We’ll drink to that
Inventive Houston cocktail spot spills onto Esquire’s new list of the best bars in America
Let’s raise a glass — or in this case an edible chocolate mug — to Houston’s Diversión Cocktails, which Esquire just named one of the country’s best bars for 2022.
Esquire heaps praise on Diversión for its elaborate presentations, intimate atmosphere, and farm-to-table sourcing.
“Houston is a city with zero chill. When people go out, they get dolled up. When they eat, they feast. When they drink, oh brother, wahoo,” Esquire reviewer Joshua David Stein writes. “Diversión, the cocktail bar next to Degust (one of our 2021 Best New Restaurants), doesn’t play it cool either, which is … cool. The low-slung brick building is a bar kitchen, stocked with more flasks and equipment than a Pfizer lab. Flagons of tinctures, ferments, vinegars, and shrubs line the wall.”
The bar chefs, led by Steven Enrique Salazar, click on a spotlight when they serve you a drink, and the drinks deserve such lighting, Stein tells us.
“The Night at the Movies is a concoction of Sercial Madeira and cognac with citrus bitters, accompanied by an Android tablet playing a Charlie Chaplin flick. It’s a bit de trop,” Stein continues. “For the slightly more nonchalant, choose from the farm-to-table cocktails. Many of the ingredients are sourced from the bar’s own two five-thousand-square-foot farms.”
The only other Texas bar deemed worthy of the Esquire list of the country's 25 best bars is Austin's Tiki Tatsu-Ya, the tiki bar from the team behind acclaimed ramen-ya Ramen Tatsu-ya.
“The tiki drinks on the lavishly illustrated menu are assiduously sourced and served in mugs that are vessels the same way a parade float is a method of conveyance,”
Stein raves.
Stein also praises server Feliza Bustos, writing "if you’re lucky she’ll be the one carrying out a glowing fishbowl full of gin, lemongrass shochu, and star fruit as the lights begin to flash and dramatic music plays at this maximalist tiki bar in Texas."
The drink in question? The Forbidden Grog. Served in a pale-green seahorse, the drink’s “rum runs wild, cavorting with banana, fig, honey, and more,” Stein gushes.
Tiki Tatsu-Ya took home the 2022 CultureMap Austin Tastemaker Awards for both Bar of the Year and Bartender of the Year, Cory Starr.
