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Dallas has a new bar, Double D’s. Yep, that’s the name

It’ll be a great hideout on Thanksgiving night.

Is Double D’s — this new windowless bar in the Dallas Design District — what you think it is? It’s painted purple on the outside, with its cheeky name glowing in neon. Would you go in?

According to the words on the side of the building, Double D's bar in the Design District...
According to the words on the side of the building, Double D's bar in the Design District has yummy cocktails, cold A/C, dancing and color TV. All true.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)

You should.

Double D’s is just a bar, run by four Dallas dudes.

Double D’s stands for Design District, silly.

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The former Dolphin Lounge has been gutted and reinvented as a homey, wood-paneled bar decorated with co-owner Phil Schanbaum’s mom’s records and an old lady’s afghans draped over the velvet couches. You can play the board games stacked on the bookshelf if you want to. Or snicker over the stack of cassette tapes once the bar opens Nov. 23, 2022.

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Double D’s looks like a dive bar. But that title is earned, not appointed, so give it time.

From left, Double D's co-operating partners are Brandon Hays, Sung Joon Koo, Jermey Elliott...
From left, Double D's co-operating partners are Brandon Hays, Sung Joon Koo, Jermey Elliott and Phil Schanbaum.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)
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The drinks were created by co-owner Jermey Elliott, who you’ve seen behind the bar at Parliament and Tiny Victories in Dallas. Elliott says many of the cocktails involve “lots of effort and thought,” but most of that is done out of sight, before the bar opens. It’s not the kind of place where it’ll take a bartender seven minutes to mix your drink. Some cocktails will be batched and served on tap, to save time.

Many drinks are served in ice-cold beer mugs. You know, the ones Grandpa used to keep in the freezer.

There’s no food here, either. You’re gettin’ it, it’s a bar.

Jermey Elliott created the drink recipes at Double D's.
Jermey Elliott created the drink recipes at Double D's.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)

Cocktail enthusiasts will appreciate Elliott and co-owner Sung Joon Koo’s seriousness with classics like an ice-cold gin martini or a sazerac. Of course there’s an espresso martini, but they call it the “Expresso” martini here, perhaps to poke fun at the frequent fliers who say it wrong.

House cocktails are fun, like the raspberry- and dill-infused vodka drink called Razz Letter 23, a twist on a Clover Club. The Razz Letter 23 is bouncy, if a cocktail can be that.

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Elliott’s play on a margarita is called the Bingo Bango and comes with the option of tequila or mezcal. Want it nonalcoholic? Just ask; the N/A Bingo Bango is lime and pineapple juices, vanilla agave and a Tajin rim. It’s a mocktail that actually tastes great — cheers to that!

The menus say the drinks are made with “all the love.” Stay long enough at the bar — it won’t be hard to do — and you’ll hear Elliott say it.

The pool table is made with peacock felt at Double D's in the Dallas Design District.
The pool table is made with peacock felt at Double D's in the Dallas Design District.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)

The Double D’s neighborhood

Look left, look right. From Double D’s doorstep, a handful of influential restaurant owners will or have already opened eateries mere steps away from this bar.

“We think, say, a year from now, this will really be a district,” says Brandon Hays, the fourth co-owner. (He and Schanbaum own and operate Sfuzzi, Ferris Wheeler’s, High Fives, the Whippersnapper and others.)

Immediately next door to Double D’s is El Carlos Elegante, a new Tex-Mex restaurant. It’s owned by the team that created Italian restaurant the Charles, which is less than a quarter-mile down Market Center Boulevard.

At one end of Double D's bar in Dallas, couches welcome customers ready to get cozy with...
At one end of Double D's bar in Dallas, couches welcome customers ready to get cozy with their cocktails.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)

Also over there: Nick Badovinus’ steakhouse Town Hearth and his coming-in-2023 restaurant Royal Bastard.

In 2024, a Phoenix-based company is expected to open a restaurant named Culinary Dropout in the neighborhood.

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Nearby, too, there’s the flashy restaurant the Mexican and glitzy Italian joint Carbone.

All those folks are going to need a place to drink before or after their dinner reservations, and Double D’s will be there, ready to serve (and showing no skin). We can see Double D’s as a respite for industry workers and Design District artists, too.

“The Design District doesn’t have its own bar,” Hays says. “We don’t have the Stoneleigh P [like Uptown does]. We don’t have Inwood Tavern [near the Park Cities]. We do not have Louie’s [on Henderson].”

Now we have a bar with a peacock-felt pool table and a name worth repeating: Double D’s.

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Double D’s is at 1404 N. Riverfront Blvd., Dallas. It opens Nov. 23, 2022. It will be open on Thanksgiving Day from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Double D’s regular hours (after Thanksgiving week) will be Wednesday through Sunday, 5 p.m. to 2 a.m.

For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter at @sblaskovich.