Mack Allen's Brings Old Hollywood Glamour and a Real Dress Code to Post Oak

Houston · Restaurant Opening

Leave the flip flops at home. Mack Allen’s means it.

Photo: Michael Anthony / Mack Allen’s

One of Houston’s biggest new dining rooms of the year just opened on Post Oak, and it comes with something this city almost never sees anymore: a dress code with teeth. Sweatpants, baseball caps, exposed underclothes, sleeveless shirts, flip flops. Wear any of them and you are not getting past the lobby. In a town where billionaires eat brisket in boots, that is a statement.

The room making the statement is Mack Allen’s, restaurateur Mack McDonald’s New American debut, and it does not do anything small. Sixteen thousand square feet, the entire ground floor of the 5POP tower at 4400 Post Oak Parkway, right where River Oaks meets Uptown. Old Hollywood is the brief and they committed to it completely: dark walnut, brass, vintage photos of Hollywood stars lining the walls, and a gleaming 1941 Cadillac Series 62 from DriverSource Fine Motorcars staged at the entrance on opening night.

The food

Executive Chef Carlos Andrade, with Regional Chef Manuel “Manny” Viveros, runs a menu around prime steaks and Australian wagyu, including a tomahawk with the restaurant’s name branded right into the bone, the kind of move that tells you exactly what kind of steakhouse this intends to be. Beside the beef, a raw bar runs specialty sushi, from a Kata Robata-trained chef, and Domus caviar bumps, the salty little luxury that has quietly become the calling card of every serious new steakhouse in America. Backing all of it is a 1,000-bottle wine list. This is not a precious tasting-menu room. It is a big, confident dining room that wants you to order the big cut and the cold bottle.

Opening night

Photo: Michael Anthony / Mack Allen’s

The 500-guest opening set the tone for what kind of nights this place wants to host. Costumed lampshade ladies and feather-fan dancers circulated through the crowd while Sinatra tribute artist Rickey Davis crooned Ol’ Blue Eyes favorites. The party flowed through a 2,000-square-foot lobby lounge, past the 50-seat U-shaped bar, into the Champagne Room where Veuve Clicquot kept the bubbles moving, and on to the clubby Board Room, where the Old Fashioneds are built on Eagle Rare 10-Year drawn from McDonald’s own barrel at Buffalo Trace. The night landed on the patio, a near-quarter-acre garden of Japanese maple, magnolias, star jasmine, and gardenias, with a 10-foot-tall fire and water feature that was still under construction on opening night.

If you go

• Where: 4400 Post Oak Parkway, Houston, where River Oaks meets Uptown
• Book: mackallens.com or (713) 589-5079
• Dress code: enforced. No sweatpants, baseball caps, exposed underclothes, sleeveless shirts, or flip flops. The house calls it polished yet comfortable.
• Good to know: three private dining rooms; the garden courtyard’s fire and water feature was still under construction on opening night.

Mack Allen’s is open now. And seriously, no flip flops.

Sources: PaperCity, Houstonia, The Infatuation. Photos: Michael Anthony / Mack Allen’s. Official site and reservations: mackallens.com.