#236: Mayfair

The Bar

Mayfair. 501 W 6th St Ste. 300, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 6/20/2026 @ 6:30pm.

The Drink

Mayfair frozen. Frozen piña colada. $10.

Yes, a frozen drink, although I didn't begrudge the recommendation given how incredibly hot it has been lately - too hot. There wasn't anything particularly notable about this frozen drink, which was made with "well everything" according to the bartender, but that was fine with me. I don't really have strong feelings about piña coladas one way or the other, except that I always get that famous adultery song, which apparently was originally about Humphrey Bogart, stuck in my head every time they're mentioned. My one complaint is that I was still a little hungover from the previous night's marathon bar crawl, and the resulting intermittent brain freeze I got did not help it one bit, but obviously I have no one to blame for that but myself. 

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

Second time's the charm. I had tried to get in here last night as my fifth (!) and final stop, but there was some sort of ticketed event and they wouldn't let me in, unlike at RIO back in 2017 where I was able to sort of wander in undetected. It's probably for the best, as whatever was going on there was most likely not for the likes of me, since at night Mayfair caters to a high-end crowd expecting NYC/Miami/Las Vegas club vibes. It's in the same complex and owned by the same folks (Nova Hospitality) as TenTen and Bull & Bowl, who also run Devil May Care across the street. As if there wasn't already enough going on at this address there is also Skybox Lounge one floor above, but it's an event venue and therefore not eligible for this project. Mayfair was originally planned back in 2018 but only opened four years ago, which makes it part of the COVID rebound demographic; the bar equivalent of the baby boom, which the bartender and I spent a good chunk of time discussing. As you can see I was the only patron, which gave him and I plenty of time to chat about Sixth Street while simultaneously watching Germany vs Ivory Coast. He gave me good tidings: next door neighbor Unbarlievable, who seriously recommended me 96oz of Moscow Mule, had recently closed. I try not to gloat at the misfortune of others, but it's hard to mourn such malice. Hopefully Mayfair, with its clear conscience, will last a good deal longer. 

#235: Benny's Room

The Bar

Benny's Room. 720 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 6/19/2026 @ 10:30pm.

The Drink

Espresso martini. New Amsterdam vodka, cold brew coffee, Frangelico hazelnut liqueur, cream, honey. $15.

As I was typing up this post I was wondering how this was only the fourth espresso martini I've catalogued so far, but I remembered that a good chunk of the rest have been second/third drinks and therefore not "official" for the purposes of this blog. By now you should be familiar with the three basic ingredients of an espresso martini:

1. Vodka.
2. Coffee.
3. A ton of sugar + maybe some other stuff.

It's notable that while the vodka vs gin battle still rages to this day among traditionalist martini drinkers who insist upon gin, when it comes to espresso martinis the battle has been decisively won the other way by the vodka partisans (though I did appreciate when Marfa Lights and Roe Bucks used mezcal and peanut butter tequila, respectively, as their base liquors). This makes perfect sense, because whereas the gin botanicals would be completely overwhelmed by the coffee and sugar, flavorless vodka slides in perfectly unobtrusively behind all that. Benny's Room did wisely to choose New Amsterdam vodka for that role, as I have been fond of it for many years. I don't know that there's anything special about their cold brew coffee, but it did the job caffeine-wise, which was appreciated. 

Where the Benny's Room rendition of the espresso martini distinguishes itself is in the third leg of the ingredient tripod with its use of not only cream, and not only honey, but also Frangelico, an absolutely delicious old Italian hazelnut liqueur. I have made a lot of joking references to how espresso martinis have a tendency to turn into milkshakes, since if the liquor part is essentially fixed, and there's only so much you can do with coffee part, most of your creativity budget is being spent in the sweet part. It's like if that infamous silt-sand-clay threefold chart had only one of the types vary, leaving you lost in loam land. Well, this version plants you firmly in the milkshake sector, and you know what - the milkshake sector is actually pretty great. This is the best espresso martini I have had so far. 

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

My fourth stop of the night. I'd been sitting on this place for a while because I wasn't sure if it technically qualified as its own independent venue, but after a bartender at the main Green Light Social bar assured me that a different name would appear on my receipt, I was sold, and walked right in. Benny's (not Bennie's) Room is a side project of Green Light Social that they use as both a venue for events as well as a lure for customers who want something different from downstairs, with either a more speakeasy-like atmosphere inside or a rooftop view outside. It's not particularly hidden (just go upstairs and head leftward/northeast), so assuming that there's available seating you can just go walk in like I did. I confess that I don't have a lot to say about this place other than that it fulfills every requirement you could ask for from a nicer cocktail bar. Sometimes it's okay to just quietly excel in your chosen field, and that's exactly what this place does. I was very strongly tempted to stay for another round, but I had dreams (sadly dashed) of checking out Mayfair, so I departed. 

#234: The Lobby Social Club

The Bar

The Lobby Social Club. 710 B W 6th Street, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 6/19/2026 @ 10pm.

The Drink

La Paloma. Tequila, triple sec, agave, grapefruit, Tajín. $15.

Drinks in a dance club tend to be either basic yet functional, because you need just something to drink, or flashy and expensive, because you're trying to impress someone. This paloma was in the former category, although it was better than functional. This was the fifth paloma I've been served and I think it was among the best even though I don't know what well tequila they used. Part of that might have been presentation, as it came in a nice-looking glass rather than the plastic cup you sometimes get at clubs, but the other part was that the bartender was preparing it with skill even as I was annoying her with my spiel and questions about the bar. Dance clubs can be dehumanizing places to grab a drink, but not here, even though I had to drink it standing right up against the bar like a weirdo because while I was chatting with the bartender, immediately after I took my first sip about a million people descended upon the dance floor behind me and there was nowhere else to go. It all worked out though.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

My third stop of the night. When I was being waved in up the stairs by the doorman, my Simpsons-addled brain had the overwhelming urge to tell him "I have to go to ze lobby", but thankfully I was able to suppress it. Ze Lobby opened about a month ago, replacing The Ranch, which closed at some point within the last year. I have to say that in my opinion The Lobby looks way cooler than The Ranch was, no shade on the former occupant. The homey roadhouse interior has been replaced wholesale with a glittery infrared laser disco setting that impressed even a non-dance club-going schlub like me, and even though I still had more stops planned I was tempted to stay and just soak up the vibe/music. I was also impressed with the crowd; having just come from the essentially empty Medusa a block away, the throng of patrons made for quite a contrast. But the thing that I was perhaps most impressed with was the music, which was quite good EDM (props to the DJ), but even more importantly was at an actually reasonable volume that was just fine to listen to without being blasted into submission. In this modern era of ubiquitous painfully loud music, any venue that respects its patrons by not giving them permanent hearing damage deserves praise. 

#233: Medusa

The Bar

Medusa. 706 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 6/19/2026 @ 9:30pm.

The Drink

Green tea shot. Jameson whiskey, peach schnapps, sweet & sour. $5.

Even though even a great shot can only be so good, as a general rule, after adjusting for the form factor and grading on the appropriate curve, this was a great shot. Preceded by its three cousins at Lux, Voodoo Room, and Bijou Lounge, this was the fourth green tea shot I'd been served so far; the fifth if you count the full-sized version I got at Soho Lounge. I've talked before about using certain drinks as "standard candles" in order to compare bars to each other, and though this is often not possible given the wide variance between bars, despite minor differences from bar to bar (much like real standard candles), the green tea shot is as good a contender as any, barely behind the trusty gin and tonic, since it's a simple shot that's really hard to mess up even compared to other shots. Jameson did well when they invented it! 

One fun benefit of using shots as standard candles is that I've noticed for some reason that there has been much less inflation in shot prices than in other drink types like cocktails. I got a green tea shot at Lux in February 2017 for $5, and almost a full decade later it is still nominally $5, or $3.64 in 2017 money - a full 27% cheaper! Maybe shot deals are just unusually sticky for psychological reasons, or maybe it's just a cosmic anchor (Bijou Lounge had the gall to charge $8 for this shot in 2020 and now they are out of business, hmm), but either way it's much appreciated in this ever-changing world in which we're living. To be clear, I don't recommend switching to drinking only shots when going out, but unlike your doctor, your accountant might not object to your strategy. Lil Jon certainly wouldn't mind.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

My second stop of the night. Add Medusa to the list of bars I only found out about by physically walking past on the way to another bar. It replaced WYLD about a month ago, which itself replaced Brew Exchange back in 2020. I'm not sure what happened to WYLD, as it seemed to be plugging along as recently as March of last year, but such is life on Sixth Street. Medusa is not related to the old Medusa's that was located on Dirty Sixth back in the 90s, instead being a new venture attempting to bring some of the Latin dance club vibe you see at places like Mala Vida or Mala Fama to West Sixth, which does not currently have that exact type of dance club. As I was the only patron there for some reason, I was able to chat with the bartender for a long time about what it meant to have a more Hispanic-oriented bar on this stretch of Sixth, and how places like Medusa might differ from the other new Mexican bars like Chupito's on Dirty Sixth, to say nothing of the older stalwarts like Cisco's or La Perla on East Sixth. As we were discussing the sadly-departed Rabbit's Lounge that sits in the building now occupied by Whisler's, it was worth reflecting on how while patrons make the bar, bars also shape their patrons, and it's conceivable that Medusa might carve its own place into the history books someday if everything works out. Here's hoping. 

#232: The Treasury

The Bar

The Treasury. 1012 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 6/19/2026 @ 7:30pm.

The Drink

From Monument to Masses. St. George Valley gin, Yebiga "Bela" plum brandy, Comoz blanc vermouth, China-China Amer. $15.

The Treasury takes the exploration part of craft cocktails really seriously, as both this cocktail and the other I tried had unique ingredients I'd never seen before but really enjoyed. The name is a reference to spreading the gospel of Monument Valley (which the owner is evidently a big fan of), but I am not quite sure what cocktail genre this falls in - the combination of gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari/another Italian liqueur would make it a negroni, but the plum brandy adds a really different spin on it, and all of the other ingredients have some sort of citrusy overtones, including the gin. The bartenders are big fans of the Balkan plum brandy, also known as rakija; this was the unaged version. The Amer, which dates back to 1875, was a solid addition; as you can tell by the name, it can play the role of amaro or vermouth in a cocktail. I have had the Comoz vermouth before at Swedish Hill and liked it. Overall this was just a really well-made cocktail with multiple ingredients that would each be great in other cocktails. 

A fun behind-the-scenes detail is that the drink picture above is actually of my second round; I was so absorbed by my conversation that I totally messed up the picture, and was therefore forced to order it again so I could get a clean snap of it. I don't like to dwell on just how much suffering I endure on this journey for you, the loyal reader, but sometimes I am practically forced to order multiple cocktails in order to provide the level of service that you deserve. 

What's Up, Doc? San Cosme mezcal, Primo Aperitivo, pineapple gomme syrup, carrot juice, lemon. $15.

I liked the first drink but loved the second. In my opinion drinks like this single-handedly justify the existence of the entire craft cocktail scene/movement/wave, as the idea of using carrot in a cocktail would never have occurred to me but fully converted me once I tried it. Like many great ideas it was based on an inventory problem: one of the bartenders had a bunch of carrots lying around and - just like in the famous anecdote of the Moscow Mule being designed to unload a ginger beer surplus - decided to see what could be done with the excess root vegetable. The result is a triumph; even its name is both a fun reference to Bugs Bunny, arguably the greatest cartoon character of all time, as well as the fact that San Cosme is the patron saint of doctors. San Cosme is evidently more of a mixing mezcal than a sipping mezcal, and that works well here when poured alongside the citrusy Primo Aperitivo, which is also from Mexico. Gomme is just syrup with a thickener in it, so when the pineapple is combined with the lemon, the carrot juice, and everything else, the resulting cocktail was so good that I immediately wondered why you don't see carrot more often. The answer: carrot juice doesn't stay fresh for very long, so it's usually not worth it to keep it around. If only all inventory problems had a solution as drinkable as this one.

The brilliance of carrot juice as a cocktail ingredient in conjunction with the sight of a bottle of Malört on the shelf sparked a lengthy discussion about how Austin needs its own prank liquor equivalent to Malört based on some local flavor or ingredient of our own. We have the Indian Paintbrush, invented at Garage Bar, as our "official" city cocktail, but that's way too pleasant for our purposes. Malört's horrible taste draws deeply on old European folkways, but Austin is too new for us to have thought up our own terrible local distilled disaster (I have had menthol tobacco-flavored vodka, but that's imported), so the best we could come up with was to make our hypothetical gag spirit savory, reminiscent of breakfast tacos somehow. Upon further reflection, I think a good candidate would be a chorizo liqueur:

• Even the sound of that is disgusting, which is just what we're after.
• At least one person has made a chorizo negroni and not died instantly, so there is precedent.
• Filipino cuisine has not one but two types of pork sausage - Chorizo de Cebu and Chorizo de Macao - made with anise, which strengthens the Malört connection.

I'm not directly asking someone to make this horrific meat liqueur nightmare come to life, like Prankenstein's monster, but wouldn't it be fun if it did exist?

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

Somehow I had not noticed that Hen House had closed - maybe because the paint job on The Treasury when the door to the outside is closed camouflages it seamlessly with the rest of Shangri-La - but close it did after COVID, departing for a new life on Fourth Street back in 2021. This sad closure gave Shangri-La the opportunity to stealthily open up a more intimate high-end cocktail bar adjacent to their existing more laid-back dive bar. They call it a speakeasy, but it only sort of is - though the most common way to get in is indeed to follow a circuitous and non-obvious path through the bar and outdoors to travel up and down flights of stairs and then wait to be buzzed into the cocktail chamber, another way is simply to walk in whenever they have the outside door open during happy hour. 

Through some trick of interior design, the space itself somehow seems much smaller and more intimate than when it was Hen House. Perhaps it was the treasury/bank vault theme (not like a Fallout vault), but I felt securely ensconced at my front seat bar perch in a comforting way that I didn't at Hen House. One really cool thing they did that stood out was that on their menu they have recommendations for other cocktail bars to go to if you liked the vibe here. I have never seen a bar advertise other bars on their menu like that, but I really respect that attitude of friendly competition and mutual support for fellow establishments. That carried over to the bartenders too, who were all very well-connected and happy to be a part of Sixth Street. I felt like I could have stayed here and drank for the whole night, but I had places to be. This is a great place to drink, and you can take that to the bank!

#231: Jo's Coffee

The Bar

Jo's Coffee. 221 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 4/24/2026 @ 11:30am.

The Drink

Four Corners El Chingón. $6.

There's a funny beer selection here, as despite Jo's being a proudly Austin chain, basically every beer they had was from Four Corners, an equally proudly Dallas brewery. When I posed my standard question about the drink that best represents the bar, the staff collectively vacillated between this and the Local Buzz, their honey blonde, before eventually choosing the IPA. I was glad they did, as El Chingón (a cheerfully affectionate vulgar Spanish term meaning something like "the badass") is an excellent IPA, one of the few which can rival my beloved 512 IPA in terms of smoothness (72 IBU vs 512's 60) and quiet strength (at 7.3% ABV, it actually bests 512's 7.0%). I wasn't trying to get hammered in a bank lobby at 11:30am, but if I had been, this would have been a really pleasant way to do it, as there was some very nice seating with a good street view right behind the Jo's counter that I had all to myself. $6 a can isn't a particularly great bargain, but again: this is in a bank lobby.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

Jo's is a local mini-chain of coffee shops with an interesting position in the Austin cultural landscape. The flagship location on South Congress is internationally known for its iconic "I love you so much" wall mural, beloved of locals and tourists alike, but over the years the mural has become so well-known that it has reached escape velocity and is now more famous than the coffee shop itself, which is kind of like if everyone only knew the NYC restaurant featured in When Harry Met Sally as the "I'll have what she's having" deli. Still, there are obviously worse problems for your business to have than featuring world-renowned iconography on your building (at the very least, you can sell the crowds of people standing in line to take selfies in front of the mural coffee to drink while they wait), and the chain has done fairly well for itself since its founding in 2010. In fact, it has recently expanded beyond Austin to double-digit locations in multiple states thanks to its current status as a recently acquired member of the Hyatt hotel empire. 

Now, it's always potentially dangerous when a much-loved scrappy local joint scales up and out quickly - Alamo Drafthouse, Kerbey Lane, Torchy's, and Vert's are only some of the Austin-specific cautionary examples I could cite - but I feel like the coffee shop business model, particularly of the grab-and-go variety, has fewer inherent scaling problems than a restaurant, being more dependent on the location for its ambience. This Jo's outpost is located in the lobby of the freshly remodeled Chase Bank Tower, which was recently officially renamed to the Procore Tower but in a Sears Tower-like fit of stubbornness will probably retain its older name forever, especially among those old enough to remember when it was gold, like me. I had to go here during lunchtime since they close up at 5pm, which isn't great from an alcohol sales perspective but is just fine for a coffee shop that is focused on its core competency. Amusingly, the Jo's location nearest my house at Manchaca/Stassney can't sell alcohol at all since it is just barely within the TABC-mandated 300 foot radius of Crockett High School, but that just goes to show that booze isn't necessarily a big part of the Jo's business model, which is fair enough.

#230: Campo

The Bar

Campo. 1630 E 6th St #100, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 4/10/2026 @ 5:30pm.

The Drink

Spicy watermelon mint margarita. Carabuena tequila, watermelon, mint, chili. $16 ($10 during happy hour).

I've had watermelon margaritas before, but this one was easily the most citrullic yet, as it included a chunk of actual watermelon in it, thus putting the false promises of the other, lesser renditions of this humble classic that I've been drinking all these years into sudden stark relief. What a fool I'd been! An additional element in favor of this rendition is that the Carabuena tequila it uses is from Austin. I'd first encountered Carabuena when doing my research after visiting Willow Country down on West Sixth; after finally trying it, I think it makes an excellent base for the cocktail. I snagged this really fresh-tasting drink at the $10 happy hour price and it was a fantastic bargain.

Mezcalita maracuya. 400 Conejos mezcal, passionfruit, orange, agave, chili. $16.

This was the drink that second-best represented the bar, as I put it when I requested a second round. Campo does a lot of in-house juicing and making of agua frescas, and so I got another really fresh and flavorful cocktail. A mezcalita is just a margarita with mezcal in it, and maracuya is Spanish for passionfruit, so this drink is very true to its name. Speaking of, the name of the mezcal, which over-literally translates to "400 rabbits" (hence the name of the Alamo Drafthouse's specialty bar down south), is actually a translation of "centzon totochtin", the Aztec term for being really drunk: think of "drunk as 400 rabbits" as saying "3 sheets to the wind" in Nahuatl. By a funny numerical coincidence, the French also have a "400" phrase: "faire les quatre cents coups" figuratively means "to raise hell, to live a wild life", but when François Truffaut used it as the (perfectly apt) title for his debut film, it was bafflingly calqued by the studio as "The 400 Blows", which doesn't mean anything at all in English. What gives? What were they thinking?

In conclusion, I liked this cocktail as well. If the third beer is the philosopher's beer, the second must be the linguist's.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

About a month ago Campo ("countryside, field" in Spanish) moved into the empty space left by Recreation's closure a few months back. None of the staff were quite sure what had happened to Recreation, but from what I can piece together, it seems like when Recreation's sister restaurant Ma'Coco's lease ran out on Comal a few blocks away, the owners tried to consolidate the concepts at Recreation, and just couldn't make it work out. RIP. Instead of Recreation's San Diego cuisine specialization, Campo's an upscale interior Mexican sort of place. The nice clean decor reinforces this impression; you can't really tell from the photo above, but everything is very neat and Instagrammable, which my bartender and I spent some time discussing. As I keep saying, it's really tough to open a cheap dive on Sixth Street these days, so the economics of influencer-friendly establishments, both in looks and menus, get more and more attractive to prospective bar owners who are trying to battle any number of economic headwinds these days, both tariffs on the national level as well as the related falling alcohol sales on the local level. 

As always, this is unfortunate for those of us who are attempting to recapture our lost memories of $1 Lone Stars and $3 wells, but what are you going to do. Interestingly, restaurant meals have gotten nearly 50% more expensive since 2017 versus only a 33% increase for drinks at a bar, so rather than complaining about how bougie cocktails have gotten, we should be directing our ire at more upscale menus and mourning cheap wing specials instead. But it's missing the point to spend too much time grumbling at how much appetizers are these days, and you won't hear (too much) grumbling from me on that point - bars aren't charities, and the worst bar of all is the one with the CLOSED sign on it. Instead I will say that you should go here if you're looking for a slightly more casual, less dressed-up companion to Mexta at Sixth and Congress.

#229: The Victorian

The Bar

The Victorian. 604 Brazos St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 3/20/2026 @ 6:30pm.

The Drink

Old-Fashioned. High West bourbon, Rittenhouse rye, demerara, Angostura bitters. $18.

Old-Fashioned #19! I have not been very consistent about using my Old-Fashioned rating system, but this one was so good I feel the need to bring it back, especially given the novelty of the first item:

• Base liquor: 9/10. Can't decide between a bourbon and a rye? Por qué no los dos? This is the first Old-Fashioned I've gotten which has split the difference on the single most existential question faced by an Old-Fashioned, and I loved it. It reminded me of the version I got at Via 313, which used a spicier bourbon that approximated a rye and was therefore also sort of halfway between the two varieties. Rittenhouse is one of the very few bottled in bond ryes, on the sweeter side anyway, and while the High West bourbon does not seem to be quite as acclaimed I still enjoyed it. Sometimes mixing liquors muddles a drink, but other times it improves it (this is the entire reason whiskey is blended in the first place), and this was one of those times. New law: all variants of an Old-Fashioned you can conceive of not only could exist somewhere out there but actually do, waiting to be discovered and drank. 
• Other ingredients: 9/10. Ever since I drank an Old-Fashioned with maple syrup instead of plain old sugar I feel like I can't go back, but the caramel notes of demerara are almost as good as waffle sauce. The luxardo cherry was top notch as always; an unheralded but essential ingredient. I don't know if I actually prefer multiple small ice cubes versus one big one, but these were just fine with me. 
• Preparation: 9/10. The bartender didn't actually make this in front of me due to it being the start of the evening rush, so you could argue that a 9 is too high, but her service (and the resulting cocktail) was so good that I would be amiss if I didn't give her high marks. 
• Value: 9/10: $18 in 2026 money is a bit over $13 in 2017 money, and I would have been perfectly willing to pay that for this cocktail back then. 

Overall it was just as good as you'd hope from a bar like this. I feel lucky that I live in a city with such good Old-Fashioneds everywhere I go. The bartender had given me a few options when I gave her the spiel, so I couldn't stop at just one cocktail....

Black Manhattan. Rittenhouse rye, nocino walnut digestivo, sweet vermouth. $20.

Yup, it's another multi-drink recommendation post. I have mentioned several times how one of the most fun parts of this whole Sixth Street project is getting to try new things, and I never tire of discovering new liqueurs specifically, so the nocino walnut liqueur that accompanied the rye in this version of a Manhattan was a real treat. I am not generally a fan of sweet vermouth (I once did some "Manhattan science" in college to determine the best combination of vermouths and whiskeys, and as far as I can remember I preferred the dry vermouths), but the way it balanced out the nut/herb flavor of the nocino really took the drink to the next level. I didn't ask which specific brand of nocino or sweet vermouth they used, but the next time I make one at home I will follow their lead. 

The Layover. High West double rye, Bénédictine, Aperol, vanilla. $20.

Okay, last one. This one actually came with the highest personal recommendation from the bartender, as it was designed by an acquaintance of hers. Kudos to the designer, because my verdict was that it was excellent. This surely can't be the very first time I've had a cocktail with Bénédictine in it, but I cannot locate a precedent, so I will have to describe it anew: imagine a liqueur almost as herbal as chartreuse, but sweeter and spicier. It isn't a perfect substitute for chartreuse, but since those damn monks are still not increasing production to meet demand, there might be scenarios where you could swap it in for its scarcer, more famous cousin. I found it to be the perfect accent to the double rye along with the Aperol and vanilla (a criminally underused cocktail ingredient), and I actually don't know if chartreuse would have been better. Props to the inventor of this cocktail, whoever she is, because it was delicious.

We switched to martinis and eventually beer, which we also enjoyed, but I didn't take pictures of them.

The Crew

Aaron, Ishani, Elijah.

Notes

I was really looking forward to The Victorian, and I am pleased to report that it did not disappoint in the slightest; the latest bar in the Driskill is just as great as its predecessors. They have been open since October, which coincides with the reconstruction of the original bar as part of a general renovation/overhaul undertaken by MML, everyone's favorite local hospitality management corporation. The space currently occupied by The Victorian has been a surprisingly diverse number of things over the 140 years that the Driskill has been around: a bank, a nightclub, and most interestingly to me, a devoted Robert Caro reader, the headquarters of LBJ's radio station KTBC, which eventually became our local Fox 7 TV station. You would never know it had such a long and varied history from the decor, which makes it look like it's always been a really nice cocktail lounge. They have ample seating downstairs, but even more upstairs, which was really convenient for when the band you can see behind us started playing. They even have great food as well; we had a variety of plates as we got steadily drunker from their superb cocktails, and enjoyed all of them. Live music, great drinks, fun vibes - I have no hesitation whatsoever about recommending The Victorian as one of the best new cocktail bars around, even though it feels like it's always been there.

#228: Buckshot (again)

The Bar

Buckshot. 519 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 2/28/2026 @ 12:00am.

The Drink

Cucumber kamikaze shot. Pearl cucumber vodka, triple sec, lime cordial, sour, spicy rim. $6.

Do constraints encourage creativity? In most types of art, the answer is yes. Whether the scarce resource is money, time, materials, deadlines, space, or people, being forced to work within some sort of limits can engage an artist's talents in a way that unlimited freedom might not. Shots are no exception: as a bartender, you are trying to serve up something strong but palatable enough to go down the gullet all at once, so you have to be careful what you mix up. In cooking, making small food big or big food small can be revelatory, but it's easy to think of good cocktails which would make for bad shots, and likewise, of decent shots which would make for decidedly unappetizing cocktails. 

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that within the parameters of what constitutes an acceptable shot, this diminutive version of the kamikaze cocktail is squarely on target - basically a mini-margarita, with an additional smooth cucumber aftertaste in this rendition. As it happens, the kamikaze shot is actually based on a cocktail, and one mentioned in the hit movie Cocktail, at that, although not with affection: 

In the book on which the film is based, also called Cocktail, author Heywood Gould describes Flanagan's contempt for the drink, mainly because it's a pain to make, only to be gulped down in one go.

"The Kamikaze is one of a class of disco cocktails invented by barbiturated teenagers," Gould writes. "It is a senseless, infuriating concoction made of equal parts vodka, lime juice, and triple sec (some regional variations include Tequila), shaken and strained into an ounce-and-a-half shot glass, and thrown down in one gulp. Its intent is instant inebriation."

Flanagan laments that a large shot of any spirit would do the job faster but then "these little sadists wouldn't have the fun of watching the bartender pouring and measuring and shaking and straining to absolutely no end".

Well, the bartender recommended it to me, so any sadism here would really be masochism. It was quite pleasant to shoot, though, which was good, because this was definitely a drinks, shoots, and leaves situation, as you will see...

The Crew

Aaron, Carter, Elijah, Ishani.

Notes

I'm seeing double here... four Buckshots! It turns out that Buckshot moved a block east to the old Sake Mama location several years ago and I simply didn't notice until a few days ago when I was scrolling Google Maps. In my defense, Maps still lists the bar in its old location too, but still... even if the bar were "the same" (which this isn't), a new location means a new bar to visit. Unfortunately, it turns out that the punishment for failing to notice that Buckshot moved is a visit to Buckshot, which was one of the loudest bars I have ever been to. I don't want to rehash the discourse on why some bars play such stupidly loud music (answer: it draws patrons in with promises of good times and then encourages them to buy their drinks and consume them as quickly as possible), but I will reiterate that I hate it and avoid bars as loud as this as much as possible. I really do try to look at the bright side of all these bars I visit, but I personally go to bars to have a drink while talking to people, and it was almost too loud in here to even order our round, which really shouldn't be possible. There are a ton of taxidermied skulls all over the place, and I couldn't help but speculate that they were there not for baddies reasons, or even as trophies for the ammo connection, but to represent the mortal remains of patrons who have simply succumbed to the near-lethal volume of the pounding hip hop/EDM/club music. 

This was our fourth stop of the night (the third and final official stop, but we took a detour to Violet Crown), and we wanted to actually talk to each other, so we slammed our shots and immediately retreated next door to Roe Bucks for great drinks and a chance to hear ourselves think. Despite the retention of the "buck name" (as in Roe Bucks, Two Bucks, Buck Wild), the ownership changed around the time of the move, so Buckshot now has no formal connection to its similarly-named brethren. Whoever the new owners are, they need to turn that shit down. Get your patrons drunk, not deaf!

#227: Bluff's

The Bar

Bluff's. 1107 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 2/27/2026 @ 9pm.

The Drink

Jalapeño business. Tequila, triple sec, jalapeño lime, tajín. $10.

When I asked the bartender for his recommendation, he initially tried to beg off because this was in the very first hour of his very first shift here. Well, too bad! I'm on a quest here, man! In truth, he did just fine, as the spicy margarita he eventually made me was just fine. His compatriot behind the bar lent a hand, both conceptually - he was the beverage director - and in the actual pouring. I confess that I find myself somewhat at a loss for something interesting to say about this drink, given how solid it was; despite being the single most popular cocktail in America, margaritas are not generally a drink that people rhapsodize over. No matter: it was strong, tasty, and cheap, and I would recommend it unhesitatingly. We also had a round of espresso martinis that were delicious, and I would recommend those as well.

The Crew

Aaron, Carter, Ishani, Elijah.

Notes

Bird's Barbershop, the not-really-a-bar that snuck on this list thanks to the salesmanship of its staff, has moved a few blocks the street, its old location replaced as of January by Bluff's. Frustratingly, I couldn't learn much about this bar's story since the owners were not present and all of the staff were brand new. There's basically nothing about it online, not even a blurb from the normally extremely useful Eater Austin, aside from a surprisingly informative influencer video. I did learn that this is not a chain or branch location, and I am always heartened to see another bar started from passion rather than from pecuniary impulses alone. Otherwise this seemed like a fairly typical Dirty Sixth bar despite being on East Sixth; I am not sure if this portends any cultural shift of the "grungy/touristic" vibe eastwards into the "hipper/laidback" zone, but it was perfectly pleasant while we were there. Some of us needed a snack, so after a long conversation with a fellow patron about the woeful history of the Jets, we decided to get a round of pondering Iron Whips (the best frozen cocktail in the game) and some Jewboy sliders at Violet Crown next door before tackling Buckshot, the third and final official stop of the night. 

#226: Max's Sushi

The Bar

Max's Sushi. 2121 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 2/27/2026 @ 6:30pm.

The Drink

Hatozaki. Hatozaki small batch whiskey. $10.75.

I practically had to pull the bartender's teeth to get him to recommend me a drink - "We don't do dealer's choice, we do customer's choice" were his exact words - but after much haggling and some very leading questions about what would be appropriate to drink with sushi, eventually I got my whiskey. I don't really have an appropriate category for this drink: Hatozaki is sipping whiskey, so this isn't a shot, but as straight whiskey, it feels weird calling it a full-fledged cocktail. Well, it came in a rocks glass (mainly because they didn't have anything else to serve it in), so a cocktail it is! Hatozaki has gotten mixed reviews, for being overpriced, on the light side, or simply being unremarkable; I liked it, even though I agree with the comments that it wasn't really anything special and I wouldn't recommend it over other Japanese whiskeys if you had to pick one bottle in a liquor store. We also had a few rounds of Bushido and Snow Monkey sake; I do actually recommend the Bushido, which was surprisingly good for canned sake.

The Crew

Ishani, Elijah, Aaron.

Notes

The first stop of the night was the old Hi Hat location. I really liked Hi Hat, a really distinctive restaurant/live venue/craft beer joint that felt like a neighborhood institution, and I was bummed that it closed in summer 2024 when they couldn't recover from the lengthy and expensive repairs the space required after suffering damage from our various recent winter storms. Max's has been in the space for about five months after relocating from their old location up north, but they still seem a bit unsettled. Half a year is a long-time to still be experiencing opening-night jitters, but almost every aspect of the experience felt slightly discombobulated to a degree - the lengthy drink-ordering process described above, the incomplete glassware, the parade of confused DoorDashers wandering in trying to pick up their orders from the bar kitchen, the abandoned half-installed sake taps next to the bar... Even the music required some assistance from me, but that turned out to be for the better, as I am happy to report that I have now gotten Skee-Lo's immortal 1995 hit I Wish played at not one but two different Sixth Street bars. 

I would be remiss for not discussing the food here in more detail; despite what I said above about this bar still seeming in shakedown mode, their food is an excellent deal. They have big chicken katsu fingers, delicious garlic ramen plates, hefty sushi rolls, and each item is only like $5. We were sharing plates and left full for what felt like no money. Highly recommended, especially if you are eating because you need a buffer against the next round of drinks, which we were...

#225: Poeta

The Bar

Poeta. 1108 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 2/14/2026 @ 2:30pm.

The Drink

Golden Hour. Gin, golden falernum, ginger, rosemary, lemon. $15.

Great cocktail, despite it not having anything to do with any of the numerous other cocktails of the same name: examples 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Hey, sometimes you come up with a good drink, a name comes to you, and you roll with it, prior art be damned; if it's not one of the very few trademarked cocktails, you can basically mix up whatever you want. This laissez-faire attitude extended to all phases of the drink-ordering process, as the hostess who sat us initially recommended a paper plane, a modern classic invented by none other than Sasha Petraske himself, but before that order made it to the bar our server called an audible and recommended this house specialty instead. I was glad he did, since this was a nice lemony, herbaceous, very drinkable afternoon cocktail. It was sweeter than you'd expect given the ingredient list; simple syrup wasn't listed, but this tasted almost like straight Deep Eddy lemon vodka, which is not a criticism since I love that stuff. Worthy of a second round, for sure, but given how rainy it was, I switched to a nice warm carajillo instead, which was also quite good.

The Crew

Elijah, Ishani, Aaron, Bobby.

Notes

Poeta is the newest occupant of the East Austin Hotel. You may recall that this hotel opened in 2019 with 3 different bars residing within: Sixth & Waller, Pool Bar, and The Upside. The ownership then decided to economize, and, reusing one of their other bar concepts, replaced them with a single bar: Second Bar + Kitchen. Now another bar has moved in: Poeta. The reason it's not called Third Bar or something similar is not only because Second Bar is still hanging around, operating in this space on weekdays and swapping out to Poeta for dinners and on weekends, but also because Poeta predates the hotel, having taken up residence in a few other spots around east Austin before finding its latest footing here on Sixth Street. I'd never been to its previous incarnations, but it's an upscale Italian place that has consistently gotten rave reviews no matter its mailing address. Bobby and I had just eaten so we didn't order anything, but Elijah and Ishani got mortadella and raved about it. I have written before about how the era of hotels playing a pivotal role in the invention of various dishes and drinks has ended; that may be true, but hotel restaurants and bars are still pleasant places to stop in even if you're not staying there.

#224: Counter Cafe

The Bar

Counter Cafe. 1914 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 2/14/2026 @ 1:30pm.

The Drink

Bloody Mary. Tito's vodka, house mix. $12.

I used to be a big Bloody Mary fan, but my enthusiasm has waned somewhat over the years. Nothing against the drink itself, it's just that for me, a big glass full of tomato juice over a shot or two of vodka just doesn't quite hit the same as it used to, regardless of how many mini-meals are or aren't crammed into the drink. For a long time Rio Rita ruled the roost of Bloody Marys on Sixth Street; once they departed for 12th and Chicon in 2016, Casino El Camino took over as my favorite on the street. Casino can be confident in their crown, as Counter's Cafe's version was functional but not particularly spectacular. The main way that a Bloody Mary can fail to impress is by not being strong enough, which this wasn't. Another way is by having a subpar mix, and while this wasn't bad or anything, it just didn't knock my socks off. 

However, in fairness, the main way that you can fail a Bloody Mary is by having only one of them, thus depriving them the opportunity to exert their peculiar power of persuasion that day-drinking needs to override the critical parts of your brain via their cumulative impact. Much like a bad joke can become funny via constant repetition, even a mediocre Bloody Mary can display its charms once accompanied by a few compatriots in short order. However, we couldn't stay to consume enough gallons of cocktail to begin to enjoy them, so I have to give a rare thumbs down on this one; maybe stick with a mimosa or something. 

The Crew

Bobby, Aaron.

Notes

"Always read the fine print" is always good advice, not only when you're buying a house or participating in a leveraged buyout, but also even when you're reading a menu, as I overlooked what should have been stop #112 or thereabouts on this project for all these years, because I simply never noticed the tiny text in the bottom corner stating that they served alcohol! Counter Cafe is a local mini-chain originally founded all the way back in 2007. They first caught my attention in 2009 when they landed at #2 on Texas Monthly's Best Burgers In Texas list, quite deservedly in my opinion. That was back when all they had was the single cramped location on Lamar (featured at the 32:33 mark in the movie Slacker); this Sixth Street location opened up in 2014, followed in 2018 by their taking over the original Conan's Pizza location on 29th, followed by the COVID-induced closure of the Lamar location in 2020 and its replacement by what is now Garbo's. 

I like this location more than the original; while still maintaining the intimate, old-school diner vibe of the original incarnation, this new location has more than double the room, which allows them to handle the crowd (especially on a day like Valentine's Day), and its patio seating is not only not jammed right up against a busy street like Lamar but is sheltered from the elements, which is important on a rainy day like today. Although they're famous for their burger, these days I usually go for their breakfast: they have some of the best pancakes in town (no word on where those rank in the state; stop slacking, Texas Monthly!), their breakfast tacos are excellent (though a tad small), their crab cakes benedict is phenomenal, and their migas special is no slouch either. Counter Cafe is a solid modern classic and I hope they keep doing what they're doing for many years, although as I mentioned above, maybe their drink menu could use another look.