Opening Day & Home Opener Dinner in Arlington, TX

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Opener week is a reservation week

A home opener is one of the two or three dates each season when the whole district fills at once, and the ninth floor at 2221 E Lamar Blvd fills with it. Mercury Chophouse – Arlington takes reservations through OpenTable and by phone at 817-381-1157, and for opener week the right time to book is the day the schedule is published. That goes double for the Friday and Saturday nights of that week, when the dining room runs until 10 PM.

Two things shape the plan: the day of the week the opener lands on, and the first-pitch or kickoff time. The restaurant is open Monday through Saturday and closed Sunday, so an opener on a Sunday takes dinner here off the table for that day and moves it to the Friday or Saturday beside it.

The Rangers home opener

The Rangers open the home schedule in early spring, and Globe Life Field is about 1 mile and 4 minutes from the restaurant’s front door. If the opener is an afternoon first pitch, the day-game pattern applies: the game ends mid-afternoon, and a 5 PM reservation gives a full dinner with the ballpark still in the window. If it is an evening first pitch around 7 PM, reserve 5 PM, leave by 6:30 PM and allow extra time for opening-day traffic, which is heavier than an ordinary Tuesday in May.

Spring light is a bonus. Sunset moves from about 6:30 PM in early March to 7:35 PM after the clocks change and 7:55 PM in April, so an early-evening table catches the retractable roof and the Six Flags tower in daylight before the district lights come on. The Rangers pre-game page has the full timing table.

The Cowboys home opener

The Cowboys’ first home game usually comes in September, and more often than not it falls on a Sunday, when Mercury is closed. When it does, the opener dinner becomes an opener weekend: Friday night or Saturday night on the ninth floor, with AT&T Stadium about 1.5 miles away lit up in the window and sunset at about 7:35 PM. When the home opener lands on a Thursday or Monday night, a 4:45 PM reservation fits a 7:15 PM kickoff with a leave-by of 6:15 PM.

The Cowboys pre-game page spells out the Sunday problem and the days that avoid it. Either way, September opener weekends tend to overlap with Rangers home dates, which means two crowds in the district on the same night and a stronger case for reserving early.

Sunset by opener month

Window tables are asked for constantly in opener week and cannot be guaranteed, but the curved window wall runs the length of the dining room and the view is wide. Ask when you book and arrive on time. Live piano plays by the window on select evenings; if that matters for the night, ask which evenings when you call.

A first-of-the-season dinner

Opening day is a reason to order the cuts you talk about for the rest of the year. The 27 oz Wagyu Long Bone Ribeye at $210 is the signature cut and feeds a table. The Dry-Aged 36 oz Porterhouse at $175 is the two-person steak. The Land & Sea Sampler at $26 per person starts a group with calamari, a filet mignon cigar, a crab cake and shrimp cocktail all at once.

The bar leans local for the occasion: Hibiscus Ranchwater at $17, a Cowboy Daiquiri at $17, the Arlington Cosmopolitan at $17 with St George citrus vodka, and Texas whiskeys by the 2 oz pour, including Garrison Bros. Small Batch at $23 and Ironroot Harbinger at $20. Draft beer comes from Manhattan Project in Dallas, with the Half Life hazy IPA at $8.

Groups for opener week

The Boardroom is the opener-week room: a private space behind a frosted glass door, 8 to 20 at one long table, a large screen wired into the AV system for the pregame coverage, and the same district view as the dining room. Semi-private seating takes groups up to 28. Parties of 10 or more meet a food and beverage minimum, one check is presented, and inquiries sent through the event inquiry form are answered within 48 hours. Because opener week books early, send the request the same week the schedule comes out.