In the alley behind Adair’s Saloon, there has been a seemingly modest addition to the back patio. It’s visible from the parking lot, a small update dwarfed by monumental construction on Commerce Street. Fresh new wood boards have been hammered into the shape of a window on the back fence. Look close enough, and you’ll see the ledge. It’s a new era for the 57-year-old dive bar.
In February, around Adair’s anniversary, owner Joel Morales was ready to plan a raucous birthday party for some time in March. Instead, this past Saturday, he entered his bar alone, stirred the jukebox, and rustled the air conditioning awake. He booted up the dusty neon lights like Jack Torrance firing up the Overlook Hotel. Instead of an anniversary party, a new drive-in window would have to do.
This week, Morales is opening up the window, now cut into the fence at Adair’s, for drive-up or walk-up service, because pivoting is all that bar and restaurant owners get to do these days. At Adair’s they’ll grill as many burgers ― the ironclad classic with yellow cheese, rings of red onion and mustard ― and deep-fry as many spuds as they can. Hot wings too, if you’re lucky, might show up. There will be cold beer to go.
It was 37 years ago, the moment Adair’s relocated to Deep Ellum, when they began serving liquor. Before that, in the first location on Oak Lawn (from about 1972 to 1982), it was simply draft beer, a jukebox and shuffleboard. Today, Morales continues to evolve Adair’s backyard as the stresses tighten around the pandemic. The back patio will be a fast-food beer barn, essentially, and a drive-in-and-up for cheeseburgers and cold beer and “Armadillo Eggs” (stuffed jalapeños inside bubbly egg roll wrappers). There will limited parking, or you will be able to walk up, or attempt to swing your car near the window, like a makeshift fast food lane.
“Something’s gotta happen,” Morales says. “Because there’s doom and gloom every day.”
A few days earlier, Morales camped out in the back of the bar, awaiting a bread delivery from Signature Baking. Above Commerce Street, towering over his bar, another new apartment complex continued to punch its way into the skyline. Morales noticed a few construction workers were strolling through the Clover Street alley, eking out a lunch break in the oppressive heat. He asked where they had picked up their lunch. He told them that a cheeseburger, fries and soda would only cost them $8 if they ordered from Adair’s. Adaptation is happening in real time for bar owners.
Other neighborhood spots have tried the same thing. Emporium Pies launched a “Pie-Thru” in May ― a tented to-go pie experience in Oak Cliff. The idea was sunsetted later that month. At La Popular Tamale House, if you stop by on the weekends, the restaurant will snap open its Fitzhugh Avenue-facing takeout window (within the convenience store that it’s housed in). Warm bundles of tamales pass through the window, by gloved hands, along with a mile of tortilla chips.
The makeshift drive-through is about boosting sales, sure. It’s also an idea that gives patrons the slightest nod, the thinnest shard of the feeling of being served and catered to inside their favorite neighborhood joints. For some bars, the drive-through is the most that can be done to keep business moving forward.
For Las Almas Rotas, the shift happened overnight. Co-owner Shad Kvetko and his partners had held off on reopening as long as they could to keep staff safe. When the shutdown clamped down in March, 80 percent of their business vanished. Still, they waited. Their mezcaleria is self-funded, and they wanted to learn more and see what was going to happen.
Kvetko was already familiar with the speed bumps of owning a local business. A couple of years ago, Rotas’ original chef stormed out of the kitchen, leaving the state and absconding with handfuls of the recipes. Leigh Kvetko, Shad Kvetko’s spouse, grabbed the wheel before anyone could crash and helped rebuild the menu from scratch over the next year. This past February, a drain pipe burst during a days-long downpour in Dallas, and floodwater filled their bar. Around the same time, they hired Armando Aguilar, who took a brief pause to get married and honeymoon in Mexico. The day he returned, March 17, he was ready to get to work. Then, the city shut down as the coronavirus spread.
“It’s pivot, pivot, pivot, right?” Kvetko says, exhausted. “We are fighting for our lives. We put all of our money into this project.”
There was fate in the form of an unkempt alley outside Las Almas’ service door. It cuts a small path from Parry Avenue to the lot behind the restaurant. Bright, multicolored banners adorn the building. A sign reads “Stop here for tacos.” It’s a charming little street. They call it “Las Almost Rotas.”
Pull in, and minutes later a family pack of tacos, tequila and lime juice fizzing inside a glacially-cold Topo Chico bottle, and heavily sugared and cinnamoned churros will be in the passenger seat. Las Almas presses fresh tortillas, too, employing the nixtamalization process with heritage maize. They soak the corn in a limy bath and hull the kernels to build the masa from scratch. Kvetko’s throwing around the idea of selling bulk masa and the tortillas in bundles, complete with Las Almas’ brush-clearing-hot salsa.
The enchiladas, neat rolls of tortillas run through with tangles of chicken and smoky, desert red sauce, are spectacular. The heat will clear out the cobwebs of weird quarantine dreams. It’s a small change to the service, maybe unnoticeable in between the mountainous ups and downs, or it may be the thing that carries Las Almas Rotas and other neighborhood spots across the gulf.
“We wanted to give our people just a little bit of an experience,” Kvetko says.
