#206: Willow Country Bar

The Bar

Willow Country Bar. 719 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 2/28/2025 @ 8pm.

The Drink

Cowboy cocktail. Chuckle rum, Malibu rum, pineapple juice, cranberry juice. $16.

One of the benefits of having done this project for 8 years (!) is that it gives me some perspective whenever I get sticker shock. I don't love that a drink in a Solo cup, even one made of metal, is $16, but the equivalent drink I was served 8 years ago at Concrete Cowboy was $12, and according to the BLS inflation calculator that is $15.72 today, so it's actually almost exactly the same price, even though it doesn't feel the same, as the drink at Concrete Cowboy was not only more elaborate but much bigger. Regardless, Chuckle rum is basically a fruit punch (I'm not sure if it has extra chuckle), and Malibu rum is the classic cheap "coconut suntan lotion" you remember from college, so this is a sort of simplified hurricane. I can only handle so much of these very sweet club drinks, so while each sip was fine on its own, I was not sorry when I finished it. Interestingly, the bar has an ownership connection with Carabuena tequila; it might have been nice to get a drink with some of that in it, but that's Dealer's Choice for you.

The Crew

Aaron, Rome.

Notes

Willow Country Bar is a reimagining of Concrete Cowboy, though its owners, the So Clutch Group, still maintain the Concrete Cowboy brand in other cities. It hasn't been open too long, but it had a big crowd of service industry folks the night I was there. In terms of changes from its former incarnation, the biggest change is the addition of a mechanical bull, which is an attraction I'm always surprised that bars spring for, given the cost of installation and operation, the amount of floor space they consume and the type of crowd you have to attract in order for them to get used. Do patrons really buy more drinks as they're watching some drunk tourist get thrown off after the first buck? Are there really people who practice their technique so they can ride it for longer? They're not that expensive, it's just interesting that the economics can work out for a bar. This was my fourth stop of the night (Rome's third), so we decided not to stick around for any bull-riding which might occur.