#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....