#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.