The Apothecary has a new menu of cocktails, a tour of decades that lasts through August.
By Lauren Drewes Daniels DALLAS OBSERVER
May 12, 2025
The Apothecary on Lower Greenville is a funny little space. No bright lights mark the spot. No loud bangers spill out onto the sidewalk, luring customers to a boozy good time. If you pop it into your Google Maps, Siri will tell you you’ve arrived and you’ll wonder ‘Where?’ and grumble about how she’s a liar.
The only sign that marks the spot at this upscale cocktail den is a bronze sign no more than four inches high, on a post out front.
Our advice here is to persevere.
Apothecary is a quirky little space in terms of its eclectic menu and bi-annual costume changes. Last year, it went literally down the rabbit hole with an “Alice in Wonderland” theme. Before that, it created a cocktail menu based on zodiac signs.
Now the menus have been reprinted, this time for a tour of the decades.
In April, they started with the 1920s, offering a menu reflective of that time period. As cliche as this sounds, each drink tells a story. Take the Opium Den, made with Baiju rum and — since clearly opium is no longer available — the bar team got creative in finding a way to infuse the flavors of poppy seeds into a syrup.
May celebrates cocktail and food culture from the ’50s. Think meatloaf and pigs in a blanket washed down with a Don Draper dirty martini. And Apothecary might be the only place we’d actually try a cocktail called Sunday Supper, which is a green bean casserole in drink form.
“We were talking bout what drinks represent America in the ’50s and the green bean casserole came up,” says Tanner Agar, owner and creative director of Apothecary and Rye. One of the bartenders, Mitch, built a clever layered cocktail with foam on the top that represents the creaminess of the sauce, along with the core ingredients: green beans and mushrooms.
When asked what it actually tastes like, Agar offers an admittedly unsatisfactory answer: “The easiest way to describe it is green bean casserole.”
But people don’t want to drink green bean casserole, I countered.
“Yeah, well, people said they didn’t want to drink butter curry or Tom Kha soup,” Agar says, implying that after they tried it, they did. “There’s a friendly rivalry amongst the team here to say, ‘Well, if you could get them to do that, let me see what I can do next.'”
That’s fair enough considering a bartender at sister-concept and neighbor Rye, Julian Shaffer, was awarded the Michelin Guide Texas 2024 Exceptional Cocktails Award in 2024. They know cocktails — officially.
I stopped by in mid-April for a sampling of a few drinks. Being in a dirty martini mood, we ordered the Lunch with Don Draper with gin (or vodka if you’d like), a house brine, black pepper and celery bitters. The glass wore a scarf of thyme and rosemary salt. Even better, however, were the dirty martini deviled eggs.
The drink menu of the ’50s isn’t just dirty martinis, though, as Agar explained that time period saw the rise of Tiki culture.
“So the ’50s menu is really formatted into two parts, and the first part is the American Dream [green bean casserole],” he says. “World War II has ended, and you’re coming home. This is obviously the Baby Boomers. We’re going to have peace and we’re going to have prosperity. And then the second half of the menu is about Tiki culture, which also exploded as a function of World War II.”
The Happy Talk is a take on the Polynesian classic Dole Whip, made with “navy strength gin and rum,” pineapple, passion fruit, basil, cardamon dram and vanilla.
Agar explains that his team spends months working on recipes, getting the flavors, textures and presentation just right. Bartender Moise Zamora spent months on the Dole Whip-inspired drink and Agar says it’s one of his favorites.
Is there a risk in changing the menu so often? Could that alienate customers? Does Dallas like to be surprised with new cocktails? Agar admits they get a lot of customers who come back for the tried—and—true, the full drink menu is still available.
“But on the other hand, there are people who do want to try something new and something different,” he says. “And there’s a standard we want to uphold to ourselves. And I’m glad we’re doing this sprint and putting out so many — we’ll have developed and put out 50 new cocktails in a four-month period.”
The full dinner menu is a whole other story. The Cacio e pepe with hand-rolled egg yolk pasta was nothing short of a dream, as was the ocean trout swimming in a coconut saffron lobster bisque.
For the next few months, Apothecary will continue to travel through the decades. June welcomes a menu based on classics from the ’70s, July is the ’90s, and in August, they’ll have a best-of menu from each month.
But once fall arrives, they’ll have a new slate of cocktails at the ready.
Lauren Drewes Daniels is the food editor of the Dallas Observer. She started working as a freelance writer in 2013 and became editor in 2021. She covers Dallas’ evolving dining scene, the many openings and closings as well as trends and breaking news. She oversees annual lists including Top 100 Bars and Top 100 Restaurants and contributes to the Best of Dallas. If you have a tip about an amazing pastry, pie or taco, let her know.