jayelbee said:

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There have to be at least a dozen posters (single and married) and twice that many lurkers that are waiting for you to confirm the final meat up spot.

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Is The Rustic mostly outdoors? Because I'd prefer to not melt into a blob of sunscreen, mascara, and boob sweat before dinner.

My backyard

TXTransplant said:

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Is The Rustic mostly outdoors? Because I'd prefer to not melt into a blob of sunscreen, mascara, and boob sweat before dinner.

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Hybrid. It's a bit of both.

jayelbee said:

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There have to be at least a dozen posters (single and married) and twice that many lurkers that are waiting for you to confirm the final meat up spot.

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Ha...funny! I'm imaging a bunch of middle-aged engineers and accountants having a slow Friday checking back here periodically hoping to find an excuse to blow off work early.

Irish 2.0 said:

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TXTransplant said:

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Is The Rustic mostly outdoors? Because I'd prefer to not melt into a blob of sunscreen, mascara, and boob sweat before dinner.

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Hybrid. It's a bit of both.

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mostly indoors at the Post Oak location. The outdoor area is a lot larger downtown.

You heifers stay up north. We got enough beef down by the lake.

The bar at MAD in River Oaks District has fantastic people watching and surprisingly not terrible drinks.

good call. BCN has great gin drinks, so that doesn't surprise me.

Don't know about drink specials, but Caracol used to have a pretty busy bar during happy hour (haven't been since COVID). Get the roasted oysters, so good.

ThunderCougarFalconBird said:

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The bar at MAD in River Oaks District has fantastic people watching and surprisingly not terrible drinks.

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MAD is awesome, but it would be a shame to go there and not stay for dinner.

Based on where the OP's dinner reservation, I'd probably go with Julep for happy hour.

So where are we meeting?

We're flying by the seat of our pants. Stopped at a friend's store to do a little shopping, and without hesitating, she said Bludorn is the place to be. We will find out if she can be trusted.

Bludorn has a good bar

Diggity said:

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Bludorn has a good bar

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Drinks are great. Crowd is meh. I expected better from the big city on a Friday night.

TXTransplant said:

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Diggity said:

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Bludorn has a good bar

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Drinks are great. Crowd is meh. I expected better from the big city on a Friday night.

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That's what you get for not taking our advice and listening to your wife's friend. You're a victim of your own making!

Your key takeaway from this; your wife's friends are morons

TXTransplant said:

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Diggity said:

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Bludorn has a good bar

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Drinks are great. Crowd is meh. I expected better from the big city on a Friday night.

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you know where to go

Irish 2.0 said:

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TXTransplant said:

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Diggity said:

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Bludorn has a good bar

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Drinks are great. Crowd is meh. I expected better from the big city on a Friday night.

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That's what you get for not taking our advice and listening to your wife's friend. You're a victim of your own making!

Your key takeaway from this; your wife's friends are morons

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Wife's friends??? Have you even read the thread?

Diggity said:

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TXTransplant said:

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Diggity said:

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Bludorn has a good bar

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Drinks are great. Crowd is meh. I expected better from the big city on a Friday night.

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you know where to go

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Yep, I got no one to blame but myself. I'm hoping it's just still early...? We will be here another hour-ish.

TXTransplant said:

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Irish 2.0 said:

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TXTransplant said:

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Diggity said:

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Bludorn has a good bar

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Drinks are great. Crowd is meh. I expected better from the big city on a Friday night.

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That's what you get for not taking our advice and listening to your wife's friend. You're a victim of your own making!

Your key takeaway from this; your wife's friends are morons

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Wife's friends??? Have you even read the thread?

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My bad. Thought you said "wife's friend's store". My point remains. Key takeaway should be to trust the Internet forum board and not friends

TXTransplant said:

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Yep, I got no one to blame but myself. I'm hoping it's just still early...? We will be here another hour-ish.

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On my way!

Isn't the blue door closed now?

TXTransplant said:

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Diggity said:

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Bludorn has a good bar

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Drinks are great. Crowd is meh. I expected better from the big city on a Friday night.

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The limp-wristed, Inner Loop-living, liberal soy boys are all still too scared of the 'rona to make themselves cougar-bait.

It actually turned out great. My friend who's store we stopped at earlier showed up with her posse, so it was fun. And the friend who drove me to pick up my car got a job lead, so all good. Off to dinner now.

On a side note, how the heck to y'all drive in town every day? I swear, my car is going to need to go back in the shop after navigating the streets and potholes of Houston.

Most of us drive slabs with swangas so it's really not that bad.

It's why everyone on the auto board owns a white Ecoboost F150

Texan_Aggie said:

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Most of us drive slabs with swangas so it's really not that bad.

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No lie, I was behind a Ford Explorer hoopty with a rear tire that was shaking as much side to side as it was rotating forward, and a front tire that was angled out at at least 25 degrees. Dude (obviously) couldn't stay in his lane to save his life.

Between that, the potholes, and the drunk cyclists weaving in and out of traffic, my friend thinks she's lucky to still be alive.

aTm_bomb said:

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It's why everyone on the auto board owns a white Ecoboost F150

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I swear, I felt like I needed 4 wheel drive. The Boxster is not equipped for Houston terrain.

Diggity said:

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We had a birthday party for my wife and a few of her friends there and the service was awful.

Sounds like that wasn't an outlier.

Great setup but **** execution by management. Maybe they figure the crowd is transient so they don't care.

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Yep, Everytime I've gone the waiter disappears for 30 minutes and you have to ask someone else if they can take your drink order lol. I'm not a waiter snob at all, but the rustic is by far the worst service I've ever experienced in a restaurant.

This thread is like peeking into an alternate dimension where life sucks and is unfulfilling.

Ocean Of Funk said:

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This thread is like peaking into an alternate dimension where life sucks and is unfulfilling.

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It's the Tine Board. If you're expecting roses and sunshine, you're in the wrong place.

Ocean Of Funk said:

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This thread is like peaking into an alternate dimension where life sucks and is unfulfilling.

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It's always amusing when frumpy, boring suburbanites venture from their tract home utopia with cosmopolitan visions of How Stella Got Her Groove Back and describe dipping their toe in the Inner Loop as if they were Christopher Columbus confronting hungry cannibals in the New World.

ea1060 said:

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Diggity said:

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We had a birthday party for my wife and a few of her friends there and the service was awful.

Sounds like that wasn't an outlier.

Great setup but **** execution by management. Maybe they figure the crowd is transient so they don't care.

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Yep, Everytime I've gone the waiter disappears for 30 minutes and you have to ask someone else if they can take your drink order lol. I'm not a waiter snob at all, but the rustic is by far the worst service I've ever experienced in a restaurant.

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Agreed.

Cool atmosphere and "pat green is one of the owners (not sure if that's true)".

Lunch, dinner, or happy hour, large or small group, it has sucked.

Is picking up on sarcasm in the written word a lost art these days?

There probably are women out there who think one night at happy hour at a Houston restaurant is some major groove-getting, eat, pray, love life-changing experience. My friends and I are not that kind of women.

We just wanted good drinks, food, and atmosphere that was a little different than what we get up here in Suburbia.

She actually nailed it on the dinner restaurant. Xin Chao was very good, and we don't have any place with a menu like that up here. I have a bit of a food hangover, but the soft shell crab and pork buns were excellent. It was also very reasonably priced, especially for the quality and amount of food that we got.

TXTransplant said:

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Is picking up on sarcasm in the written word a lost art these days?

There probably are women out there who think one night at happy hour at a Houston restaurant is some major groove-getting, eat, pray, love life-changing experience. My friends and I are not that kind of women.

We just wanted good drinks, food, and atmosphere that was a little different than what we get up here in Suburbia.

She actually nailed it on the dinner restaurant. Xin Chao was very good, and we don't have any place with a menu like that up here. I have a bit of a food hangover, but the soft shell crab and pork buns were excellent. It was also very reasonably priced, especially for the quality and amount of food that we got.

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Did a dude come to all and say the best part of happy hour is you ? Then you all giggled