Here Nor There

Here Nor There is a reservation-only speakeasy at 612 Brazos Street, in a basement beneath an alleyway beside the historic Driskill Hotel. It opened in June 2018 and seats just 55. Getting in is part of the design: reservations go through a dedicated app, which releases a code shortly before your booking to open the alley gate. The Infatuation's Nicolai McCrary noted it sounds like a lot of effort, and that it stops feeling that way the moment you are through the door and greeted by a life-sized stuffed bear holding a tray of champagne with old-school hip hop on the speakers.

The cocktails are expensive — thirty to fifty dollars — and technically serious, with liquid nitrogen-cooled olives, clarified punches and hand-stamped ice, all of which McCrary read as part of the show rather than as affectation. The menus are high-concept and rotate.

For a non-drinker the honest assessment is that this is a craft cocktail bar first. Upscale mocktails are available and made to the same standard as everything else, but they are not a named, published programme the way they are at the Roosevelt Room or Parley — you are asking the bar to build you something rather than reading a list. Given the technique on display that is usually a good trade, but it is worth knowing before you book a table at these prices.

What the format does offer a non-drinker is unusual and underrated. The evening is a seated, ticketed, hour-and-a-half experience with a hard start time, in a room of 55 people. Nobody is buying rounds, nobody is at a bar, and the pace is set by the venue rather than by whoever is drinking fastest. That structure removes most of the social machinery that makes a normal night out difficult when you are not drinking, which can matter more than what is in the glass. Open from 5pm nightly.