All Aboard Boxcar, Dallas’ Tiny New Bar

Nothing says romance like cuddling up with your boo over a tasty cocktail while outside snow slowly falls, blurring the mountains in the distance. Though it’s a scene rarely found in Texas, you can still engage in the Danish concept of hygge with your sweetheart courtesy of the Boxcar in central Dallas.

“I want it to feel like you’re not in Dallas,” Scott tells me when I visit the bar in January. “I don’t want it to feel like [you’re in] traffic, where you’re sitting on the DART or a bus. We want it to feel like you’re taking a trip.”

Indeed, everything about Boxcar feels like a journey. There’s no sign to announce the bar’s location, on the west side of Greenville, in the same lot as Bangkok Thai. After missing it twice, my husband and I spot a red velvet rope in front of a blacked-out window and a shiny black door. The train-pull door handle hints at the interior.

Walking into the dim, sultry space feels like what I imagine it must have been like to walk into a prohibition-era speakeasy, only this one gives the illusion of being on wheels. Three glass chandeliers channel the Orient Express and the ceiling curves at its edges like a luxury passenger train car. Leather red banquettes line a wall and create intimate sitting areas. At eye level on each side, high-resolution television screens serve as windows, depicting the snow-covered trees and craggy mountains of the Alsp swooshing past. (The owners plan different vistas in the future to match the season but for now, the European vistas remain.) You get the uncanny, but delightful sense of being far away from SMU Boulevard, and possibly even a bit back in time.

Transforming the space was a bit tricky. Hanging the chandeliers required Carson to snake his way into the crawl space to drill the holes, and Scott tells me about the complicated system behind the animation for the “windows.” In short, creating the effect of moving through a European country at top speeds is no easy task.

While Scott chats about the space, I notice his shirt features a pattern of neon train cars. He tells me his mother has purchased an array of train-related shirts for him to wear when he bartends, which he is doing with Angel the night of my visit. Since I quit drinking almost two decades ago, I rely on my husband to be taste tester. No worries, Angel and Scott assure me, they can make my husband a cocktail and make me a mocktail.

Angel designs the drink around my tastes, asking whether I prefer citrusy, spicy, or fresh and herbaceous. I go for citrusy, and he rewards me with an absolutely delicious concoction reminiscent of one of their signature drinks—the Delmonico, a cardamon pineapple refreshment with syrup and lime. My husband opts for Boxcar’s old-fashioned, which boasts barrel-aged whiskey that the bar ages itself. From the way his eyes light up after the first sip, I can already tell he gives the drink his approval.

A bar serving craft cocktails demands a careful balance. The owners wanted lovingly crafted cocktails, which takes time, but also wanted to ensure drinks got into patrons’ hands quickly.  “We worked on the drinks for probably a year before we opened,” Scott says. “Our primary focus is service and then cocktails.” The bartenders rise to the challenge. Defying the laws of time, they somehow manage to mix, shake, and muddle in an impressively fast manner.

James Beard Award-nominated chef Eric Freidline designed a menu to work within a tiny kitchen, which is smaller than most closets. Among the offerings patrons can order are charcuterie, herbed whipped cream cheese dip with crostini, and truffle parmesan tater tots. Allen recommends trying the Wagyu French Dip with the butter croissant beignets for dessert.

The owners hope to play up the 1920s theme in the future. “I want to do a murder mystery theme night. I think it’d be cool to have the crowd involved—like an hour or two-hour ordeal where you sit down, you’re part of the mystery,” Scott says.

The clientele tends toward people in their late 20s and up, young couples away from the kids, friends still in their business-casual attire catching up after work, hip Dallasites stopping for a last drink of the night before heading home, young people hoping to woo their dates. The occasional train fanatic even stops by. “We’ve had older gentlemen who are really big train guys come for birthday celebrations,” Scott says. “This one guy even brought old train models.”

People tend to find the bar on social media, which is how patron Paula Jackson and her husband found Boxcar. Wearing bright red glasses and clearly enthused about the unusual décor, Jackson tells me they discovered the bar via TikTok. They hail from Lubbock and were in town for Market—a multistory, enormous trade show where shop owners and designers can peruse everything from fancy jewelry to contemporary décor to athletic wear to the latest in Easter decorations. 

“When I saw this, I thought, ‘We’re going to go do something random instead of taking naps like old people,” she says. “It’s as good as I thought it was going to be. It’s very speakeasy-ish. I love it.”