Last night I visited Hoop’s new place for the first time. Many Downtowners fondly remember the original Hoop’s Bar, a friendly neighborhood bar that was on the second floor of EP Delta Kitchen. With a beer pong table, Wii bowling, and one of the most entertaining bar staffs ever, Hoop’s Bar continued to flourish even after EP’s started to go downhill. Unfortunately, when EP’s closed in September, it had to close too.
Hoop’s new place, however, may be even better. It’s the Voodoo Room in the basement of Orleans on Front (formerly Cayenne Moon, on Front between Union and Gayoso across from the Butcher Shop). It has its own private entrance – look for an open door on Front, with steps leading downstairs. There you’ll find a very groovy speakeasy-style lounge run by Hoop. I was in there a couple of months ago for Orleans on Front’s grand opening. Since then Hoop has made some changes to the downstairs to make it more appealing. In particular, he enlarged the bar so it seats about 10, and the beer pong table has made its return. He’s working on getting Wii.
Now for the answer to the important question: They have PBR, and they serve it the way it was meant to be served, in cans. Price is a reasonable 2 bucks each.
For food, they’ll have Orleans on Front’s menu until 10, and then after that they’ll have the Voodoo Room late-night menu. That menu is still under construction but here’s what was on it as of last night: Cheese stix; sweet potato fritters; parmesan fried green tomatoes with comeback sauce; french fries with comeback sauce; Rotel cheese fries; 2 hot dogs; pork chop sandwich; double cheeseburger; triple cheeseburger; blackened chicken sandwich; blackened or cornmeal breaded catfish basket or sandwich; homemade bread pudding with Southern Comfort bourbon sauce. All the sandwiches, burgers, and dogs come with fries, and Rotel can be added to anything for $1.50. Again, the menu is still not totally decided at this point. Appetizers are $4-6.50 and sandwiches and baskets are $5-8, $9 for the triple cheeseburger.
The new bar will be open until 3 every night. Hoop will be behind the bar Tuesday through Saturday, and Lauren (who also works at Calhoun’s, and used to work at the Saucer) will be there Sundays and Mondays.
Wow… so now I have the Voodoo Room, the Saucer, and Bardog Tavern all within 4 blocks of my front door. Talk about a power trio of places to get a beer. And Silly Goose is not far from opening. And I want to try the new late night menu at Automatic Slim’s sometime soon too. Downtown just keeps getting better and better!
I’m thinking about getting the triple cheeseburger with Rotel next time I go, just so I can tell my health guru AL that I did.
In other news: Looks like the issue of what to wear to the ugly sweater party has been resolved… my friend Bicycle Bobby has a hideously ugly green sweater he’s going to give me. Unfortunately he wants me to meet him at the Saucer tonight to pick it up… the Saucer? I hate that place! All that beer is so unhealthy, and the outfits those girls wear are just plain indecent. I’ll have to spend extra time at church on Sunday to make up for it. And by “church” I mean “brunch at the Majestic.”
I sent out an e-mail to my trivia team’s e-mail list kicking off the annual “what are we going to do on New Year’s Eve” discussion/argument a few minutes ago. I’m looking for a better communication method than a Google e-mail list, because we keep leaving people off who aren’t on the trivia team. What I’m looking for is a web-based contact manager where everyone in our group (whether on the team or not) can add their e-mail addresses. Then, when someone has something they want to send out to the group, they can go through and check boxes next to names of people they want to invite, or click a “select all” button to check everybody. It would then produce a list of e-mail addresses that can be pasted into the To: field of any e-mail program. So far I haven’t found anything like that. If anyone knows of such a tool let me know. If I can’t find anything, I may write one using PHP.
More posts to come today – I’ve been asked to be a “celebrity judge” for an event at the Majestic Grille next week, and I’ll have info on a new cheap beer night at Calhoun’s.