'It Has it All'; The Grapevine Bar Has Found a New Home

The Grapevine Bar on Maple Avenue is one of Dallas' most loved dive bars. It's long been a place for everyone and anyone, including many Observer happy hours both when our offices were just next door and since.

Last year the eclectic small bar with a courtyard big enough for a basketball court announced its lease was up and it was packing up and moving out. The land and building were purchased by Crow Holdings, the Dallas real estate company owned by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' bestie Harlan Crow.

The bar has been on Maple Avenue 27 years, so saying goodbye to the space will be sad. Co-owners Michelle and Ronny Honea have spent decades adding touches of humor and snark. They've said they will pack up all the key elements to take with them.
So, the big question for everyone is: What's the forwarding address?

For the past couple of weeks, the Honeas have been dropping hints about the new space on Facebook, enhancing and magnifying small details of photos, leaving everyone to guess the next location. It was a borderline mean tease. There are photos of wood, benches, the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, an outline of University Park and Highland Park. Some were just photos of their recent vacation in Mexico.

The new home of The Grapvine Bar will be the former restaurant and bar Redfield's Neighborhood Tavern (2213 Butler St.), which closed late last year and is less than 2 miles from the current location.

"It was very hard," Ronny says about finding a new space, "We looked at so many different places. It was looking like we were going to have to lease a place and do a complete redo, and it was discouraging. We hate to see that Redfield's is no longer around, but the timing was perfect."

This new location checks all the major boxes for them with some bonus elements.

"There's so much more space inside. We don't have to do anything except add the Grapevine flare," Ronny says.

Plus there's a fully equipped kitchen.
"We're definitely going to have food, although not at first," Michelle says.

There's no timeline yet for when they're moving out of The Grapevine Bar on Maple and into the new space. Michelle says that Crow has been "very generous and flexible." And there are still permits to acquire, which will take some time, but the Honeas are looking at "the summer."

"We don't want to throw a timeline on it and put unneeded pressure on ourselves," Michelle adds. "We're definitely going to give everyone enough time, definitely going to have a big bash. But there might be a few days of us being nowhere. There might be a gap."

The new location has enough room for the basketball court.

"It's another great thing about this place. It has it all. We'll also get to have live music," says Ronny.

Shade trees and a large patio also sold them on this space.

The only hard part is going to be hiring more people. The Grapevine has long held onto its bartenders and servers, some for decades.

"With all this space, we'll need to hire more people, and we'll need another 10 years to train them the right way," Ronny says with a laugh.