Squable

Quality food and even better service. A member of my dining party is gluten intolerant and our waiter personally highlighted a menu for her. Like, took out an actual highlighter and made a personalized menu notating what was safe to eat. Top notch. I suggest family style ordering, that way you can taste more of the menu (and you want to taste more of the menu). Breads and pastas are made fresh, in-house daily. The menu changes seasonally, so every time I go I get to discover something new! Cocktails are amazing, which is to be expected by anything from Bobby Huegel. Squalbe is also part of a restaurant group that offers full health benefits for their employees. We truly love to see businesses doing right by their staff!

This is a very special local restaurant. The space works as a nice place to take a date on an important night or to come by as a local for a cocktail and dinner without a lot of fuss. I met my. bestie for a casual drink and a bite. We chose the bar as our seat, because, well, never mind. I love a serious bar with passionate mixologists, so I was excited to be here and expecting a lot from Justin Yu's cocktail menu. I scanned the cocktails to see what looked good and it had the usual heavy gin based cocktail menu and a splatter of other offerings, but I was not profoundly drawn to any gin (my favorite) drink. I am a huge fan of a classic Aperol spritzer and went for their strawberryish version. In the end I hate to say it, but the spritzer is an obscure enough offering in Houston to not need a variation, especially one that makes a 5 out of a 10 drink. I struggled after the spritzer to find a drink I wanted to try, as I had been front at center at the bar watching the mixologists negotiate with what looked like snow cones and blue-raspberry liquid sugar. I'm one for a good Tiki drink and even an umbrella, but this blue junk didn't look like it belonged, much less like anything I wanted to tantalize my palette and gut, frankly, before a great spread for dinner. One of the very capable mixologists noted my difficulty with the cocktail menu and asked what I like. After watching SO....MUCH....ICE..... in all of the cocktails, I said - something with gin and straight up. She knocked it out of the park with a classic I'd never heard of made with sweet Gin, bitters and citrus. Between my friend and I we had an unspeakable number of these delish cocktails. I felt intuitively the bartender knew the menu was lacking a drink for my taste, and I appreciated her intuition and expert skills in satisfying my palette. Any complaints I may have had stop here, as the dining experience was on-point excellent. My friend at some gluten-ous scratch made pasta Alfredo, for all practical purposes. Sadly I couldn't try it, but she said it was totally worth breaking my diet for! We had the crudo, which was the best I've ever had. I eat crudo 2/3 times a week, so I am well-versed in this simple and delishous dish. The succotash was also excellent. It comes with croutons, but I don't eat that mess....so they offer chicken skin cracklins instead. Um, yes. I'll eat that mess! We also ordered a dish that I can't believe we ordered - just weird. Baked sweet potato with pork on top. Your brain goes to the Pappas Brothers hamburger joint or something like that. So I asked, "Is this, like, huge?" - not wanting fill up on starch - and she said no and went on to describe how delicately this item was prepared. I was so happy and satisfied with the succulent salt-baked potato and deep friend nuggets of pork. Yes. All in all, the place is a ten. The only time I won't return is if I want a cocktail mainly and food secondarily, as the food is amazing but the cocktail menu is not satisfying to me.