where to party on cinco de mayo

20-plus Houston favorites firing up feisty fiestas for Cinco de Mayo

By now, most Houstonians know that Cinco de Mayo marks the Mexican army's pivotal defeat of the French army at the Battle of Puebla, during the Franco-Mexican War. No, it isn’t a major holiday, but it is a great excuse to party.

Here in Houston, that means local bars, clubs, and restaurants will serve up Mexican fare, beer, tequila, and mucho margaritas. Here are some favorite spots for a serious Cinco de Mayo celebration. Fiesta safely, Houston.

8th Wonder Brewery will host “Lucha Libre Live” on Saturday, as a lead-up to Cinco de Mayo. Join the iconic brewery for a night of thrilling performances, delicious food, and endless fun. 6 pm.

BoomerJack's Grill will be offering its Jack's Ritas for $3 all day. Their signature, crafted draft margarita features Sauza Hacienda Silver Tequila. It also comes with a custom rim (salt, sugar, tajin) and flavors including strawberry, watermelon, peach, sangria, and pineapple. 11 am.

Candente is celebrating Cinco de Mayo with their annual fiesta happening all weekend. They will showcase lively festivities including festive decor, two additional satellite bars for extra house-made margaritas, and a special appearance from a mariachi band. 10 am.

Caracol, Hugo’s and Xochi will have a five-hour, Sunday brunch buffet for Cinco de Mayo. They will also have $10 signature margaritas, along with The Greatest Margarita Ever Sold for $18. 10 am (11 am Xochi).

Comalito is kicking off the holiday with a day-long celebration at the Houston Farmers Market featuring $5 margaritas, food specials like pozole and cochinita pibil. Lalo Tequila will also be there to share freebies and stellar sips. 10 am.

Cyclone Anaya’s wants all their customers to have a marg in hand on Cinco de Mayo. They’ll have $5 margaritas all day long, with the option to upgrade to a jumbo for $10. 10 am.

El Bolillo Bakery is celebrating their patria (translation; homeland) all weekend long. We’re talking about delicious Mexican-themed pan dulce, sugar cookies, tres leches cakes, cake pops, and more. 6 am.

El Patio aka Club No Minors will have happy hour all day, with $3 Dos XX, Tecate & Miller Lite; $7 house margs; and $8 famous blue Margaritas. A DJ and a mariachi band will be around to provide music. 11 am.

Gaspachos Mexican Bites will be basically getting its “Mariachis y Margaritas” on. They’ll have margaritas featuring heavenly flavors, soulful mariachi tunes and an electrifying DJ (starting at 4 pm). 2 pm.

Hidden Bar has partnered with popular Houston deejays Wunderboi, Zino and Loopy, to keep the Cinco de Mayo party going. There will also be drink specials on margaritas, Tommy margaritas, and palomas, as well as specials on all tequilas and mezcal. 3 pm.

Mutiny Wine Room will be celebrating Cinco de Mayo all weekend long, inviting people to same vintages from Mexico’s wine country. The bar will also serve its take on chiles en nogada. 2 pm.

The Original Ninfa’s is doubling down on Cinco De Mayo with weekend-long festivities, including promotional giveaways and drink specials, at both locations. Live mariachi performances will infuse the atmosphere with the vibrant sounds of Mexico. 11 am.

Pistolero’s will have a Cinco de Mayo parking-lot party, complete with $7 margaritas, $6 shots, $7 Mexican candies, and $8 Ranch Waters. There will also be a mariachi crew, a flower wall, a photobooth, and music by DJ Rhyno. Noon.

The Savoy is hosting a festive celebration loaded with deals on scratch-made Mexican dishes, frozen margaritas, specialty drinks, and tequila. They will also offer south of the border favorites and frozen margaritas for $5 each. 11 am.

State Fare Kitchen & Bar will offer $5 frozen or on-the-rocks margaritas (originally $14) all day at all three locations. Their signature margaritas pair perfectly with their chunky guacamole and queso blanco with green chiles. 10 am.

Tacodeli will be offering diners a $5 margarita or the Special of the Month, the carne asada taco, which will be launching that day. The limited-time taco will be served with grilled steak, avocado, onion, cilantro and a lime wedge, and will only be available through June 22. 8 am.

Thirteen, James Harden’s Midtown restaurant, is hosting an exclusive Cinco de Mayo tasting event. Guest chefs Raul Gonzalez and Jorge “Monstro” Ortiz will present a gourmet, seven-course culinary adventure, complete with seven wine and cocktail pairings. 6 pm.

URBE will first offer a five-hour, Sunday brunch buffet; After that, the restaurant will have a special cookout with happy hour bites on the front patio. The live entertainment includes a DJ and a mariachi band. 10 am.

Verde Garden is celebrating Cinco de Mayo with a first-come-first serve, all-day event. Brunch is available with $8 Tommy margaritas, both frozen and on-the-rocks. There will be a mariachi band, folklore dancers, and a live DJ. 11 am.

Both WILD spots will have $8 cocktails on mango, hibiscus, strawberry & watermelon margaritas, Ranch Water, and palomas; plus $5 Mexican candy or tequila shots, and $4 Pacificos or Modelos. You can also enjoy $3 Taquitos or $5 Elote cups. 8 am.

Photo by Shawn Chippendale

Ninfa's will celebrate with drink specials at both locations.

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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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