Volcano Room, Seabrook, TX (bar)

Name:Volcano Room
Type:bar
Street:4650 Nasa Parkway
City:Seabrook
State:TX
Zip:77586
country:USA
Phone:281-549-4080
Status:operational

Description:
New bar (June 2016) opened south of downtown Houston. If you are near NASA then stop by and check this place out.

It is a good sized place with two side rooms that could probably be used for private parties. There are two carved tikis at each end of the bar, bamboo ceilings and several glass floats. There's also a wall of clear skulls that hold candles and a large Okole Maluna neon sign. Drinks were pretty good. The mai tai had a housemade pecan orgeat. The mai tai was more sweet than rum for my liking but that should be an easy fix as they get more into the swing of things. Painkiller was good and came in a skull mug. They drizzled grenadine, or something red, on top a bit so it would overflow and look like a bloody skull. Fun idea until you pick up the mug and it gets sticky. Navy grog was good and in a Fu Manchu mug with a burning cinnamon stick. We had one of their original drinks, the Shore Club Sour which was quite good. They have a small food menu. We had the ham/brie and little havana sliders. They were great and served on hawaiian bread. There were 3 sliders per plate. The music was top 40 dance music and the crowd seemed to be looking for saturday night hookups so that wasn't ideal for a tiki mood. Overall the drinks were good and the staff was very friendly. It's a new bar and their heart seems to be in the right place. I would go again, maybe in the afternoon when it's less of a pickup joint. But hey no pineapple or grenadine in my mai tai so i consider that a win. Here's the facebook page: https://m.facebook.com/Volcano-Room-457892221084116/?tsid=0.25005061412230134&source=typeahead Pictures to follow soon...

[ Edited by: TxTikiGirl 2016-07-02 22:44 ]

Found myself in Houston for the last three days and unfortunately our group didn't have enough time to go downtown to the Lei Low. So, being that the Volcano Room was only 1.5 miles from the hotel ... off we go.

Inside decorations were nice, but spartan. The floor was bare sealed concrete but the ceiling was filled with hanging bamboo poles, there were several Moai, and a nice little secluded lounge area with upholstered furniture. Unfortunately there was Hip Hop playing for music and the dozen or so people inside were not sporting any kind of a tiki vibe. Can't judge a book by its cover ... but a middling first impression.

The bar itself was a non-tiki in style with metal stools. However there was a nice selection of rums on the wall behind and the bartender greeted us warmly. I had looked at the Yelp and Facebook posts and had been expecting good things. The drink recipes seemed honest and pictures of the cocktails looked like some effort had gone into crafting them. I liked the garnishes, flaming limes, etc..

What better way to gauge things but to order a Navy Grog to start off? You can tell much about a bar by how it goes about slinging one of these together. It's a good drink to test the tiki waters needing a selection of rums, funky and otherwise, spices and a balance of grapefruit and sweet.

Mine was was served in a tall blue tiki mug with no garnish. From the first sip something was very much wrong. Thin. Really thin. No sour from grapefruit, no heady rush from the rum, and just the barest hint of allspice. So I asked CJ, our bartender, for how he made the drink (in the nicest way). He explained with great earnestness how he used Meyer's rum and Tito's Vodka with a splash of this and that. Uggg. Vodka? In all my days .. in all my travels ... I've never had vodka in a Grog. I slipped my stool a little bit away from the bar in fears of the Tiki Gods smiting this poor fellow due to his blasphemous concoction. It didn't even follow the ingredients on the menu!

Call me a glutton for punishment but I went back to the well one more time and requested the Mai Tai. What's the old adage? Fool me once...shame on me. Fool me twice ... well ... it was bad. Not OJ in your Mai Tai bad ... but really incredibly sweet. No mint garnish as well. I didn't see what orgeat he used, but I suspect Torani (or something similar) due to the sweetness. Maybe someone will tell me that CJ was not the typical bartender or that I should try it some other time ... but these drinks were killers (and not in a good way)

The positives were definitely the food. We had pulled pork sliders and tacos with Jerked Chicken Quesos. Very tasty.

We did not stay for another drink. We paid up and left via Uber to stop in at the Nobi House (one of my favorite places in Clear Lake) to watch the Dodgers lose the World Series.

So. Overall for the Volcano Room. Grade D. DO NOT RECOMMEND

[ Edited by: Wearefunkytiki 2017-11-04 13:19 ]