Concrete Rose opens in Houston
Cocktail bar Concrete Rose has opened in downtown Houston, championing Chicano culture and its co-founder’s Mexican-American background.
The bar comes from Houston native Greg Perez, who also co-founded Trash Panda Drinking Club in the city. Perez founded Concrete Rose alongside partner Saul Santana.
Inspired by his Mexican-American heritage, the drinks programme incorporates ingredients and ideas from both countries, while the venue features a raw industrial design collaborated on between Perez and Houston designer-artist Stephie Kaiser Harvel.
The bar’s name takes after American rapper Tupac Shakur’s The Rose That Grew From Concrete poetry collection, which explored resilience and how beauty can arise despite difficult circumstances.
Perez explained: “Being first generation, the son of an immigrant, means growing up in a constant identity negotiation – torn between American and Mexican.
“That duality is the foundation of Concrete Rose, which proudly celebrates both. There are no predecessors in this specific lane as far as cocktail bars: a bar built to champion Chicano culture on a national and international stage.”
The cocktail menu is presented as a lookbook inspired by fashion editorials, with each serve styled as a ‘street-fashion shoot’.
It is split into three sections: Signatures, which ‘bring the Concrete Rose collection to life through flavour; Kickbacks, which are described as a ‘crowd-pleasers with nostalgic culinary inspirations’; and Classics, which are reimagined through the bar’s lens.
Cocktails
Many of the cocktails are made through sustainable practices, with entire products and scraps utilised. There is also said to be an extensive use of infusions, acid-adjusted juices, housemade cordials, and fat washing, as well as a culinary-inspired foams and airs.
The process allows the team to batch drinks and serve them quickly, so they focus on their most important pillar: hospitality.
From the signature menu, some of the highlights include The Nature’s Law, which combines butter-washed Pueblo Viejo Blanco Tequila and Xicaru Pechuga Mezcal with a mole blend, tomatillo-jalapeño tea, Ancho Reyes Verde, agave syrup, celery bitters and mole poblano foam.
The No One Else Even Cared then contains Arette Blanco Tequila, tomato-yerba cordial, Uruapan Charanda rum, avocado sorbet and avocado-skin chip.
For cocktails inspired by food, from the Kickback menu, the Al Pastor takes on the aforementioned dish with cilantro and epazote-Infused Tequila, pineapple-cinnamon soda, and taco bitters (made with cumin, chiles, annatto, cinnamon and peppercorns).
Inspired by the pastry found at Panadería Rosetta bakery in Mexico City, the Guava Danish is made with brown butter-washed Maker’s Mark 76 and Old Grand-Dad Blend, guava syrup, croissant syrup, acid-adjusted guava nectar, and topped with vanilla whipped cream cheese.
The bar itself is located in the Purse building on Commerce Street, which was built in 1929. The space is contrasted by plush velvet booths and concrete columns, while black-and-white street photography from Mike Lazo adorns the walls. Lazo’s photography documents Mexican-American neighbourhoods in Houston and Los Angeles.
A large hand-painted ceiling mural from Eloy Angel, depicting the struggles of Chicanos amid icons of Houston’s skyline, crowns the room. The mural pays tribute to Angel and Perez’s mothers and grandmothers, whose overcoming of adversity is compared to roses growing from concrete.
The bar is now open daily from 4pm-1am.
For more new bars, see our roundup of the hottest openings from spring.
Other recent cocktail bar openings in the US include Golden Rule in San Francisco and Limo in New York City.
Related news
New openings boost bar numbers in Britain
