Touchdown Taphouse Gives Anna a Sports Bar That Actually Feels Like One

Anna, Texas — There are sports bars, and then there are bars where sports happen to be playing on television.

Touchdown Taphouse feels like the former.

That distinction became pretty clear Friday night, when Anna, Oklahoma, Michigan State and Georgia State were all playing football simultaneously, and seemingly every television inside Touchdown Taphouse had something worth looking at.

Then Anna returned an interception for a touchdown just as Oklahoma found the end zone against UTEP.

The entire room erupted, with seemingly every section having something to cheer about.

That’s ultimately the best argument for Touchdown Taphouse, a relatively new addition to Anna at 1234 W. White Street: the sports aren’t background decoration. They’re the point.

Wings, Ranch and a Sweet Tea

For this visit, I kept the food order about as stereotypically sports-bar as possible: 12 bone-in wings tossed in honey barbecue with ranch and a sweet tea.

The wings cost $18, with the tea adding $2.99. After tax, the total came to $22.72 before tip.

Twenty-five minutes passed between ordering and the food arriving, but on this particular Friday night, holding that against the restaurant would be difficult.

The place was packed.

At a few points, the hostess was helping wipe down tables simply to get the next group seated. It was the opening weekend of the college football season, Anna was playing Brock, and plenty of Coyote and Sooner fans had arrived with the same idea.

When the wings did arrive, they came out hot and fresh.

And then they disappeared.

Honey barbecue isn’t exactly an adventurous wing flavor, but Touchdown did it well. The sauce provided plenty of sweetness without drowning the chicken, and the wings themselves had enough crispness underneath to avoid becoming soggy.

The ranch was good, too.

I ordered 12 wings under the assumption that some degree of restraint would kick in before the basket was empty.

It did not.

The sweet tea was less successful for me. It leaned toward the stronger, less-sweet variety rather than the borderline-syrupy tea I personally prefer. Refills were also slow enough that my glass sat empty twice, and getting another occasionally required tracking down my server.

That’s worth mentioning in a review, but so is the context.

This was a packed Friday night during Week 1 of college football, with a local high school game drawing plenty of attention as well. The restaurant was visibly working to keep up with the crowd, and the slower drink service never became enough of an issue to overshadow the night.

Sports Are the Main Event

Touchdown’s biggest strength isn’t really the wings.

It’s what happened around them.

Sports bars are hardly a new concept, and Anna already has restaurants where you can sit down, order a beer and watch a game.

Touchdown feels more deliberately built around the watching the game part.

A massive video wall dominates the bar, while additional screens around the restaurant make it difficult to find a seat without a view of a game.

I went alone, but this is a place I’d return to immediately with a few friends when there’s a game we want to watch.

The atmosphere changes when something happens on screen. Conversations stop. Heads turn. One side of the room cheers. Then another television gets everyone’s attention a few minutes later.

Friday’s college games weren’t exactly providing instant classics. Oklahoma was handling UTEP, Michigan State had Toledo and Georgia State was facing North Carolina A&T.

Anna and Brock, meanwhile, were locked in a defensive fight.

That was the game capable of getting the whole room’s attention.

When the Coyotes scored on a pick-six, you didn’t need to look at the television to know something had happened.

You could hear it.

That’s what I want out of a local sports bar.

Room to Grow

Touchdown Taphouse is still a new business, and Friday showed some of the growing pains that can come with suddenly filling a restaurant.

The wait for food wasn’t particularly short. Drink refills could have been quicker. And for someone not drinking alcohol, the beverage selection appeared fairly conventional rather than offering much in the way of specialty non-alcoholic options.

None of those issues would stop me from returning.

In fact, I already know what I’d change next time.

The wings can stay, so can the sweet tea.

Next time I’m adding the nachos.

I watched enough plates of them pass by Friday night to spend the rest of the evening regretting that decision.

The Verdict

I left around halftime of Anna’s game, not because Touchdown had given me a reason to leave, but because I still had things to get done.

Had the game been closer — or had Friday’s college football slate offered a particularly compelling matchup — I could have easily stayed planted in that seat for another couple of hours.

That’s probably the most important thing Touchdown Taphouse gets right.

You can bring a family here. You can come for dinner. You can come for wings and leave.

But this isn’t really a family restaurant that happens to have televisions mounted on the walls.

It’s a sports bar.

And on a Friday night in Anna, when the Coyotes take an interception back for six and an entire restaurant reacts together, that’s exactly what it should be.

Touchdown Taphouse
1234 W. White St., Suite 140
Anna, Texas 75409

Photos by Brayden R. Heath / The Anna Progress