Woodlands and River Oaks.
The Food: Prices vary from an order of $4 empanadas to a $19 tasting of four ceviches. A favorite snack is the Angel Wings (chicken wings) with brown butter, habanero-papaya sauce and blue cheese for $11.
The Drinks: Cordua Cocktails such as The Toronjada made with whipped orange vodka, lime, grapefruit, and soda are priced from $8 to $11.
The Times: Daily until 7 p.m.

THE UNION KITCHEN
The Place: This family neighborhood restaurant and bar has locations in Bellaire and Memorial.
The Food: Half price appetizers include a crab stuffed avocado and Tejas Kobe Carpaccio for $6.50 or less.
The Drinks: Wines by the glass are $6, sangria is $5, drafts are $3, specialty cocktails are $7, and wells are $5.
The Times: Seven days a week — from 11 a.m. to 6:30 at Memorial and from 3 to 6 p.m. at Bellaire.

ÉTOILE
The Place: Étoile at Uptown Park offers fine French cuisine, an aesthetically pleasing environment, friendly service, and a new happy hour menu available at the bar and on the patio.
The Food: A few of the items featured on Étoile's Social Hour Menu are Chef Verpiand's basque crab cake lollipops, beef short rib sliders and merguez sausage on ciabatta. All are $7 and under.
The Drinks: For $6 each, order select wines by the glass and cocktails such as the Moscow Mule.
The Times: Sunday through Friday from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Fig Cream Cookie cocktail at Eleven XI

Photo by Stuart Rosenberg

Fig Cream Cookie cocktail at Eleven XI

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eat real food

Houston DJ-turned-TikTok star cooks up a cult following one recipe at a time

Courtesy of Uncle Dibbz

Uncle Dibbz, a.k.a. A.H. Bowden, has built a devoted following for his viral recipes.

For the past month, Uncle Dibbz has been, shall we say, going ham on social media with the myriad videos of alternative Thanksgiving dishes. He’s dropped how-to clips for such recipes as Cajun-roasted turkey, honey-baked ham/hens, oven-bag turkey, and six-piece fried turkey (to go). Basically, if you don’t want to cook a bland ol’ Butterball this Turkey Day, Dibbz has you covered.

Who is Dibbz, you say? Well, he’s a North Jersey-born, Georgia-bred, Houston-based chef who’s been building quite the foodie rep online. Several videos across his TikTok, Instagram and YouTube pages, from his Cajun-boiled fried chicken (2 million on IG) to his “Propose to Me Pasta” (12.3 million on TikTok), has amassed millions of views. But Dibbz (government name: A.H. Bowden) wasn’t always a culinary content creator. He used to spin music back in Atlanta as DJ DiBiase, named after retired wrestler Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase. “DiBiase is a mouthful to say, so people just always call me ‘D’ or ‘Dibbz’ for short,” says Bowden, 37, during a Zoom interview.

@uncledibbz PROPOSE To Me PASTA 💍 🍝 Trust your Uncle! This SEAFOOD Pasta will seal the deal 👌🏽 Get my recipe below ⬇️ or on uncledibbz.com [@uncledibbz Link in Bio] 🌐 **Ingredients:** - 8 ounces spaghetti - 1 lb mixed seafood (shrimp, scallops, crab meat, etc.) - 2 tablespoons olive oil - Fresh chopped basil - 2 cloves garlic, minced - 1/2 cup white wine - 1/4 cup heavy cream - 2 tablespoons unsalted butter - Salt and pepper to taste - Uncle Dibbz Delta Dust [link in bio] - Fresh parsley, chopped (for garnish) - Grated Parmesan cheese (for garnish) **Instructions:** 1. Cook the spaghetti pasta according to the package instructions until al dente. Drain and set aside. 2. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the minced garlic, chopped basil and sauté for about 1 minute until fragrant. 3. Add the mixed seafood to the skillet. Season with Uncle Dibbz Delta Dust to taste and cook for 2-3 minutes until cooked through. Remove the seafood from the skillet and set aside. 4. Pour in the white wine to the skillet and let it simmer for 2 minutes, allowing the alcohol to cook off. 5. Stir in the heavy cream, butter, Uncle Dibbz Delta Dust seasoning, salt, and pepper. Cook for another 2-3 minutes until the sauce thickens slightly. 6. Add the cooked spaghetti and cooked mixed seafood to the skillet. Toss everything together until well coated with the sauce. 7. Remove from heat and garnish with fresh parsley and grated Parmesan cheese. 8. Serve hot and enjoy the flavorful Seafood Spaghetti. That's good Shawty! #UncleDibbz #ThatsGoodShawty #Pasta #marryme #proposal #bride #wife #husband #relationshipgoals #datenight #easyrecipe #seafood #cajun #cooking #fyp #foryou #viral #houston ♬ original sound - Uncle Dibbz 🍴

He was making a nice living as a DJ, even serving as rapper Big K.R.I.T.’s touring DJ for a while. But when the pandemic hit, the gigs obviously dried up.

“I was living in Miami at the time,” he says. “And, you know, when you have a lot of time on your hands to think – but also need to figure out a way to, you know, sustain an income and everything like that – the ideas start coming,”

Like most DJs at that time, he was doing live mixes on Instagram. But his days throwing cookout parties in Atlanta inspired him to start doing his cooking videos, where he used his very own seasoning. Of course, he had a lemon pepper blend, which he used in a lemon pepper hot wings video that currently has over a half-million views on TikTok.

“I'm about to go live to DJ later that night, and my phone was just going off with orders,” he recalls. “So I'm like, where are these orders coming from? And it's not from my friends. I'm seeing the cities and the states. I don't know these people.”

Thanks to his videos, which usually end with him saying his signature line “That’s good shawty!” (that’s also the name of his cookbook he released last year), Dibbz went into the seasoning business full time. He eventually hired another person to help send out the piles of orders he was receiving.

He even got an order from former Dallas Cowboy Emmitt Smith, one of his favorite athletes. “I remember doing a book report on him when I was in fourth grade,” he boasts.

Although Dibbz has a flair for making meals that border on decadent, he’s an ardent practitioner of cooking with natural ingredients, especially in his seasoning. He has several low-sodium seasoning, including Bebe’s Salt Free – named after his mother, who had open-heart surgery a few weeks before the pandemic started.

“I don't think a lot of people understand the amount of toxins and chemicals that go into a lot of these seasonings,” he says. “You're starting to see it in the news now. A lot of the foods with certain dyes are being taken off the shelves and things like that.’

Soon, Dibbz moved himself and his new business to Houston, a favorite place to perform as well as a town whose hip-hop got him into music. He cites local chopped-and-screwed gods DJ Screw, Michael 5000 Watts, and OG Ron C as his holy trinity of influences. To give props to the music of his new home, he created a hot sauce – called HXT Sauce – whose uncharacteristically large bottle resembles Promethazine cough syrup (aka the key ingredient in lean, the preferred purple cocktail for the city’s rap community).

“It's not necessarily about promoting that usage,” he says. “But, at the same time, it’s just a homage to one of the factors and influences of screwed-and-chopped music.”

Dibbz still indulges in spinning records from time to time. The Waxaholics’ DJ Big Reeks has gotten him to break out the vinyl a few times during his Thursday-night sets at Alley Kat Bar & Lounge in Midtown. But creating new recipes, dropping delicious content and proving you can eat and live in a hearty, healthy fashion still remains his full-time mission.

“I’m not just talking about eating cauliflower rice all day and every day, but just eat real food,” he says. “We're eating fake food. That's the bottom line. We're eating fake food and my whole purpose is to inspire people to eat real food and that starts with real ingredients, real herbs, you know – real natural seasonings.”

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