Townhouse is the town joke

Last night three of my friends and myself went to happy hour at a new place in Dallas called Townhouse. I have actually been to the one in Sherman Oaks, California before and remembered it being a good time. The food didn't stand out to me, but I didn't have any bad memories of the food either and of course the drinks were good! Townhouse has recently opened up at the Dallas Galleria which is near my house. I am taking the blame for picking this place for our get together. Honestly, it was horrible! I will probably never go back.

The decor is very nice. It is very modern and pretty. All the tables are able to roll so you could configure the tables to meet your needs. Here are some pictures I found on their facebook page. You can see it looks very nice!

 All images via

When Dani and I got there, we were able to grab one of the last tables and it was only just 5:00! I guess these happy hourers started early! They had happy hour from 3-7 and it included beers, well drinks, and house wines. Here is strike one. The bartender/waiter brought us the regular menu and left. We were confused because I had called and asked about HH (because they have no website!) but the HH specials were no where to be found on this menu. Another waitress comes up and we ask her about happy hour and she bring us the table tent we should have had with the specials. We each order house wine. Kate and Lauren arrive. Here is strike two, Kate has been looking for the restaurant and could not locate it because there is no entrance from inside the Galleria. You have to walk outside to get to it and since there is no convenient parking you have to park in one of the garages (the closest being the Banana/Gap/Old Navy) garage and walk.

Our food was nothing great. We first ordered the roasted red pepper hummus. It came with these hard little chip things and cucumbers. I like the hummus I get at the grocery better and I would have preferred pita bread. These hard things were not good.

We also ordered the calamari. It came as two kinds. The normal rings and the full tentacles. None of us ate the tentacle ones. Gross. We also thought they were salty. They came with two sauces also, which I tried and was not impressed with.

Our third appetizer was the blue cheese chips. These were like kettle potato chips with a blue cheese sauce that had chunks of blue cheese in it. The flavor of the sauce was good. This was probably the best thing we had. But on top of the sauce was this orange zest of some kind which no one could tell us what is was! It had a strong taste to it. I don't know. We could not figure it out. The waitress said someone told her they thought it was carrots. We tried to pick around that stuff.

So none of the appetizers were worth ordering again. The service was not great. I had to hunt down the waitress to get us all another glass of wine before happy hour ended. I had to hunt her down to get our check when we were ready to go. The only saving grace here is that she forgot to charge our table for two of our wines. Yay! I do like free wine.

So overall Townhouse was a huge disappointment. I don't know if their happy hour is just not up to par and their dinner menu is better. This is not a place I will be going back to. Dallas has far too many great dining places to waste your calories on hardly mediocre food! I did enjoy my company though! Dani, Lauren, Kate and I had a great time! Dani is a new neighbor of mine who has just moved here recently from Ohio that I have recently met so I introduced her to two of my good girlfriends. Dani and I immediately went to Jersey Mike's to pick up sandwiches we were still hungry!

Oh well, you win some you lose some with new restaurants... Let me know if you go and have a better experience!