Way back when I wrote the column about how TCU needs to educate its kids on how to behave around town (“The Rant,” Nov. 4, 2008), I interviewed a bunch of area bartenders. One of them was Charlie at The Cellar. Since she is something of a professional colleague — I pour Kurrs Lahts across the street at The Moon — I wanted to talk to someone else in the neighborhood. Of course, just about every other source echoed her sentiments about shitty-tipping shitheads, but she also told me she had gotten an additional gig at a new bar called the Royal Falcon.
Sweet name, right? Anyway, she told me about how the Falcon was a new English pub opening on Southwest Boulevard next door to Edelweiss German Restaurant. I was intrigued, so a research assistant (my friend Michelle) and I trekked over to the Way West Side to check the place out. We were expecting rampant Anglophilia along the lines of the Falcon owner’s other place, Ye Olde Bull and Bush Pub (or Cheers, probably). Needless to say, I was a little surprised to encounter a foyer lifted from the set from a Zorro movie.
“Is this the right place?” Michelle said.
I went outside to check.
It was the right place, but calling it an English pub requires a little imagination. For one thing, every “English” pub I’ve ever been to (none of which were in England, of course) was cozy, intimate, and covered with soccer crap. Not so with the Falcon. Calling it “cozy” would be like calling London warm, and calling it “spacious” would be like calling Stonehenge “old.” And as I looked at the layout of the room, it occurred to me that it was designed with lots of foot traffic in mind, particularly if said feet belonged to people carrying trays of enchilada combos. In other words, The Royal Falcon is a faux-English pub evidently crammed into an erstwhile Mexican restaurant.
To be fair, there are dartboards and plenty of the requisite Premier League regalia, and the bar itself is warm, friendly, and made of dark, English-y wood. The service is super-friendly, and it benefits from a crowd of not old but mature (read: good-tipping) drinkers. The beer and whiskey selection compares to similar joints such as Poag Mahone’s — you can nab pretty much any English beer you can think of at the Falcon, along with ‘Merican macrobrews. Overall, we had a great time. In fact, I’ve been back a couple times — it’s the sort of place where everyone knows your name, and if they shout it, it will reverberate off the pinkish (orange-ish? brown-ish?) plastic booths and hacienda stucco. (Guess I had a better time than I thought.)
You may feel like you’re having your Newcastle in a Six Flags-version of Spain, but the Royal Falcon’s a cheekily brilliant bar an’ all that then. – Steve Steward
