Pushing Daisies

Pushing Daisies opened on 17 November 2022 in the basement level of the Fifth + Broadway development, and it was the first bar concept from Sam Fox, the Arizona restaurateur behind Fox Restaurant Concepts and more than a hundred restaurants before it. The Nashville Scene's Chris Chamberlain covered the opening and described it as a luxury lounge with a slightly hidden entrance across the street from Bridgestone Arena, a speakeasy check-in at the door, sleek wall coverings and murals inside, and industrial conduit overhead that the fire marshal made the staff paint red. The floor is daisy-patterned penny tile. It matters for this directory that the room reads as a proper bar rather than a restaurant with a bar attached, because that is what people are usually looking for when they want a night out without drinking.

The main list is agave: more than forty margarita variations plus tequila and mezcal cocktails, and drinks that arrive garnished with tweezers and occasionally with fire. Alcohol is very much served here. What earns it a place is the standing zero-proof section, printed on the same menu under the heading Nada Guey. There are three, all $9: the Paloma Refresco, built with ruby grapefruit, lava salt, fresh lime and fizzy water; La Playa, with fluffy pineapple, toasted cinnamon, pomegranate and what the menu calls drunken chia seeds; and the Fresa Loca, with fresh strawberry, mandarin orange and citrus tonic. They are made by the same bar team as everything else and priced in line with the rest of the room rather than as an afterthought.

Practical notes. The bar is closed Monday and Tuesday, opens at 5pm midweek and noon at weekends, and runs to 2am Thursday through Saturday - which makes it one of the few downtown rooms with a named alcohol-free option available late. It is directly under the Broadway honky-tonk strip and across from Bridgestone, so expect it to be busy on event nights, and the entrance is genuinely easy to walk past.