"Southlake's newest bar is small, hidden and open only 15 hours a week, but that's exactly the point." That's how Southlake Style described Social Outlaw, the speakeasy tucked behind an unmarked door inside The Elmore Hotel on East State Highway 114. Most residents have driven past that building for a decade without a reason to stop. It opened in 2016 as a Cambria hotel, the kind of place built for travelers catching an early flight out of DFW, not for a Thursday night out. That's still true of most of the building. It is not true of the room behind the lobby's secret door.
A hotel that markets itself to travelers
Search for The Elmore Hotel online and the first things you'll find are airport distances, not neighborhood details. The property sits roughly five to six miles from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, and online reviews reflect that positioning almost exactly: guests describing an overnight stay "between flights," an Uber to the terminal running $15 to $20, proximity to SEA LIFE Grapevine Aquarium and LEGOLAND Discovery Center. Marriott folded the property into its Tribute Portfolio collection, and Coury Hospitality, the same company that runs Hotel Vin in nearby Grapevine, took over management. The name has changed twice since then, first to The Southlake Hotel, then to The Elmore, each version chasing a slightly different identity for the same 175 rooms.
Those listings speak mostly to travelers, which suits a property this close to the airport.
What's actually behind the unmarked door
Social Outlaw doesn't share that logic. There's no sign, no street-facing entrance, no listing on a hotel amenities page that reads like it's for people catching a 6 a.m. flight. You reach it through the lobby, through a door that isn't marked as a bar, and you don't get in without a reservation made through the front desk. It's open Thursday from 5 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 5 to 11 p.m., a schedule that rules out walk-ins entirely and rules out most business travelers by design.
Inside, the room commits to the bit: warm amber lighting, leather chairs, dark wood paneling, vintage-leaning art on the walls, live music on select nights. The cocktail list plays along, with drinks like Saints & Sinners, a mix of Angel's Envy bourbon, demerara and cherry juice built for sipping slowly rather than getting through quickly. The menu runs to handcrafted cocktails and small plates rather than a full dinner service, which is its own signal. This isn't a restaurant bar people pass through on the way to a table. It's a destination built around staying in one seat for a while.
Southlake Style's coverage put it plainly: the speakeasy is "the kind of place locals will quickly claim as their own." It reads as a welcome to Southlake residents from a hotel that also hosts guests from out of town.
The rest of the hotel is leaning the same direction
Social Outlaw isn't an isolated experiment. Sagewind, the hotel's signature restaurant, is led by executive chef Brandon Williams, who came up through ToroToro Fort Worth, the Fairmont Dallas and the Ritz-Carlton Dallas before joining the property in May 2025, ahead of its relaunch as The Elmore. He set a personal goal of making executive chef by 40 and hit it in this role. His menu leans into dishes built to repeat: crispy rice topped with spicy tuna has become a house favorite, alongside French fries and skirt steaks that draw both locals and hotel guests, according to Williams himself.
Beyond the two bars and the restaurant, the property's programming reads like a locals' calendar more than a travelers' amenities list. Poolside Dragon Pilates sessions run alongside Afternoon Tea socials and a recurring Mahjong gathering, plus a cabana package called Sip, Sun and Stay and a couples package called Rooted in Romance. None of that is aimed at someone with a 9 a.m. connecting flight. It's aimed at someone who lives fifteen minutes away and is deciding how to spend a Saturday.
Coury Hospitality CEO Paul Coury framed the intent directly when the rebrand launched, saying Southlake "deserves a property that feels authentic to the city while offering memorable experiences for both guests and locals, a true living room for the community." That's an explicit statement of strategy, not just marketing language. A hotel built primarily to catch airport traffic doesn't need a living room. This one built one anyway, then hid the best part of it behind a door with no sign on it.
Before you go
A few practical notes if you're planning a first visit:
- The address is 2104 East State Highway 114, in Kimball Park, a short drive from Southlake Town Square rather than inside it.
- Social Outlaw takes reservations through the hotel's front desk only. There's no separate booking line for the bar itself.
- As of this writing, the hotel's own listing notes its lobby is under construction until further notice, with the guest entrance temporarily relocated to the north side of the building near the roundabout, and Sagewind's restaurant service temporarily operating out of the Southlake Ballroom A space. Worth checking current signage before you park.
- The property still goes by The Southlake Hotel in some older directory listings and reviews, a holdover from its brief name before the Tribute Portfolio rebrand.
What's notable isn't that a hotel added a nice bar. Hotel bars are common enough that most locals ignore them by habit. What's notable is that this one was built with limited hours, no walk-in access and a reservation system that filters out exactly the transient airport traffic the rest of the building is marketed toward. The bar was designed to be inconvenient for travelers and convenient for the people who already live fifteen minutes away.
Southlake has added plenty of new storefronts this year. Fewer of them required a hotel's own renovation budget to build something that wasn't really for hotel guests at all.
If you're weighing a move into this corner of North Tarrant County and want someone who already knows which door in town doesn't have a sign on it, the Jeannie Anderson Group pays attention to these details because they're part of what makes a neighborhood worth living in, not just worth listing.
