If you are looking for a cheap and fun date night in downtown Dallas, stop looking… I have it for you. The best part about this date night idea is that you can make it as expensive or as cheap as you want with great drinks and food, but the best part of the whole night is the view of the city itself for free.
My wife Jessica and I discovered the National Building on Elm St. in downtown Dallas last night. The building itself is the home of the Thompson Hotel Dallas, some luxury apartments and some really great restaurants. In the main lobby area, they have the restaurant Catbird which was what initially brought us into the building. My wife had heard they had a great happy hour and we pride ourselves in being happy hour connoisseurs. The menu was great and they had a bunch of good appetizers. While we were sitting at the bar, the bartender told us that we should head up to the Monarch Restaurant on the 49th Floor to sit at their bar and see the incredible view. He also told us that all of the restaurants in the building are pretty slow before 7p so your ability to post up at the bar is really good. I find that most of the great adventures that I have been on started with a chat with a bartender.
We headed for the elevators and with our sights on the 49th floor and the Monarch. We walked up to their elevator concierge and told them we wanted to head up to the bar and they gave us a glass of champagne for the trip. I was shocked but that is what they do for everyone looking to head up to the Monarch. This night is really starting to take off for us.
The bar at the Monarch is stunning. There was plenty of room for us to grab a drink and the view of the East side of downtown, convention center area is amazing. In fact, the men’s bathroom urinal had a view of the Omni which I found both amazing and… Hoping the glass was tinted. LOL. The Monarch restaurant itself is very high end Italian steakhouse and they have incredible rare wines and spirits for those folks with a taste for the extravagant. To eat at a table, the reservations are booked for months, but I would say if you have a really big dinner date you need to set up, this would be the place. Most of the tables in the restaurant are situated along the glass windows with a view basically looking over all of Dallas.
You may be thinking, Brian… You said cheap and this sounds expensive other than the free elevator champagne. Hold onto your hats. We then found out that the Monarch has a Japanese sushi speakeasy on the 50th floor. There is no elevator access, so you have to go down a hall by the elevators and up the stairs after you walk through a door marked Kessaku, which is Japanese for “Masterpiece.” Kessaku has tables that can be reserved for sushi dinner, their menu isn’t huge, but it’s mainly meant for drinks, snacks and the real amenity… The masterpiece itself, a 360 degree view of DFW.
Once you get to Kessaku, you can grab a seat at the bar, or a drink and walk through a curtain next to the bar to the observation deck. The deck itself is a lap around the building with nothing but candle lit views and open seating over looking any direction in the city that you want. We of course took a good half hour on each side just looking at the fancy rooftops of the buildings in Dallas and imagining owning the roof top pools of some of them. We spent about an hour just relaxing in the open seating chairs in the observation deck and then made our way back down to the reality of the ground floor.
In summation, the next time you have an event in downtown, a concert or game at AAC, I recommend that you make a happy hour spot at the National on Elm St. and for the cost of one drink at the bar, you get a road soda of champagne for the ride up and an incredible view of the masterpiece that is the city of Dallas at night. The lesson to be learned from all of this? Always chat with your bartenders and be nice, they know where the best spots in town are.
