Category Archives: The Boonies

TBD Kitchen opens in Castle Hills: Are suburbanites ready for Latin cocktails?

TBD Kitchen
Bartender Daniel Guillen, now dropping drinks and knowledge in faraway suburbia.

 

CASTLE HILLS – OK, maybe Castle Hills isn’t really that far away. On a good day you can get here in less than a half-hour. Sandwiched between Lewisville, The Colony, Carrollton and West Plano, its regal label is intentional, with a 30-mph main drag dubbed King Arthur Boulevard and the sprawling development of king-sized homes described on its web site as “a majestic, 2,600-acre master-planned community.”

Castle Hills
TBD Kitchen, Guillen’s latest venture with owner Sean Conner at the Village Shops in Castle Hills.

It’s not the kind of outpost you’d expect to find a great cocktail, and yet, the very thought of being 25 miles north of downtown Dallas might make you pine for one. It’s a royal paradox.

Well, you’re in luck: With the opening of TBD Kitchen, Sean Conner’s latest venture (in partnership with Daniel Guillen), you and the villagers of Castle Hills now have two quality drinking establishments from which to choose.

TBD Kitchen, next door to Conner’s Pie 314, is the latest step in Daniel Guillen’s ongoing pilgrimage to promote Latin traditions via drink and food. Five of TBD’s nine house cocktails got test runs at the various pop-up events, seminars and South American-styled dinners that Guillen, the former beverage director for La Duni, has been throwing around the DFW area in the last year.

Castle Hills, Daniel Guillen
The Daisy — a cocktail category of which the Margarita is a variation — is a TBD staple.

Along with a bold selection of agave spirits and rums, those drinks complement a menu highlighting $2 street tacos. (Also, if anyone asks whether you want the off-menu chicharrones, say yes.) The décor is hip Mexican, with Day of the Dead skulls, Mexican movie posters and kitschy candles from Target. Cushy, bendy barstools are modeled after seats on bass boats.

“It’s not like Dallas here,” Guillen says. “It’s a whole different beast. People here have money, but they want comfort food.”

Situated at the Castle Hills Village Shops, nestled deep in the thicket of $500,000-plus homes, Conner has accommodated those tastes, offering quality pizza and now tacos, with decent cocktails to boot. “There’s three kinds of food that people eat all the time,” says Conner, among Dallas-Fort Worth’s pioneering craft-cocktail bartenders. “And these are two of them.”

Daniel Guillen
Guillen’s mission to bring Latin cocktails to the masses continues at TBD Kitchen.

But are the people of Castle Hills ready for cocktails like the Chamoyada, a drink inspired by Guillen’s visits to the fruterias of Oak Cliff, or the Pachamama, featuring Peruvian brandy and not one, but two, Italian bitter liqueurs?

Or what about the Bolivar Old Fashioned, a nod to the influential Venezuelan leader, which mixes five rums, Angostura bitters infused with tobacco leaves and Brazilian coffee beans? The nicely conceived drink did well on a recent night, perhaps because of Guillen’s piece de resistance, a coconut water ice cube that gradually sweetens the drink as it’s savored.

Guillen says TBD actually stands for Tacos, Burritos and Daisies — the Daisy being a cocktail category of which the Margarita is a variation. A daily Daisy will be a staple of Guillen’s offerings. And in the (warmer) future, Guillen envisions half-price rum nights with cigars and dominoes, Cuban-style, on the patio.

TBD Kitchen
These guys: Conner, a veteran of Victor Tango’s and Whiskey Cake, with partner Daniel Guillen.

As TBD was being built out, Guillen did a smart thing: He worked the bar at Pie 314. That earned him a familiarity with local residents that will serve him as he aims to nudge less adventurous palates into unfamiliar territory. “If you like Balvenie,” Guillen told one guest as he slid forward a bottle of Cartavio XO, “this is a Peruvian rum. It’s finished in sherry casks, just like Balvenie is.” The guy was inspired to give it a try.

A couple at the bar was impressed with Guillen’s Margarita Pa’Llevar (Margarita to-go), whose presentation mimics the street-ready drinks served in plastic bags in certain South America countries. It was among the drinks Guillen featured with chef David Anthony Temple at a South American dinner earlier this year, sipped through a straw coated with chamoy – fruit pulp flavored with lime and chile – for some added kick.

So maybe he’ll earn the keys to the kingdom just yet. “People are like, ‘Why here?’” Guillen says. “Even I don’t know. We were just given the chance, so we’re going to roll with it.”

For your consideration: Another Derby event. Yes, there will be cocktails. And fancy hats.

Polo on the Lawn
Amber West’s Thoroughbred may set your heart racing. (Photo courtesy of Lovell PR)

You could spent hours thinking about how none of the hats that appear on Derby Day are actually derbies, or you could do something way more productive: Figure out how you’re going to get yourself to Polo on the Lawn, the annual afternoon fundraiser featuring horses, cool hats and the excitement of the Kentucky Derby.

The 13th annual event, at the Prestonwood Polo & Country Club in Oak Point, features a U.S. Polo Association-sanctioned polo match and benefits Project Transformation, a Dallas organization serving low-income youth in North Texas. There’ll be live music, a silent auction and, no doubt, plenty of fancy chapeaus. Prizes will be given for best hat, picnic, tailgate and outfits.

The match will break at 5:15 pm for the traditional Champagne divot stomp, wherein attendees sip glasses of bubbly while wandering the polo field and stomping grass back in place where the horses have torn it up with their hooves. That will be followed by a viewing of the Kentucky Derby, accompanied by the day’s special cocktail, the Thoroughbred, a gin mint julep designed by bartender Amber West.

What’s this? A julep made with gin, not bourbon? “Gin and genever were used more in the medicinal juleps in the 19th century,” explains West, the former bar master at Central 214 who’s now with Caledonia Spirits. Her version uses honey, mint and Caledonia’s honey-tinged Barr Hill gin.

The polo match gets underway at 4 pm, with doors open at 3. VIP tickets – including grandstand box seating, a catered meal, wine and swag – are $150, though if you act fast you might be able to score them at half-price. General admission tickets are $45 for tailgate and lawn seating, plus Champagne and a commemorative glass. Kids 12 and under get in free.

Giddy-up.

PRESTONWOOD POLO & COUNTRY CLUB, 525 Yacht Club Road, Oak Point. 214-390-3444.