Bari and Bar Bludorn on Waterway Avenue: Which One Is Open on Show Night

Three days apart, two Houston restaurant groups opened across the street from each other on Waterway Avenue. Bari Ristorante opened at 24 Waterway Ave. on Sept. 30. Bar Bludorn opened at 25 Waterway Ave. on Oct. 2. The Houston Chronicle places Bar Bludorn right by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion.

The two are close neighbors, but they run on very different schedules. Bari serves seven days a week, with lunch, dinner and weekend brunch. Bar Bludorn serves dinner Tuesday through Saturday and nothing else. Between now and the end of the year, a lot of Pavilion shows and Town Center holiday events land on Sundays and Saturdays. So before you pick a restaurant for any of them, check what day it falls on.

How the two schedules line up

These are the posted hours as of the first week of October. Bar Bludorn's come from its own site. Bari's come from its Woodlands reservation listing on OpenTable.

The table shows two things. On Sundays and Mondays, Bari is the only one of the pair serving. On every other night, Bari starts dinner an hour or two before Bar Bludorn opens. It begins at 3 p.m. on Saturday and 4 p.m. on weekdays, compared with Bar Bludorn's 5 p.m. That head start matters when the other plans for the evening begin early.

The new spot at Hughes Landing follows a similar pattern. When Charolais by Chef Austin Simmons opened in July, it posted hours of 3 to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and 3 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, with no Sunday or Monday service listed. Of the three Town Center restaurants that have opened since summer, only Bari has posted Sunday and Monday hours.

Bari: built for big tables and long afternoons

Bari is the second restaurant from Bari Hospitality Group. The first opened in River Oaks District in 2023. Co-owner Pedro Teyuca told the Chronicle that diners from The Woodlands had been driving to the River Oaks location and asking the group to open one farther north.

The Woodlands location takes up 9,000 square feet and has more than 250 seats, two private dining rooms and a bar lounge. Chef Renato De Pirro, who led the River Oaks kitchen, is helping with the opening. Executive chef Marcelo Mintz runs the kitchen day to day. The menu carries over River Oaks classics like fritto misto, pappardelle bolognese and several pizzas, plus tableside truffle pasta and bananas foster. The kitchen uses house-made pasta made with imported Italian flour, along with European cheeses, dry-cured meats and fish sourced from Europe.

Weekend brunch started Oct. 4. Hello Woodlands also reported a weekday happy hour with $10 burgers, $10 individual pizzas and meatballs. No time window for the happy hour has been published yet, so call ahead before planning around it. The brunch menu on Bari's website lists steak and eggs, a lobster omelette, crab avocado toast and Belgian waffles. That menu isn't labeled by location, so it may not match the Waterway kitchen exactly.

With that many seats and two private rooms, Bari is the easier of the two for a group of eight before a show.

Bar Bludorn: a smaller room on a dinner-only schedule

Bar Bludorn is Bludorn Hospitality Group's first restaurant outside Central Houston. It is also the first expansion of the Bar Bludorn tavern that opened in Memorial in 2024. Chef Aaron Bludorn founded the group in 2020 with partners Cherif Mbodji and Victoria Pappas Bludorn. Bludorn told the Chronicle he wanted "something that felt really comfortable and felt like a neighborhood restaurant just tucked right in there."

According to Bludorn, the Gensler-designed space is 20 to 30% larger than the Memorial original. It seats about 100 in the main room, with a 30-seat private room, a larger bar and a patio. The look carries over from Memorial, with wood paneling and rattan. At the Oct. 1 opening party, Hello Woodlands sampled lobster beignets, steak tartare with potato rosti, duck chitarra with duck egg pecorino cream, a Wagyu tavern burger, and steak frites with a 10-ounce bavette and sauce au poivre. The cocktail list changes with the seasons.

The dates need care here. On Sept. 2, the Chronicle reported a Sept. 26 opening. The restaurant actually opened Oct. 2. If you saw the earlier date, that's why it didn't match. Reservations are available through Bar Bludorn's website or by phone at 281-746-6466.

The Pavilion calendar by day of the week

Here is the current "Up Next" list from the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, matched to the day each date falls on and which restaurant serves dinner that day.

On the two Sunday Nutcracker and Palooza dates, a family planning dinner nearby has one of these two restaurants to choose from. The two free shows, Hocus Pocus Pops on Oct. 23 and Holly Jolly Jingle on Dec. 3, require no ticket, so dinner is the only reservation those nights call for. In July, Visit The Woodlands warned that Pavilion showtimes are tentative and subject to change. Check the Pavilion's page close to the date.

Saturday, Nov. 21 is the busiest date of the season

That Saturday, the first Nutcracker performance at the Pavilion lines up with the Township's Lighting of the Doves at Town Green Park, 2099 Lake Robbins Drive. The festival runs from 3 to 8 p.m. It is free and includes performances, snow play, children's activities, vendors, Santa and fireworks. Holiday on The Waterway starts the same day, with lighted displays and light tunnels along the Waterway through Jan. 3, 2027.

The festival starts at 3 p.m., the same time Bari starts Saturday dinner. Bar Bludorn opens at 5 p.m., while the festival is still going, and stays open until 10 p.m., two hours after it ends. That timing suggests two simple plans. One is an early dinner at Bari before the fireworks. The other is the festival first, then a later table at Bar Bludorn with the Waterway lights already on. Either way, with both restaurants, the Pavilion and the park drawing crowds on the same few blocks, book early.

Two more December dates fall near the Waterway. The Glow and Go 5K starts at Town Green Park on Saturday, Dec. 5, from 6 to 8 p.m., and runs along the Waterway. Market Street in Lights runs from mid-November through Dec. 31, with a three-minute light show every hour from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. The Sing-Off in Central Park is on Thursday, Dec. 10 at 6:30 p.m.

Getting there: parking and the free trolley

Bari's address, 24 Waterway, is also home to the 24 Waterway Garage. The Town Center Parking Garage is at 2005 Lake Robbins Drive, the Pavilion's address, and the Waterway Avenue Parking Lot is at 18 Waterway Avenue. Visit The Woodlands lists eight Town Center lots and four garages. The Yellow, Orange, Green, Blue and White lots are free, and the accessible Gold Lot is free on a first-come basis.

The free Town Center Trolley runs a 4.1-mile route connecting The Woodlands Mall, Market Street, the Waterway and Hughes Landing. It runs 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and noon to 7 p.m. Sunday. It doesn't run on Thanksgiving, Christmas Day or New Year's Day, and routes can change for special events. On Sunday the trolley stops at 7 p.m., while Bari serves until 9 p.m. If you plan to park at one end of Town Center and ride the trolley, a Sunday dinner at Bari may mean walking back to your car.

The trolley also makes a two-stop evening easy. Charolais sits at Hughes Landing along Lake Woodlands. Its 200-seat dining room has an open kitchen, and next door is C&R Market, which sells Chef & Rancher beef cuts from the restaurant's own beef program. C&R Market's hours run Tuesday through Sunday, with Sunday hours of noon to 3 p.m. That makes it one of the few new Town Center stops open on a Sunday besides Bari.

On the Sunday dates above, Oct. 25, Nov. 8 and Nov. 22, Bari is the only one of the new Waterway restaurants serving dinner. For a Saturday table on Nov. 21, call 281-746-6466 for Bar Bludorn or book Bari through its Woodlands listing.

The Keith Robertson team follows what opens and changes around Town Center the same way we follow the housing market north of Houston: up close, one block at a time. If you'd like to talk about how new places like these fit into life in The Woodlands, let's start a conversation.