#214: Mexta

The Bar

Mexta. 106 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 4/11/2025 @ 9pm.

The Drink

Mole Old-Fashioned. Bulleit bourbon, mole negro infused simple syrup, habanero bitters, dark chocolate, sea salt. $16.

My 17th old-fashioned! Not that I've been keeping up with my grading system, but I don't think I'm even going to try anymore, and this is the perfect example of why - there's just been too many of them, and they're all so different that often they share only the name. This is not as out-there or showy as some of the old-fashioneds I've had, but it's certainly one of the most distinctive. Bulleit bourbon is an old reliable, but given that Mexta is an upscale Mexican restaurant, they naturally put a Mexican spin on the classic, starting with an infusion of mole negro into the simple syrup. Mole negro is a classic Oaxacan sauce with infinite variations surrounding the core ingredient of charred peppers; its presence here was helped by the habanero bitters (I didn't ask the brand), but especially highlighted and livened up by the disc of dark chocolate. The old-fashioned should never be turned into a dessert cocktail like the espresso martini does so often, but I appreciated how they turned up the dial on both the spicy and sweet aspects of it. I was very tempted to order another one, but I was done for the night.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

The fifth stop of the night. I try not to visit too many bars in one night because my notes and thoughts get a little hazy, but Mexta was on the way, and the moment demanded it. Mexta replaced Simi Estatorio a bit over a year ago, taking one of the prime spots in the Littlefield Building, one of the many holders of the illustrious "Austin's tallest building" crown. They have not one but 2 Michelin star-winning chefs, so they serve very upscale Mexico City-style cuisine (call it "chilango" or "CDMX" for insider points), with foods I've never even heard of ("pork belly encacahuatado, tikin xic salmon with xnipec salsa") on the menu, in a really classy and inviting setting. It made a fascinating contrast with the more everyday decor and street tacos at Chupitos, which I'd just been to 2 stops ago - here you have both the high and low end of Mexico City-style nightlife instantiated a few blocks away from each other. I already talked about the ongoing demographic shifts in Austin in the Chupitos review, and the upscalization of the city in the BOA Steakhouse review, but the juxtaposition was just very striking to me when I was sitting at the bar at Mexta chatting with the bartender. "Mexican cantina" may not have the same definitive form as "Irish pub" just yet, but it will be interesting to see how the market segments work themselves out as the city changes.

#213: Mitzi's

The Bar

Mitzi's. 320 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 4/11/2025 @ 8:30pm.

The Drink

Rear naked choke. Ilegal rum, Cynar, Aperol, lemon. $18.

Named after the infamous martial arts move, this is one of their signature cocktails. I guess you could call it a rum negroni or a rum Aperol spritz. I generally think of pairing rum with sweeter mixers rather than more bitter/floral ingredients like Cynar or Aperol, but even with both, this worked for me. It did stand out to me as more of a sipping drink: obviously it's not like I'm chugging any of these cocktails, in these advanced years where college is but a distant memory, but some drinks are just more gulpable than others, and this was a drink to linger over.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

I will confine myself to this single sentence lamenting the pandemic-induced death of the Alamo Ritz theater that this establishment replaced; RIP. Anyway, there's a lot to say about Mitzi's, but as good a place as any to begin is to note that it is named after Mitzi Shore, a pivotal figure in comedy history as well as having incidentally birthed the infamous Pauly. The bar is tucked away in Joe Rogan's Comedy Mothership, but is separately accessible from the street should you want to go there without going to a show. I'm not sure what percentage of its patronage is independent of the performances; it doesn't open until 6pm, a mere hour before most shows begin, but when I visited in mid-set there weren't too many other patrons. That was just fine by me, since as you well know by now, a quiet bar is a good chance for me to chat with the bartender.

The main topic we discussed at length was the question of if Austin has become more of a comedy city since the Comedy Mothership came to town. It's tough to say - to use a music analogy, it's not like building a bigger arena in a city produces more musicians in and of itself, but the presence of the arena can draw bigger musicians to visit, which might encourage both more musicians moving to the city as well as more homegrown production due to clustering effects. Of course, many of Austin's most famous musicians were here well before the city had big fancy venues (which we still don't really have, COTA aside), and if anything Austin might be worse at producing musicians now that we're a more expensive city to live in, since the #1 thing musicians need is cheap rent while they work on their art (Exhibit A: Townes Van Zandt's Clarksville hovel). There might be plenty of other reasons for comedians to move to Austin besides large venues, but the parallels between comedy and music are worth pondering - in 2016, Patrick Reilly wrote a fascinating paper on the unique career paths of comedians, and how the lack of copyright protections for jokes help segment the industry into superstars and have-nots, which is of even greater relevance in an era where social media is having vast effects on both the production and consumption of comedy.

Then again, the Comedy Mothership hasn't been open long enough to have any real effect anyway, so it's probably too soon to say. An unanswerable question is the best kind to debate over your fourth cocktail of the evening, so after noting that the interior is comfortably run-down and scruffy, and might make a good venue for small sets itself, I departed this pleasant locale for my final stop of the night. 

#212: Chupitos

The Bar

Chupitos. 311 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 4/11/2025 @ 8pm.

The Drink

La Palomita. Tequila, grapefruit, agave, lime, Tajín. $16.

This was a great disappointment. Not the drink itself, which was just fine, but the manner in which I received it compared to what could have been. A paloma ("dove") is a standard cocktail, so the diminutive form palomita either refers to a smaller version, or a variant on it, or just a paloma that you particularly like. The bar's intention was that this paloma would be served in a glass bottle of Mexican Squirt, but the absolutely idiotic Trump tariffs made it too expensive to import them from south of the border, so it was served to me in a normal boring rocks glass instead. Ah well, you know what they say about a bird in the hand - it was a great paloma anyway. 

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

My third stop of the night. Chupitos (meaning "sips, shots") is brand new, like a month old. I have no idea what happened to Tiki 311, and neither did the bartender, but now Chupitos is here instead. It's kind of strange to me that in 2025 bars can still open up and shut down suddenly without anyone having any idea what happened, but there you go. What the bartender could tell me is that Chupitos is a very different bar, being more of a Mexican dance club, like Mala Vida or Mala Fama, and rather than serving Hawaiian food like Tiki 311 did, naturally they serve more Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisine like CDMX-style street tacos, which looked really good although I did not partake. While I was walking here I saw a big sign for the Old 6th marketing campaign (run by Stream Realty, which is redeveloping a big chunk of Sixth Street); as Austin has grown and gotten richer over recent years it's gotten less white and more Hispanic, going from about 20% Hispanic in the mid-80s when I was born to just about a third Hispanic now. Bars can be either leading or lagging indicators of demographic change, and while I'm not sure if exactly 1/3 of all new bars opening up on Sixth Street are Hispanic-owned/oriented/patronized, it's interesting to contrast the newer establishments to older ones like La Perla or Cisco's. As the Old 6th campaign kicks into high gear, it's worth pondering on how Sixth Street grows and changes along with the city, rather than freezing certain moments in time. What a happy coincidence that "al centro" can also mean "to downtown"!

#211: BOA Steakhouse

The Bar

BOA Steakhouse. 300 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 4/11/2025 @ 7:30pm.

The Drink

Smokeshow. Knob Creek rye, maple syrup, orange bitters, applewood smoke. $20.

There's a famous maxim that you eat with your eyes first. Its truth has been confirmed by research for food, but it's true for drinking cocktails too, which is why skillful preparation and presentation like you see here is always so nice to encounter. This was very-similar to the smoke-shrouded Manhattan I was served at Lonesome Dove, only this take on an Old-Fashioned wasn't served on a platter. Instead, it was served to me on the bar with half of the drink in the glass, chilled by one of those Death Star-esque massive ice spheres, and the other half in a corked bottle that was filled with applewood smoke, which allows you to tailor the smokiness of your cocktail to your taste as you drink it. Not only does it look cool, attracting attention and jealousy from other bar patrons, but the drink itself was excellent. I've basically lost count of the number of Old-Fashioneds I've been served by now (it's #18 in all), but this was the first to have maple syrup, which was a why-didn't-I-think-of-that touch of brilliance and should be a serious consideration if you're making one at home. The bartender was on point too, which made the drinking experience all the more pleasant.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

BOA (pronounced with 2 syllables, as in "constrictor"), which has been open for about a year, is a vivid reminder of the fact that Austin is no longer becoming a wealthy city - it already is one, and in fact it has been for some time. Whether you use a quantitative metric like median household income, nominal or real per capita income, real GDP, number of millionaires, or some other more qualitative measure like in all those tedious sour grapes navel-gazing longreads about how the city isn't all that/stopped being all that/was never all that in the first place, Austin has become a city where an upscale steakhouse that advertises an "LA vibe" in reality feels like just another new high-end restaurant that fits in seamlessly on Sixth Street alongside the high-end Mediterranean at Aris, the high-end Mexican at Mexta, the high-end Texan at Lonesome Dove, the high-end Filipino at OKO, the high-end seafood at Clark's Oyster Bar, or even coming full circle to Austin's heritage with the high-end American cuisine at the Driskill, and so on. This is downtown, after all.

I have zero negative things to say about the restaurant at all - my drink was excellent, the staff was top notch, all of the food looked awesome, the atmosphere was really pleasant in that swanky kind of way, everyone there was having a great time - it's just that every so often I get reminded of how much Austin has changed since I was a kid, in both an uncomfortable way, as it's yet another place which will probably trip your Too Rich For My Blood alarms; and in a positive way, as the average quality of food and drink that us Austinites have access to has risen in a curve strangely reminiscent of all those graphs I was just talking about. Hey, all that extra money we're now making has to be spent somewhere, right? BOA Steakhouse is as good a place to spend it as anywhere.

#210: The Kitchen

The Bar

The Kitchen. 400 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 4/11/2025 @ 7pm.

The Drink

Hibiscus margarita. El Afan Blanco, Grand Marnier, fermented honey, hibiscus, lime. $20.50.

The Kitchen is one of those places that gives you a cocktail menu in the form of a little book, and the recommendation came from their page of house specialties, although they had another page of gin cocktails which also looked intriguing. The tequila here is Blanco from El Afán ("desire, yearning"), a Jalisco-based distiller. It has a fairly balanced profile, Hibiscus is a solid choice as a margarita base, not only for its complex floral/tart tangy flavor but also to the red color it gives to the drink. Grand Marnier is of course the cointreau/triple sec-adjacent component that adds a little sweetness. I wanted to know more about the fermented honey (AKA mead), like if it was from Meridian Hive meadery or somewhere else local, but the bartender unfortunately didn't have the opportunity to fill me in on the backstory due to the needs of the other patrons (see below). Overall it was a solid hibiscus margarita, although not exactly a great value for the price.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

The first thing about this restaurant you will learn is that it is owned by Kimbal Musk, brother of Elon, being the fourth outpost of his restaurant chain. Normally that would merely be a Fun Austin Fact along the lines of Sandra Bullock owning Walton's Fancy & Staple down the street, but this place seems to be a sort of "company bar" for the entire extended corporate Muskoverse, as sitting near me were employees of Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Company, etc., having exactly the kinds of discussions you'd expect while ordering drinks at a rapid pace. The interior is like a diner but nicer, if that makes sense, with a vibe in between "homey" and "high-end". I looked it up and it was designed by Michael Hsu, an architect who has also designed an impressive number of "hey, that's neat" buildings around town and elsewhere. Austin has a cool legacy of artists quietly leaving their their unique marks all around town for those who know where to look, like Gary Martin's signs, or Evan Voyle's neon lighting, so it's neat that that tradition is still going strong even if The Kitchen isn't exactly the same kind of local business as those others. 

The building it occupies on the ground floor, the imaginatively named Sixth and Guadalupe tower, is currently Austin's tallest tower, at least until the Waterline seizes that crown not just for Austin but for all of Texas, and it has a pretty interesting backstory: it replaced a series of hotels, including the Alamo Hotel, which was owned by LBJ's brother and featured in the music videos for Rock the Casbah and Pancho and Lefty. This tower was commissioned by Facebook in 2019 just before the pandemic, when commercial real estate in downtown Austin looked like a can't-miss investment for all the in-person jobs that were surely coming down the pike. Well, things didn't exactly turn out that way, and so Facebook has decided not to move in at all, opting instead to sublease out the whole thing. Those of us who remember the Intel Shell should be relieved that that debacle was not repeated here, and instead of a decaying ruin there is a restaurant, its proprietor's politics aside.

#209: OKO

The Bar

OKO. 1100 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 4/5/2025 @ 9:30pm.

The Drink

Rock Lee. Citadelle Jardin d'Été gin, pandan, plum, ponzu. $19.

Every so often on this project I get served a cocktail that impresses me more than delights me. Evidently named after a character from the anime Naruto, this was by far the sparkliest drink I've yet been served. A quick glossary: pandan is a fragrant flower often used in Southeast Asian cooking, ponzu is a Japanese citrus vinaigrette sauce, and the Jardin d'Été gin is a slightly more Asian edition of their standard gin, with yuzu, melon, and orange peel. The sparkle came from the edible glitter on the dried plum (NOT a prune) you can see perched atop the rim of the glass. Savory cocktails often provoke a strongly mixed or polarized response from people since your brain spends more time going "hmm, this isn't what cocktails usually taste like" than analyzing the flavors themselves; by the end of this one I knew I liked it, but I might have preferred a simpler gin cocktail with only 1 or 2 of the other ingredients. The other cocktails on the list are all similarly eclectic. When I was looking up Filipino cocktails afterwards I discovered the kagatan, which is sort of their version of an Irish coffee; it's not on the menu, but if I go back, I'll see if they can make that.

The Crew

Aaron, Ishani, Elijah.

Notes

The wheel of time continues to turn on this property; as the sun once set on East Side Showroom to rise on Ah Sing Den, it has now set on Ah Sing Den in order to rise once more on OKO, a very upscale Filipino restaurant that is the latest project from ubiquitous local super-chef Paul Qui. Austin has never been known for its Filipino cuisine, for essentially purely demographic reasons (there are fewer than 5,000 in the city proper), which gives prospective Pinoy restauranteurs the classic dilemma of either opening a low-cost food truck serving mainly street food or opening a high-cost brick and mortar of high-end cuisine. Either option risks neglecting the "middling cuisine", as Rachel Laudan put it, that most average people typically eat and enjoy, which is one reason why immigrant restauranteurs sometimes struggle with finding a business model that fits the food they want to serve in addition to all the other ones of labor, etc. Qui and his partners chose the latter option for OKO (which interestingly is from the Hawaiian word oko'a, meaning "different/separate/independent" and not a Tagalog word), which is a drag from a wallet perspective, but on the other hand the food was absolutely delicious. We had:

• Baboy (pork skewers).
• Manok (chicken skewers).
• Pancit canton (stir fry noodles).
• Roti.
• Basque-style lemon cheesecake.

All of it was superb. Austin might not be as encouraging to new restaurants as it could be (due in part to our zoning restrictions which artificially hamper the low end of the market), but the ones which do make it are usually top notch.

#208: Recreation

The Bar

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

Visited 4/5/2025 @ 8:30pm.

The Drink

Figgy mule. Tito's, fig/ube syrup, ginger beer, lime. $14.

It's been years, but I have finally gotten over being given 96 oz of Moscow Mule at Unbarlievable - the misery of that sustained assault on my tastebuds has faded, and I can drink mules without the hateful scent of ginger beer triggering my gag reflex, so I promise never to mention it again. I probably wouldn't need to anyway, because Recreation's take on the venerable mule is far superior, not only because it's much lighter on the ginger beer, but also due to the combination fig/ube flavored syrup in it. Ube is of course the purple yam flavor that is popular in Filipino cuisine, and its mild sweetness pairs well with the flavor of fig, and naturally, Tito's pairs well with basically anything. I haven't discussed Tito's much lately, since there's not too much to say about a consistently excellent vodka other than they continue to set sales records and throw their weight around in the unglamorous but extremely lucrative distribution tier of the alcohol industry. It's surprising to me that as late as the 21st century there was still room for a new challenger in the vodka category, a drink which is by definition tasteless and indistinguishable, but if there had to be a vodka Standard Oil, I'm glad it's from Austin.

The Crew

Aaron, Ishani, Elijah.

Notes

I noticed that Drop Kick had been replaced on our way to meet up at Mother's Ruin, so we made this stop #2 of the evening while waiting for our reservation at OKO. I am not sure exactly why Drop Kick closed, and the bartender wasn't too sure either, but Recreation (which is unrelated to Recess on the other side of I-35) only replaced it fairly recently, having opened in August. The new owners also own Ma'Coco a few blocks away, which serves San Diego-style Mexican food (a cuisine which is sadly under-represented in Austin). The new joint is a bit less of a straight up cocktail bar than Drop Kick was, which makes me curious to know more about the success rate of cocktail bars as compared to other types of bars - do you have to go for the very highest of high end atmospheres or else you won't stand out enough, or is the labor supply of those bartenders more constrained than that of "regular" bartenders? - but I didn't see anything to dislike, and in fact the atmosphere reminded me of a sports bar or West Sixth club more than anything when we were here. We stayed to watch some of a ridiculous Houston vs Duke March Madness game, and then it was time to hit up OKO.

#207: Mother's Ruin

The Bar

Mother's Ruin. 1401 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 4/5/2025 @ 7:30pm.

The Drink

Dressed Tecate. Tecate, Cholula, lime, salt. $5.

As a brief aside, in the 10s I lived a block away from the Thunderbird Coffee on Koenig, and cans of Tecate were $1 on Thursdays. Now, Tecate is perhaps not the single greatest Mexican light beer ever made (as a loyal fan of the Fast & Furious franchise, it can't be anything but Corona), but if you can stand the mild sweetness, a dollar in 2013 for 12 oz of the 4.5% ABV product of Baja California was a pretty solid deal. $5 in 2025 is less solid, but still a perfectly respectable bar price. The moment it was served to us, I thought, "Gee, this looks just like the ArModelo I got at La Perla." I learned that "dressing" beers is actually a specifically Tex-Mex tradition dating back to the days of  Prohibition, when it was done either to cover up questionable brewing practices or, less unpleasantly, merely to adjust the unassuming flavor profile of a light beer to suit the drinker's mood, which is of course more common these days. Which is the better dressed beer, La Perla's or Mother's Ruin's? I prefer Cholula to Tabasco in most contexts (especially as an alcohol accoutrement), and Tecate to Modelo Especial, so I have to give the edge to Mother's Ruin here, but in an ideal world you'd of course do them both one after the other.

Pickleback. Jameson, spicy pickle juice. $9.

I'm including two drinks because that's what the bartender insisted on when I gave my spiel about the project and why I wanted Dealer's Choice. She chose wisely: it runs out that a pickleback does indeed best represent the bar, because TJ Lynch, the owner of the bar, invented it! I went down this rabbit hole after Kung Fu Saloon served me my third pickleback of this project, following ones at The Lodge and The Library before that, so it was nice to try one right from the source, or at least from a franchise of the source. Mother's Ruin has a few varieties of pickle juice you can choose from if spicy isn't your thing (it very much is mine), and you can't go wrong with Jameson as the whiskey. This is a top tier pickleback, if a shot with only 2 ingredients, one of which is pickle runoff, can be said to have tiers. 

The Crew

Aaron, Elijah, Ishani.

Notes

Stop #1 of the night. Mother's Ruin (the name is slang for gin) is a venerable NYC-based bar chain that has just made its way down to Austin. Charmingly, they have a Trudy's-esque (RIP) challenge, where if you visit this location plus at least 2 of the other 3 (NYC, Chicago, Nashville) in 1 day, you get 1 free beer per day for life, and if you somehow manage to visit all 4, free cocktails. We were not feeling that ambitious, but luckily this location, which had only been open for a month, was plenty for us. The atmosphere is somehow both comfortable and nice at the same time; not to rehash my new bar economics spiel for the 10,000th time, but I will always try to highlight new bars in Austin which do a good job of providing cheap quality drinks along with an inviting atmosphere and good service, because it's a very difficult balance to strike, especially over a long period of time, since the audience that's attracted by the premium cocktails whose margins pay the rent is not always the audience who just wants to nurse cheap beers. The food here looked really good, but unfortunately we were planning to eat dinner at another stop of the evening. Onward....