Introducing Angel Share

Downtown's new charity bar takes flight with opening date

Downtown Houston’s new charity bar is almost ready to make its debut. Angel Share HTX, the new occupant of the former OKRA Charity Saloon (924 Congress Ave.), will open June 11, owner Mary Ellen Angel tells CultureMap.

Angel, the charity saloon’s longtime general manager, purchased the bar for $10 back in March. Since then, she’s been working to update the space and getting it ready to serve food and drinks to customers.

The bar's new name is a nod to the term for the whiskey that evaporates from barrels while it ages. It’s said to be the "angel's share" of the barrel.

“It’s kind of the same concept with the bar,” Angel tells CultureMap. “We make money. We donate a portion of the profits to charity every month. It goes into the air, to the community.”

As with OKRA, Angel Share’s charitable contributions will vary from month to month based on the profit it generates. Non-profits will be able to apply to receive that month’s donation, with a winner selected by the bar’s patrons. First up will be the charities that would have received funds prior to last year's shutdown.

All of the proceeds from drinks on a special charity menu will be included in each month’s donation. At opening, the selections include classics such as the Old Fashioned, Southside, and frozen bellini, but Angel says she’ll rotate the drinks quarterly.

In addition to the charity menu, the bar will make patrons all of their favorite classic cocktails as well as serve locally brewed craft beer and a small selections of wines. During happy hour from 4-6:30 pm, patrons will receive half-off beers, wines by-the-glass, and well drinks.

Angel collaborated with chef Dax McAnear (Shoot the Moon) to create a brief menu of dishes that are easy to eat by hand. Offerings include chicken tenders with green curry ranch, tempura-fried okra, and a Monte Cristo wrap that comes complete with raspberry jam and a dusting of powdered sugar.

Baked-to-order chocolate chip cookies use a recipe Angel inherited from her great grandmother. Naturally, they’re served with a glass of milk.

Local artists Kati Ozanic and Yolle Lemberger contributed to a redesign of the space’s second floor loft. Changes include new flooring, new booths, and lighting with a celestial theme. The most noticeable changes have been to the stairs, which have been painted blue and light up when people walk up and down them.

“We did the mural on the stairs, which is kind of the story of how the bar came to be. It’s got little nods to the bars that helped us become the bar we are now,” Angel says.

After being shut down for over a year, Angel says she’s excited to get back behind the bar along with some of OKRA’s former bartenders. The area around Market Square has been on an upswing as establishments such as Captain Foxheart’s Bad News Bar & Spirit Lodge, High & Dry, and the Pastry War have all reopened recently, and new nightclub Cherry has been drawing crowds.

“It’s banging downtown,” she says. “There are lots of people are out and about. I think it’s going to be busy.”

Angel Share HTX opens June 11.

Photo by Design Riot

Angel Share HTX opens June 11.

downtown cocktails openings charity

Chris Cusack explains

Houston bar owner speaks out about surprise arrest for health code violations

Photo by Sergio Trevino

Chris Cusack owns two locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse.

Certainly one of the most unusual interactions between a restaurant and City of Houston officials took place on Wednesday, May 6 when Betelgeuse Betelgeuse owner Chris Cusack was arrested for health code violations at his location on Washington Avenue.

News of the arrest spread quickly across social media over the weekend. Now, Cusack is ready to tell his side of the story.

Cusack, whose time operating restaurants in Houston goes back more than 15 years to Down House and its affiliated restaurants such as Hunky Dory and D&T Drive Inn, tells CultureMap the problem began on Monday, May 4 when a health department inspector came to Betelgeuse Betelgeuse and asked to see the restaurant’s grease trap.

The only problem is that location has never had a grease trap. Prior to becoming Betelgeuse Betelgeuse, it was Liberty Station, a pioneering bar in Houston’s craft beer and craft cocktail scenes. In the early days, Betelgeuse served food from a food truck. More recently, it prepares its food next door at The Bell and Crane. Cusack acknowledges he didn’t share this information with the inspector.

“Usually I’m a charmer with the health department, but I was a little defensive. She kept asking me. I said, ‘ma’am, we don’t make food here,’” he explains. “The tone wasn’t my finest moment, but there was no name calling or anything like that. She said, ‘where does the food come from?’ I said, ‘it doesn’t matter where it comes from. It’s produced in a commercial kitchen.’”

Cusack says he knew there would be a follow up, but he was shocked when the inspector returned two days later with more colleagues from the health department, TABC inspectors, and Houston Police Department officers.

“I got somewhere between 21 and 25 citations,” Cusack says about the return visit. He got dinged for everything from graffiti in the bathroom to a missing Harris County tax stamp on the photo booth he leases from a vendor (it has both State of Texas and City of Houston stamps, Cusack says).

One inspector told Cusack he needed a food dealer’s permit. He showed the inspector that a food dealer’s permit had been issued for the restaurant's address under the former food truck’s LLC but not to the LLC that operates Betelgeuse Betelgeuse. Cusack says he had renewed the food truck’s permit in March, but that wasn’t good enough for the inspector. In Cusack’s telling, he was arrested for not having the permit, since it was also flagged as missing in an inspection from October 2025. He's the only person he knows who has ever been arrested for a misdemeanor violation of the health code.

Cusack says he spent 21 hours in the Harris County Jail. When he got out, he says he was contacted by a more senior official within the Health Department. Once Cusack confirmed he owned both LLCs, he was told he could reopen. Both locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse have been operating normally since Friday, May 8.

Cusack maintains he never knew about the October 2025 inspection, which is why he renewed the food dealer’s permit for the food truck’s LLC rather than applying for one under Betelgeuse Betelgeuse’s LLC. “There’s no paper trail that shows I was given this information,” he says. “I did not get the email [from the Health Department].”

As for why things got so out of hand, Cusack theorizes he was a victim of Houston Mayor John Whitemire’s crack down on “reckless behavior” on Washington Avenue and stepped up enforcement on bars generally that led to the temporary closure of near northside cocktail bar Rabbit’s Got the Gun.

Cusack says he’s a “huge supporter” of efforts to reduce crimes like street racing, drug dealing, and sex trafficking along Washington and in its surrounding neighborhoods. Still, he feels targeting by the city for being impolite to a health inspector.

He plans to fight both the arrest and the citations in court. “I want the charges dropped, and I want it expunged completely from my record. That’s the first thing, and I’m going to try very hard to do it,” he says.

“That’s going to end up costing thousands of dollars just to deal with the sheer volume,” he adds.

CultureMap contacted Mayor Whitmire’s office. A representative said the mayor was not aware of the situation and has no comment on an open investigation.

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