When you arrive at the tiny glass-encapsulated Better Luck Tomorrow in Houston’s hip Heights neighborhood, you’re asked to join the bar’s “club,” which requires a signature before you’ve even looked at the menu. It’s the bar’s coy way of working around local restrictions that prohibit the sale of alcohol unless the establishment is a private club.
But over the short time it has been open, you could say Better Luck Tomorrow has become one of the hottest clubs in Houston, winning accolades galore. Eater Houston ranked it the best bar in Houston when it opened in 2017, and Food & Wine magazine flagged it as one of the country’s top 10 restaurants of 2018.
Awards for both restaurant and bar is the result of the mind-meld of the city’s two dining wunderkinds. Better Luck Tomorrow’s food menu is designed by Justin Yu, the James Beard award-winning chef known for his popular Houston restaurants Oxheart (closed in 2017) and Theodore Rex. The bar’s cocktail menu is the work of Bobby Heugel, the man who has virtually remade Houston’s drinking scene through innovative concoctions at his bars Anvil and The Pastry War. The two chose the name, the title of a film considered a prequel to the “Fast and Furious” franchise, because it seemed fitting for a bar. “Bars are generally happy places with a bit of melancholy,” Mr. Yu said.
The bar is open nightly but does not take reservations. As a result, its small interior can get cramped quickly with millennials on dates or groups of foodies on the hunt, as it did on the rainy night I visited. With outdoor seating on either side of the bar, and in light of its popularity, the space is best calibrated for either sunny weekend brunch or boozy post-dinner drinks and nosh. The dress code is come as you are, or rather, come as you would like to be seen in a tight, flirty space.
Meat lovers should not miss the sweet-and-sour fried lamb belly or the fried chicken with Middle Eastern spices, both delicious, elevated versions of drunk food cravings. The menu is short and (mistakenly, in this pescetarian’s opinion) includes no fish dishes and no dessert (other than a sad cookie). The menu still satisfies, however, especially when shared with three or four others via the “cycle,” an order of one of everything for $99.
A look around the cozy dining area, though, will betray its best angle: a hip, groovy setting for a date. Sure, you could go for the savory patty melt, but why not share the very shareable Persian flatbread and carrot spread instead? It showcases the ingredient — carrot — that Mr. Yu has mastered at all of his restaurants.
The bar turns out deceptively simple cocktails. The Japanese highball tastes like whiskey champagne — not a bad thing — and the cold-fashioned is an unpretentious rum and bourbon drink with complex undertones served in a highball glass. The Andes julep features promising ingredients — chocolate mint, mole bitters, cinnamon — but the results are a bit muddy and unremarkable. Steer instead to Mr. Heugel’s standout gin cocktails, like the long story short, which is dry, floral and gin-forward and served in 1930s-style Nick and Nora glasses, or the salty cat, manna for grapefruit lovers and the perfect palate cleanser to start the meal.
You could also drink something other than cocktails, like a Vietnamese coffee porter by the local 8th Wonder Brewery, or a bottle of light and fizzy crémant de Bourgogne, but you’d be missing out on the wunderkind ways.
Better Luck Tomorrow, 544 Yale Street; (713) 802-0845; a meal for two, without drinks or tip, is about $65.
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