City in a Glass: Ft. Worth, Texas
Photo courtesy of The Usual
Thirsty? You’re in luck. In Paste’s drinking-and-traveling series, City in a Glass, we mix up a city’s signature swills and slide them down the bar to readers. Grab a stool. This round, in Ft. Worth, Texas, is on us.
In laid-back Fort Worth, Texas, people like to drink beer, bourbon and sometimes tequila. That’s about it. Located about 30 miles west of Dallas, Ft. Worth was a major stopping point along the Chisholm Trail, the path used in the mid-1800s to drive cattle between Texas and Kansas. Today Ft. Worth’s historic stockyards are still a major tourist attraction: Cowboys in period dress drive longhorn steer down the street during the day, and honky tonk bars such as Billy Bob’s Texas and the White Elephant Saloon pull huge drinking and two-stepping crowds at night. These are the kind of no-nonsense bar patrons who live in the outlying, rural areas of North Texas—the kind of people who probably have more things to do in their day than keep up with the latest cocktail trends.
Brad Hensarling, owner of The Usual cocktail bar on Magnolia Avenue, says this is one of the reasons why Ft. Worth’s cocktail scene is still relatively niche. He opened his spot in 2009, which got more people interested in cocktails, but not in opening craft bars; you can count the number of dedicated cocktail bars in the city on one hand. “Even though there haven’t been a lot of bars that have popped up, people have changed their approach,” he says. “Places that weren’t necessarily cocktail places have started to pay more attention and stock their bars differently. You can definitely see a sea change around the city.” At restaurants such as the popular Bird Café, the cocktail list has become just as important as the beer and wine selection—a shift that has only happened in the past two years. “Quality has replaced quantity,” says Bird Café beverage director Amber Davidson. “Customers are willing to wait for the perfect Old Fashioned.”
Hensarling says the biggest obstacle to having a booming cocktail scene right now is education, both of bartenders and patrons. “There’s still a lot of explaining that has to happen,” he says. “But as long as the cocktail community is progressing, if you’re spending time seeking out new and different stuff, that’s always going to be the case.” On this city drinks tour, we’re going to introduce you to three only-in-Ft. Worth cocktails, show you where to find them and even how to replicate them at home.
1. Unconventional Wisdom
Where to order: The Usual
The Usual was the first craft cocktail bar to open in the entire Dallas-Ft. Worth region, a 13-county behemoth referred to as the DFW metroplex. Owner Brad Hensarling says that back when he opened, in 2009, you couldn’t even find a bartender in Fort Worth who could make an Old Fashioned. “I would go to the nicest restaurants in town and ask for that kind of drink and I’d either get an eye roll or the bartender would try to fake his way through it,” Hensarling says. One of the reasons he opened his bar was because he was bored of having to do it at home. “We’re kind of like the paternal figure in this whole thing,” he says.
And customers trust Father Hensarling: Cocktail geeks pop their heads inside every day asking what’s new. “They really cling to the bar here,” he says. In fact, one of The Usual’s most popular drinks, the Unconventional Wisdom, is made with a completely foreign spirit to many of them. The drink features bison grass-infused vodka, a traditional Polish spirit with a green, almost sage-like taste. The drink also includes molasses, lemon juice and sage. “A lot of times I try to play flavors off of flavors from another spectrum, but the way the vodka tasted, I figured I could use the sage to bolster that,” he says. He says the whole thing tastes fresh yet earthy, like a ginger snap cookie.
Unconventional Wisdom
2 oz. Zubrówka bison grass-infused vodka
½ oz. rich simple syrup (2 parts sugar: 1 part water)
½ oz. lemon juice
1 barspoon blackstrap molasses
1 sage leaf, for garnish
Combine all ingredients plus ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake. Fine strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with a sage leaf.