New in Amarillo: Restaurants and renovations coming downtown

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - Food and beverage opens are opening, expanding and renovating in downtown Amarillo just in time for summer.

The Hot Dog Hut

Amarillo’s first locally owned gourmet hot dog restaurant, The Hot Dog Hut, recently opened on 10th Avenue.

They hope to become a renowned spot for both community members and those traveling through Amarillo.

Staff say they chose to open along 10th Avenue because downtown is continuing to grow but has few lunch options for business men and women.

“There’s not a hot dog hut or hot dog at all you can get in Amarillo,” said Barbara Hart, manager of The Hot Dog Hut. “There’s not a famous one or a really good one besides Wienerschnitzel, so we thought this one would be great and be a great place because its downtown.”

The 50′s themed diner offers all beef hot dogs, jalapeno sausage and hot links on three different types of lobster roll buns.

Customers can buy a specialty hot dog named after one of the owner’s pet dogs, or build their own hot dog from 14 toppings.

“We’re super stoked, we have so many people coming in with people giving us ideas of things we need to do,” said Hart. “We have hot dogs of the month we’re going to be doing.”

Hart adds the ‘Motley’ dog is one of their favorites.

“You have a six in one beef frank, a ounce for french fries, grilled onions, chili, cheese, coleslaw, mustard, ketchup and onion ring on top, with a regular bun,” she explained.

The Hot Dog Hut also offers onion rings, corn dogs and fried pickles, along with dessert floats and cookies.

The diner is open on weekdays from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Chesney’s Whiskey Saloon

Also newly open is Chesney’s Whisky Saloon, located at 715 S Polk.

Believing the Texas Panhandle is the heart of country and country music, Chesney’s Whiskey Saloon staff wanted to bring an authentic country bar to Polk Street.

“We’re the only country bar downtown,” said Andrea Jackson. “Amarillo is the AQHA headquarters and we are the prime center for beef, country and all things country, yet we didn’t have a country bar.

The saloon offers live music every weekend both inside and on their outdoor patio.

The space opens as a restaurant during the day, and turns into a space for drinks and dancing at night.

“We’ve got 40 whiskeys on our shelf and the majority are from Texas,” Jackson explained. “There’s not a true whiskey bar in Amarillo, so we wanted to give the country guys something they could come in and drink.”

Chesney’s Whiskey Saloon is an extension of the old Bodegas bar, which has now closed.

Now, the combined space offers four different styles of music for all ages.

“[The old] Bodegas has Latin pop on the dance floor. In the middle part, we’ve got top 40 and on the Chesney’s side we’ve got a live band every weekend you can dance to and a nice dance floor and that’s today’s country hits,” explained Jackson. “Downstairs in Chesney’s we actually have 80′s and 90′s country and its a full dance floor down there as well. If you don’t like one music, you can just walk into another room and listen to something else.”

Palace Coffee Company

Just down the street, some changes are coming to Palace Coffee’s downtown location as they prepare to open a new storefront in Wolflin Square.

Palace Coffee says they are expanding so rapidly they need to open a new and larger roastery.

The current roastery at their downtown location will be renovated into additional seating and a conference room that anyone can use to host meetings.

“We’re gong to have to open up a new roastery. Right now we roast in our current downtown location, but we’re outgrowing what we have,” explained Patrick Burns, founding owner of Palace Coffee Company. “We’re going to add seating back and we’re also going to have a conference room. So where our current storage is for our green coffee, we’re going to make that into a conference room for business people to be able to come in and use.”

The new roastery will be found at Palace Coffee’s new location in Wolflin Square.

The location will include Palace Coffee’s first craft cocktail bar.

Called ‘Royal’, the cocktail bar will be Palace Coffee’s debut into the cocktail space and will expand their hours to later in the evening.

“We’re going to have a new concept called the Royal Bar,” said burns. “That’s going to be a craft cocktail bar that will be in the space as well that people can come and enjoy craft cocktails with us. We’ll serve any type of craft cocktail, obviously we’ll have coffee cocktails as well because that’s what we know, but we’re really excited about getting into the cocktail game.”

The new storefront at Wolflin Square plans to open in mid-June in the old Furr’s building.

The location will still serve Palace Coffee’s usual coffee and tea menu.

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