One door over from Jimmy’s Food Store in Old East Dallas is Sylvestro, where the lights are low and the drinks are strong.
It’s the newest concept from brothers Pasha and Sina Heidari who own La Palmas, Bowen House, Mike’s Gemini Twin Lounge, St. Martin’s Bistro and Urbano Cafe.
The small cocktail bar, which quietly opened on Halloween, is connected to Urbano Cafe. That means the longtime neighborhood restaurant known for being BYOB is no longer BYOB.
Inside the new cocktail bar in Old East Dallas, Sylvestro, on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025 in Dallas.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer
Eat Drink D-FW
Beer, wine and cocktails from Sylvestro can be ordered at Urbano Cafe, while the restaurant’s food menu can be ordered at the cocktail bar.
Inspiration for Sylvestro came from the late 80s, said Pasha Heidari. It’s a time period he and his brother are fond of, and they wanted to create a space that feels of that era.
The nods to the 80s are subtle. Hints of art deco revival come through in the glass block bar counter, the curved leather and chrome banquette seating and the blocky graphic design.
The drink menu also pays tribute to the time period, but in a modernized way.
“The 80s were not necessarily the best decade for cocktails as a whole,” said Joe Shirghio, beverage director for the Heidaris’ concepts. “But they did create some great-looking cocktails then.”
Madison King prepares the Gioiello cocktail at the new cocktail bar Sylvestro in Old East Dallas.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer
Sylvestro’s cocktail menu is, by design, full of recognizable drinks like a cosmo, a gimlet and an espresso martini.
“We wanted people to have a bit more familiarity with the cocktails, with names that are familiar,” Shirghio said. Beyond the names, the cocktails become less familiar.
Take the Everything Espresso Martini. It’s made with Japanese iichiko sochu and orgeat, and it is flavored with everything seasoning and a dash of soy sauce for salinity. It comes dusted with crushed fortune cookie and topped with a fortune. Shirghio said he never sets out to create a life-changing cocktail, but this one might come close.
The Everything Espresso Martini at Sylvestro is flavored with everything seasoning and a dash of soy sauce.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer
Also on the drink list is the Bergamot Martini, which is a play on the chrysanthemum, a pre-prohibition era cocktail. The martini is made with dry vermouth, an Italian bergamot liqueur and Pernod.
The most striking cocktail on the menu, Shirghio said, is the Gioello made with midori, gin, centerbe and dry vermouth. The centerbe, an Italian herbal liqueur, gives it a neon green hue, and it comes with an ice cube inset with a maraschino cherry.
A nonalcoholic drink list is in the works, but the bar has a full line up of nonalcoholic spirits that can be deployed to whip up just about anything, Shirghio said. A menu of bar food is also in development.
Sylvestro joins a corner of Dallas where Jimmy’s Food Store has fed the neighborhood for decades and where one of the city’s oldest continuously operating bars, Dallasites, is still slinging drinks after more than 50 years.
Saint Valentine, from Dallas bar veterans Gabe Sanchez and Ryan Payne, brought craft cocktails to this pocket of Old East Dallas in 2023.
Sylvestro — with its moody interior, traces of nostalgia and familiar but inventive drink list — is date night material. It is currently open from 5 p.m. to 12 a.m. Tuesday through Saturday, but eventually it will be open daily.
Sylvestro opened Oct. 31, 2025, at 1412 N. Fitzhugh Ave., Dallas. Cocktails range from $16 to $20.
Sylvestro’s cocktail list takes inspiration from the 1980s.
Shafkat Anowar / Staff Photographer