Sassafras

Really didn’t like this place is more for an older crowed there was like 3 people at the bar really lame

Really chilled bar with a nice patio seating, arcade games, food trailer and a pool table. I got a $ 3.00 well drink during HH (until 8 pm) but the regular cost is $ 4 so it’s an overall great dive bar with inexpensive drinks! The bartender was really nice to let me know that I didn’t close out my tab when I was about to leave. So I would definitely recommend this place if you’re nearby

This place is lowkey and LEGIT:
*Music
*Food truck
*Beer selection
*Wine selection
*Staff
All on point. Best Heights area dive! Get it in.

I was looking at «steak nights» and a friend said hey go check out this place. It’s a hole in the wall place, super simple, small patio outside, pool tables and bar inside. Super friendly service — and a steak night on a Monday night… All I can is WOW. Steak was absolutely perfect — amazing flavour, cooked to perfection. Sides change weekly but this week was caprese salad, orzo, eggplant and a bread roll. I have eaten at many fine dining/​super expensive steak places across the world, this really rated as one the best steaks I have ever had! $ 20 — feeing full, and thoroughly satisfied. I will be recommending this to everyone I know as an awesome Monday night spot! Well worth checking out.

Calm relaxed atmosphere. Great proximity to the booming Inwood Forest area. Friendly staff, stiff drinks, yummy sangria. Mixed crowd, hipster, punk, young and older. Great watering hole for locals.
No food except for the except for the occasional food truck on weekends. Steak night during the week. Go to their Facebook page for the exact day.

Charlie and the staff here are super welcoming and we enjoy the jukebox, friendly regulars, and great craft beers. I’ve only done it once, but steak night is well worth checking out!

I really love this place! It’s a great chill place to hang out with friends. They have a pool table, jukebox machine and pac man inside. The bartenders are all really nice and helpful. There is additional parking on the next street. After you park there is a lighted pathway that leads to the bar. Every Monday they have a steak night! Very good food. Tuesdays from 10pm-​2am they have $ 4 Jäger & fireball shots as well as $ 3 wells! Wednesdays aka Wine Wednesdays they have $ 2 off wine by the glass and $ 5 sangria all night! They also have patio seating which is really nice!

I LOVED this bar. We’ve been twice. Once for NYE — we are early nerdy birds and it was literally just us and the bartender. The second time we went, there were several more people. Both times we went, the bartender (different both times) was friendly and helpful. I don’t like red sangria as a general rule, but theirs? I loved it. I will order at least one glass every time, guaranteed. We will go back and we will take friends when they are in town. I hope it stays around.

It seemed like this location kept changing but it was always a bar. None of the iterations before Sassafras were particularly enticing to me so I never went. My boyfriend spotted them on a list of best new bars in Houston and we hadn’t even noticed that it had changed! I guess I’ll echo what a fellow Unilocaler said below that the signage is not great (but not a reason for me to take a star off!) so I suppose that’s why I’ve driven by dozens of times and didn’t notice the change. We headed out on a Monday and had a couple of beers. It was great! Monday is steak night but we had already eaten. It was $ 20 and it looked amazing – most people were eating. I wouldn’t call this a dive bar but the crowd had a divey feel if that makes sense? It was an eclectic mix of people – at the bar with us were two career girls in their 20s and right next to them was a biker couple who were in their 60s. So it was great people watching! We are craft beer lovers and the selection was pretty good. They only had 5−8ish on tap but they had a fully stocked fridge of various bottles. They had Lonestar, Dogfish Head, and a lot in between. Overall it’s a fun bar and a great addition to the neighborhood!

For the area, very cool. If you don’t GPS it at night, you could easily miss it. Small clean bar but still divey. No food but they invite people to come in and cook on the patio for profit. Definitely think the patio is the place to be but barkeep is cool, friendly, approachable. It’s Wednesday so pretty quiet. Tried the sangria, meh — ok, not great. Overall, definitely worth dipn in. It’s a dive bar so don’t come in with high expectations but then again do you ever when it comes to dive bars.

Great dive bar with a great beer selection. It’s my go to spot now cause it’s one of the few good bars in the area. Always nice and clean with a friendly staff that takes real good care of the customers. I also enjoy this place because I can have my dog out on the patio with me as long as he’s on a leash it’s not a problem. They also have steak night on Mondays and on any given night you can find a food truck out here as well. Overall a great place!

We have been here a few times and love the new ownership. Great beer selection and my wife loves the sangria. The patio area is nice, and servers are always friendly. There is some extra parking around the back if the lot up front is full.

Well, well, well. It looks like someone has come and breathed new life into the old «Crazy J’s.» My wife and I went over this last Sunday to finally give this place the once over, and I was impressed. The staff was friendly and knowledgeable about their different beers, and the atmosphere was pretty much right up my alley. I’m glad someone saw the potential in this place after Crazy J’s failed and the great «Brew House» debacle of 2013.
The place is no frills, it isn’t huge but if you have a small group of 3 to 6 this is a fantastic place to go hang out on the patio. The inside is small with some dim lighting, a juke box and a pool table. It is a little hipster, but this should be no surprise as the people who own it now are behind Big Star Bar and Grand Prize. I won’t hold that against them too much, especially since they went out of their way to harken back to the Crazy J days with «Motorcycle Only» parking up front. Also, points for the small Swayze shrine on the side of the bar. I don’t «Lol» often, but when I do it is because of things like that.
You will see an eclectic crowd of the locals hanging out here, most all of whom were incredibly friendly. The Young and The Old. The Hip and The Crusty. The Skinny Jeans and The Boot Cut. I suppose you could probably get away with bringing your large group of 10 Bros from your fraternity here to high-​five and do Fireball shots, but the inside will be a little cramped and I am not convinced this is place where it will get THAT kind of rowdy (thank God). But if you want to find a place I believe will be where the long time locals and professional drinkers come to tie one on, I see this place becoming that place. Being married to higher class woman and having to accommodate her tastes in watering holes from time to time (she doesn’t like dirt floors like I do), I believe Sassafras has found «The Middle Way.»
Walking into Sassafras was like seeing a friend who you haven’t seen in years and doesn’t have a Facebook to keep in touch. When you finally get together they have lost just enough weight to not be pretentious about it, stopped popping their collar, ditched that awful haircut they had in college, and broke up with that girlfriend you always hated anyway. Glad to have them in the neighborhood.

Very cool dive bar with a really funky crowd. They serve a solid beer selection, including some less easy to find craft beers (including my favorite ever ballast point sculpin IPA). Notably, they have a very prominent Patrick Swayze shrine, showing their GOOF pride.

Cool little bar by the railroad tracks on Pinemont, just east of Antoine. I came here mainly for the fact that it’s owned by the same folks as Grand Prize and Big Star, both which I like very much. Outside patio is great on a nice night.
They currently mainly have beer, wine and sangria with a very limited selection of alcohols. They don’t have a cocktail menu as of yet, but let’s hope it will be soon.
I took one star off for signage and location since I drove right by it the first time I came. Even though I am very familiar with this area since I used to drive by this building twice a day to go to work, the temporary sign was small and you can only see it driving west bound on Pinemont. Another star for lack of alcohol. According to the bartender, they are going to expand the building and make it more roomy. Once they do this, they’ll increase their alcohol supply. They definitely need to increase the inside space since it’s too small right now. The pool table takes up a lot of the room. Reminded us of a bar in a sleepy town from the movies. I will be back after all the renovations have been completed. Let’s hope this new establishment can last longer than Crazy J’s and Brew House.

Owners know what their doing. Chill vibe and nice outdoor area. Also convenient for cyclists with designated routes on Pinemont and bike trial off TC Jester. Drinks are set at good prices.

I will put this very simply… thank you for opening Sassafras! I am a fairly new resident of the rapidly improving/​developing near NW (western edge of Oak Forest, Forest Pines, Candlelight Oaks and the lovely Forest West). There isn’t much to speak of in terms of neighborhood bars that suit my taste, so I was very happy when I discovered this place. If you want a cool little spot with a nice interior and super friendly bar staff you really should check it out. It is a sweet little gem in an up and coming part of town. Cheers guys!

There have been a number of neat bars that have opened in Oak Forest/​Garden Oaks over the past few years, but they’ve all been between T.C. Jester and Shepherd. If you live in section 15, 16, or 17, you still had to drive 5 – 10 minutes to get to a good cocktail/​beer/​wine bar. Not anymore! Sassafras is a wonderful addition to the oft-​overlooked western sections of Oak Forest, literally «on the other side of the tracks.» If you live along the 290 corridor between 610 and Pinemont, there’s no better bar in the area!
Sassafras is run by some of the top-​notch folks who brought Big Star Bar to the Heights/​Shady Acres and Grand Prize Bar to the Museum District/​Montrose. Both BSB and GPB are destinations for folks who live in their respective neighborhoods for good reason, and Sassafras will no doubt become the same for those in Garden Oaks/​Oak Forest!
The beer selection is full of craft brews and IPAs, but they won’t bat an eyelash if you order a Lone Star or Shiner instead. They have a better-​than-​average (especially for Oak Forest) wine selection, tasty sangrias, and liquor on the way.
The décor inside is red-​hued, yet not overwhelming. They have a pool table and jukebox, too. However, their patio is the best place to grab a seat and enjoy a drink or three with buds! Their bathrooms are fantastic, and definitely not typical of many other bars in the area. The waiting area just outside the bathrooms had a cool (yet somehow subtle) strobe effect going, and made me want to have a mini dance party before I headed back to my table!
But really, it come down to this: Whether you’re looking for a great spot to start your evening or a place to spend the whole night catching up with old friends or making a few new ones, Sassafras is the place for you!

Proving that I moved away from the old hood far too prematurely, Sassafras is the newest jewel in the crown of the burgeoning greater GOOF (Garden Oaks/​Oak Forest) nightlife scene. However, this outpost is in the far Northwest corner of that area and couldn’t be more needed. Really, if you’re west of Watonga, where the hell do you go? The answer: Sassafras. And thank your lucky stars.
This bar is from the family tree that brought you nightlife luminaries like Big Star, Grand Prize, and practically every bar downtown. These are great people that know their shit, are fast with the drink, and decided to call this corner of the world home. My only concern is that it is way too nice. Sconces, amazing furnished patio, and a bathroom that leaves little in the way of doubt and evokes no «oh hell no» feelings. When I walked in, I saw other members of the fickle 500, and know that it won’t be very long until this place registers on the radar of all the cool kids, hipsters, and associated tag-​alongs. Remember that no one was beating a path to 19^th and Shepherd when Cedar Creek and Big Star opened; most people had never heard of Eastwood when Moon Tower opened; this is your chance to be on the bleeding edge.
For some it’s a hike, for others it’s a new bastion, but for all it’s a new blip on the radar to have a good drink from an experienced hand in good company.