#216: Fish Shop

The Bar

Fish Shop. 1401 E 6th St #201, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 8/15/2025 @ 8pm.

The Drink

Martini rossi. The Botanist gin, cocchi americano, olive, onion, lemon oil. $15.50.

When I looked over the menu before we visited, I was pleasantly surprised to see that unlike so many other new bars and restaurants, especially on Sixth Street, Fish Shop's drink prices were downright reasonable. Because of this blog I have gotten in the habit of using January 2017 as a price reference point, and this martini would have cost less than $12 back then. It's worth every penny, as this was one of the best martinis I've ever had. The gin is The Botanist from Islay in Scotland, which you probably know better for its scotch. Describing it as "balanced" feels like cheating, but even though the scotch on Islay is stereotypically very peaty, the local botanicals in this gin were smooth and anything but aggressive. But the real star of this martini was the cocchi americano, a quinine-based "aperitif wine" from Italy which turned what could have been an ordinary vermouth-based martini into something more like a gin & tonic. One sip of this and I immediately wondered why we've been using vermouths for so long when this has been around since 1891. It was seriously delicious and I immediately ordered another when I was done with the first. I thought it was a nice touch that when they listed this drink's ingredients on the menu, they gave instructions for making it too (mix the gin and cocchi at a 2:1 ratio to recreate it at home). And if for some strange reason you don't like martinis, even ones as nice as this, they have Guinness for $8, which is a mere $6 in 2017 money. Not bad. 

The Crew

Elijah, Ishani, Aaron, Mom.

Notes

Fish Shop is a brand new seafood joint on East Sixth, located in the same building as Mother's Ruin (happily) and Brooklyn Dumpling Shop (less happily). Austin has not historically been a big seafood town, which makes sense for a small, not-wealthy town whose closest coast was the Gulf, a full 3 hours away. Quality Seafood was as good as it got, and we liked it! Well, as I may have mentioned once or twice, we're a big rich city now, so we have better access to fresh seafood than ever. Fish Shop's owners have connections to other high-quality restaurants in town like Uchi, Uchiko, and Justine's, so you can expect a good meal. We grabbed dinner here, and the food was excellent. We had:

• Mezcal octopus.
• Clams.
• Oysters.
• Fish & chips.
• Their take on a Filet o Fish.
• Honey pie.
• Affogato. 

Everything was really great, and reasonably priced for the quality. Two years ago my sister moved to New York City, where top-notch seafood is ubiquitous; my mom and I visited her a month ago, and the seafood here was easily on par with what we had there. All respect to Quality Seafood for holding down the fort for so many years, and welcome Fish Shop to our current stable of great seafood places. Its main flaw was that, like all too many Austin restaurants, it was just too damn loud (and not in the fun way). I will never understand what drives restaurants to significantly worsen the dining experience for patrons with music blasting from the corners, but hopefully they fix that soon before too many patrons swim off to calmer waters.