Jazz music is alive and properly in Montrose due to Doc’s Houston.
The Tower Theatre in Montrose has lived many lives since 1936. It opened as a film home, switched to a Hollywood Video rental hub, and later turned El Actual Tex-Mex restaurant. Most not too long ago, Louisiana-born Acme Oyster Home slung Gulf oysters to neighborhood regulars. Now, the landmark has a brand new sound and function: stay music.
“It’s simply been wonderful to me {that a} metropolis the scale of Houston, with as a lot tradition and historical past as [it has], simply doesn’t have a membership like this,” proprietor Brent “Doc” Watkins says.
Doc’s Houston goals to develop the town’s stay music panorama with an intimate area that blends efficiency, eating, and design. Watkins says he desires to have interaction all of the senses and invitations company to take a seat near the stage, really feel the room’s power, and savor a meal that’s each bit as memorable because the music.
Strolling in, diners will hardly acknowledge the previous oyster joint. San Antonio–based mostly Card and Firm Architects reimagined the 11,000-square-foot area, including an upstairs mezzanine and bar to spice up capability from 300 to round 400 company. Curved partitions, tiled surfaces, and particulars drawn from 1936 images nod to the constructing’s cinematic previous. A brand new 18-foot digital wall constructed for stay streaming, celebrations, and personalised leisure facilities the room, and a efficiency stage anchors the area. Right here, Watkins, inventive director Graeme Francis, and leisure director Felicia Guerra plan to showcase a rotating lineup of musicians—salsa, soul, and R&B—in a setting that feels purely Houston.
The Tower Theatre’s interiors now embody a efficiency stage and a mezzanine degree.
By definition, Doc’s is a jazz supper membership, however Watkins, who additionally owns Jazz, TX, in San Antonio, envisions one thing broader. “A mission for me and for Doc’s is that we wish to convey a sense of pleasure to our company, and we wish them to depart with enormous smiles on their faces,” Watkins says. “I believe the best way to try this is with artwork and generosity, and that occurs in every thing we do, from the meals to the service to the music.”
Chef Jose Avila, previously of San Antonio’s five-star, AAA 5-Diamond Resort Emma, designed a menu that blends basic supper-club consolation with trendy touches reflective of the town’s various meals scene. Starters embody ahi tuna tartare, grilled octopus in a white bean and garlic puree, Peruvian-style purple snapper ceviche, and an Iberico ham platter, serving to diners kick-start their dinner. Entrées vary from clam on line casino—baked clams topped with breadcrumbs, peppers, and Iberico bacon, all served over angel-hair pasta—to steaks and a catch of the day. Avila’s favourite? A brined-and-baked half hen completed with an herbaceous “taste bomb” of inexperienced goddess sauce, made with a contact of cream. “That’s my child proper there,” Avila says.
Chef Jose Avila says the baked hen with the inexperienced goddess sauce is a “taste bomb.”
The bar menu leans towards “elegant simplicity,” says beverage director James Sporer, Watkins’s youthful brother. “We’re not the stage. We’re not the highlight—all we’re attempting to do is elevate their expertise,” he says.
The Doc’s Symphony, a curated listing of home cocktails, options the Savannah Sling (gin, sake, and peach liqueur); the Ardour Flower (mezcal, tequila, passionfruit, lime, and rosemary honey syrup); and one among Sporer’s favorites, the Virtually Blue—a candy, boozy nod to the Elvis Costello music, made with Rittenhouse Rye, biscotti liqueur, blueberry-anise syrup, quinaquina, and palo santo bitters. Classics like palomas, old-fashioneds, and espresso martinis spherical out the menu, together with gin and tonics, mocktails, and wines by the glass. “A bit of one thing for everyone, and a bit of one thing that may hopefully broaden individuals’s horizons a bit as properly,” Sporer says.
Dessert guarantees chocolate panna cotta with pomegranate, poached pear infused with pinot grigio, and a pistachio tiramisu layered with coconut milk as a substitute of espresso, date syrup–soaked ladyfingers, blended pistachio butter, and mascarpone, garnished with white chocolate and roasted pistachios.
Brent “Doc” Watkins may even be acting on Doc’s Houston’s stage.
For Watkins, the opening of Doc’s marks the end result of a dream sparked after launching Jazz, TX, in 2016. Whereas he’s grateful for the venue and all its recollections, it may well solely maintain 100 individuals, and he knew he wished his attain to transcend that. In early 2024, he started looking for a bigger area in Houston. The Tower Theatre felt like the proper selection, particularly after he discovered Ella Fitzgerald carried out there in 1980. “That was one of many huge aha moments for me,” Watkins says.
Watkins embraces the constructing’s previous however sees Doc’s forging a brand new id that can grow to be an everlasting a part of Montrose. “It’ll be enjoyable to look at it develop and evolve over time,” Watkins says.
