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In 1927 multiple icehouses in Dallas consolidated into the Southland Ice Company, which began selling items like eggs and milk. The company later changed its name to 7-Eleven, a nod to its expanded hours of operation. They roam amongst the regulars collecting affectionate ear scratches.
How Are Icehouses Different From Convenience Stores and Bars?
Big cigars, big hats and even bigger personalities are a common theme among many of the Ice House's longtime regulars, all doing their part to keep the “Bigger in Texas” tagline alive. There's more to Houston than barbecue and beer (though we've got plenty of that too...). Nicholas L. Hall is a husband and father who earns his keep playing a video game that controls the U.S. power grid. He also writes about food, booze and music, in an attempt to keep the demons at bay. When he's not busy keeping your lights on, he can usually be found making various messes in the kitchen, with apologies to his wife Lori, his daughters Cecilia and Juliette, and his son Joshua. With Houston’s indoor smoking ban in effect, places like the West Alabama Ice House are the last bastion for folks looking for beer and a cigarette.
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We have a pool table, a ping pong table, corn hole, and ring on a string! Anyone under 21 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian and should leave at sun down. There's no food, but the acclaimed Tacos Tierra Caliente food truck is right across the street. More so than many other large cities, Houston is in a constant state of flux. This makes it an exciting and dynamic place to live, eat and drink, but it also means that history is hard to come by. We’re more likely to redevelop than refurbish, more likely to look forward than back.
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On the weekends, the Ice House is often flanked by motorcycles, as crowds of college kids down buckets of cheap beer in the back, playing games of cornhole or Wallhooky Ring Toss. In a city like Houston, settling on an iconic anything is a somewhat tricky question. Part of the answer lies in those places that somehow manage to feel timeless and contemporary, where the demographic shifts of the city are reflected in the clientele and in the character of the bar, even while the bar stays resolutely itself.
Whether you’re visiting Houston or a local, our staff welcome you with open arms. We guarantee you won’t find a better atmosphere than here with us. With nightly entertainment, games, huge events, high-quality local and international cuisines, a huge variety of drinks and so much more!
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We consulted a group of Texan icehouse owners, restaurateurs, and historians to learn about this regional icon’s importance and what makes an icehouse a perfect stop for any Texas road trip, straight from the people who know it best. The beer selection has certainly evolved over the years, expanded now to include an impressively wide array of domestic standards and rotating craft options. This friendly, casual bar—where folks always seem to be in a good mood—draws a cross-section of inner-loop Houston. You'll see lawyers in their 60s, college kids, neighbors from bohemian Montrose, and bikers. There are many reasons why Montrose is my favorite neighborhood in Houston, not least among them are the zoning laws (or lack thereof) that lend it its funky sense of order.
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You can always hang out and there will be friendly people to meet.” Or it could be an inherent openness to change that’s made it last. This cast of characters has shifted with the neighborhood surrounding the Ice House, skewing younger and more clean-cut than it once did. You can see that in the coolers, which once housed only Lone Star and the usual big beer suspects. Now, a locally brewed IPA seems like a natural fit next to an iced bucket of Bud Light. Some folks come to the Ice House for community, and some come to enjoy a solitary hour (or two) of people-watching at one of the city's oldest institutions. Drinking an iced longneck from the coolers at the West Alabama Ice House is like drinking Houston history.
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Functioning as a sort of communal living room for the neighborhood, an evening (or an early afternoon—the Ice House starts up early) spent here is like a time-lapse view of what it means to live in Houston. A taco truck parked across the street slings lengua tacos with fiery salsa, while a rotating cast out front might offer Tex-Cajun smoked boudin or boiled crawfish. Obviously, icehouse visitors don’t need giant blocks of ice for refrigeration purposes anymore, but they still love the warm, unpretentious vibe of these outdoor gathering places.
Sandwich joints are plopped in the middle of residential neighborhoods, and for some reason there are three separate Starbucks on one street corner. But the best thing about this weird little slice of Houston is the sprawling outdoor bar that sits between a convenience store and a fitness center on West Alabama Street. The West Alabama Ice House embodies the odd anything-goes ethos of Montrose. Named, "the coolest place in Texas," and one of the top 100 places to visit in Texas by Saveur Magazine. 80 years old as of 2008, this building is a true open air, Texas icehouse. But perhaps this icehouse has stuck around because, as current owner Pete Markantonis explains, “it doesn’t matter how you look or how you dress or where you come from.
The fact that icehouses are generally independently-owned also helps them directly contribute to their communities’ success. "Being a patron helps to keep dollars local and helps promote a sense of community,” explains chef and restaurateur Daniel Wolfe of City Cellars and Wolfe & Wine in Houston. Icehouses also functioned as defacto convenience stores where locals could get some simple grocery items (and other grab-and-go products like takeout beer and cigarettes). “Because the icehouse always had the ice, it made sense for them to carry other perishable goods that required refrigeration, such as milk and eggs.
They chase down your basketball when an errant shot sends it off the backboard, bouncing between the rows of picnic tables that line the rambling backyard. They are cooed at by small children brought along by their parents on sunny days. The dogs are a permanent fixture at a bar defined both by its permanence and its mutability. The icehouse’s classic function as a community gathering place hasn’t lessened with time. The heart-of-the-neighborhood nature of the icehouse dates back to the early years, when folks would head to the icehouse to grab ice and pick up some groceries, often staying awhile. This modern incarnation of the Houston dive bar has been owned by the Markantonis family since 1986, first by patriarch Jerry before passing ownership to son Petros.
In a place where history is transient, West Alabama Ice House manages to straddle the past and the present like a comfortable mainstay, cold beer at the ready for old-timers and first-timers alike. Opened in 1928 as an actual ice house, selling blocks of the cold stuff for home refrigerators, the place quickly became a fixture of a neighborhood that hasn’t stopped changing for 88 years. Ice soon took a backseat to ice-cold beers and the news of the day. Since they had so much to offer and drew such a large share of the community to their doors, ice houses took hold as a sort of community center for South Texas residents. As the surrounding area changed from country farm homes to streetcar suburb to hippie commune to LGBTQ bastion to the hodgepodge that it is today, other Texas ice houses have disappeared, but West Alabama Ice House has been a constant. Eventually ice houses started selling other goods, becoming something of a precursor to the modern gas station and convenience store.
Dogs, which are allowed to roam, are abundant and always eager for attention. Although the Ice House serves wine, you'll notice that everyone is drinking beer. Go for a cheap Lone Star tallboy or peruse the chalkboard menu of local and Texas craft beers, IPAs, and ciders. Multi-generational drinking is the order of the day at the West Alabama Ice House. While the old timers seem permanently perched on the stools lining the bar, the younger crowd tends to congregate around back watching friends shoot hoops or waiting for their turn at a game of Cornhole. Where did icehouses come from, why have they been so beloved in Texas, and what do they look like today?
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