#234: The Lobby Social Club

The Bar

The Lobby Social Club. 710 B W 6th Street, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 6/19/2026 @ 10pm.

The Drink

La Paloma. Tequila, triple sec, agave, grapefruit, Tajín. $15.

Drinks in a dance club tend to be either basic yet functional, because you need just something to drink, or flashy and expensive, because you're trying to impress someone. This paloma was in the former category, although it was better than functional. This was the fifth paloma I've been served and I think it was among the best even though I don't know what well tequila they used. Part of that might have been presentation, as it came in a nice-looking glass rather than the plastic cup you sometimes get at clubs, but the other part was that the bartender was preparing it with skill even as I was annoying her with my spiel and questions about the bar. Dance clubs can be dehumanizing places to grab a drink, but not here, even though I had to drink it standing right up against the bar like a weirdo because while I was chatting with the bartender, immediately after I took my first sip about a million people descended upon the dance floor behind me and there was nowhere else to go. It all worked out though.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

My third stop of the night. When I was being waved in up the stairs by the doorman, my Simpsons-addled brain had the overwhelming urge to tell him "I have to go to ze lobby", but thankfully I was able to suppress it. Ze Lobby opened about a month ago, replacing The Ranch, which closed at some point within the last year. I have to say that in my opinion The Lobby looks way cooler than The Ranch was, no shade on the former occupant. The homey roadhouse interior has been replaced wholesale with a glittery infrared laser disco setting that impressed even a non-dance club-going schlub like me, and even though I still had more stops planned I was tempted to stay and just soak up the vibe/music. I was also impressed with the crowd; having just come from the essentially empty Medusa a block away, the throng of patrons made for quite a contrast. But the thing that I was perhaps most impressed with was the music, which was quite good EDM (props to the DJ), but even more importantly was at an actually reasonable volume that was just fine to listen to without being blasted into submission. In this modern era of ubiquitous painfully loud music, any venue that respects its patrons by not giving them permanent hearing damage deserves praise. 

#233: Medusa

The Bar

Medusa. 706 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 6/19/2026 @ 9:30pm.

The Drink

Green tea shot. Jameson whiskey, peach schnapps, sweet & sour. $5.

Even though even a great shot can only be so good, as a general rule, after adjusting for the form factor and grading on the appropriate curve, this was a great shot. Preceded by its three cousins at Lux, Voodoo Room, and Bijou Lounge, this was the fourth green tea shot I'd been served so far; the fifth if you count the full-sized version I got at Soho Lounge. I've talked before about using certain drinks as "standard candles" in order to compare bars to each other, and though this is often not possible given the wide variance between bars, despite minor differences from bar to bar (much like real standard candles), the green tea shot is as good a contender as any, barely behind the trusty gin and tonic, since it's a simple shot that's really hard to mess up even compared to other shots. Jameson did well when they invented it! 

One fun benefit of using shots as standard candles is that I've noticed for some reason that there has been much less inflation in shot prices than in other drink types like cocktails. I got a green tea shot at Lux in February 2017 for $5, and almost a full decade later it is still nominally $5, or $3.64 in 2017 money - a full 27% cheaper! Maybe shot deals are just unusually sticky for psychological reasons, or maybe it's just a cosmic anchor (Bijou Lounge had the gall to charge $8 for this shot in 2020 and now they are out of business, hmm), but either way it's much appreciated in this ever-changing world in which we're living. To be clear, I don't recommend switching to drinking only shots when going out, but unlike your doctor, your accountant might not object to your strategy. Lil Jon certainly wouldn't mind.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

My second stop of the night. Add Medusa to the list of bars I only found out about by physically walking past on the way to another bar. It replaced WYLD about a month ago, which itself replaced Brew Exchange back in 2020. I'm not sure what happened to WYLD, as it seemed to be plugging along as recently as March of last year, but such is life on Sixth Street. Medusa is not related to the old Medusa's that was located on Dirty Sixth back in the 90s, instead being a new venture attempting to bring some of the Latin dance club vibe you see at places like Mala Vida or Mala Fama to West Sixth, which does not currently have that exact type of dance club. As I was the only patron there for some reason, I was able to chat with the bartender for a long time about what it meant to have a more Hispanic-oriented bar on this stretch of Sixth, and how places like Medusa might differ from the other new Mexican bars like Chupito's on Dirty Sixth, to say nothing of the older stalwarts like Cisco's or La Perla on East Sixth. As we were discussing the sadly-departed Rabbit's Lounge that sits in the building now occupied by Whisler's, it was worth reflecting on how while patrons make the bar, bars also shape their patrons, and it's conceivable that Medusa might carve its own place into the history books someday if everything works out. Here's hoping. 

#232: The Treasury

The Bar

The Treasury. 1012 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 6/19/2026 @ 7:30pm.

The Drink

From Monument to Masses. St. George Valley gin, Yebiga "Bela" plum brandy, Comoz blanc vermouth, China-China Amer. $15.

The Treasury takes the exploration part of craft cocktails really seriously, as both this cocktail and the other I tried had unique ingredients I'd never seen before but really enjoyed. The name is a reference to spreading the gospel of Monument Valley (which the owner is evidently a big fan of), but I am not quite sure what cocktail genre this falls in - the combination of gin, sweet vermouth, and Campari/another Italian liqueur would make it a negroni, but the plum brandy adds a really different spin on it, and all of the other ingredients have some sort of citrusy overtones, including the gin. The bartenders are big fans of the Balkan plum brandy, also known as rakija; this was the unaged version. The Amer, which dates back to 1875, was a solid addition; as you can tell by the name, it can play the role of amaro or vermouth in a cocktail. I have had the Comoz vermouth before at Swedish Hill and liked it. Overall this was just a really well-made cocktail with multiple ingredients that would each be great in other cocktails. 

A fun behind-the-scenes detail is that the drink picture above is actually of my second round; I was so absorbed by my conversation that I totally messed up the picture, and was therefore forced to order it again so I could get a clean snap of it. I don't like to dwell on just how much suffering I endure on this journey for you, the loyal reader, but sometimes I am practically forced to order multiple cocktails in order to provide the level of service that you deserve. 

What's Up, Doc? San Cosme mezcal, Primo Aperitivo, pineapple gomme syrup, carrot juice, lemon. $15.

I liked the first drink but loved the second. In my opinion drinks like this single-handedly justify the existence of the entire craft cocktail scene/movement/wave, as the idea of using carrot in a cocktail would never have occurred to me but fully converted me once I tried it. Like many great ideas it was based on an inventory problem: one of the bartenders had a bunch of carrots lying around and - just like in the famous anecdote of the Moscow Mule being designed to unload a ginger beer surplus - decided to see what could be done with the excess root vegetable. The result is a triumph; even its name is both a fun reference to Bugs Bunny, arguably the greatest cartoon character of all time, as well as the fact that San Cosme is the patron saint of doctors. San Cosme is evidently more of a mixing mezcal than a sipping mezcal, and that works well here when poured alongside the citrusy Primo Aperitivo, which is also from Mexico. Gomme is just syrup with a thickener in it, so when the pineapple is combined with the lemon, the carrot juice, and everything else, the resulting cocktail was so good that I immediately wondered why you don't see carrot more often. The answer: carrot juice doesn't stay fresh for very long, so it's usually not worth it to keep it around. If only all inventory problems had a solution as drinkable as this one.

The brilliance of carrot juice as a cocktail ingredient in conjunction with the sight of a bottle of Malört on the shelf sparked a lengthy discussion about how Austin needs its own prank liquor equivalent to Malört based on some local flavor or ingredient of our own. We have the Indian Paintbrush, invented at Garage Bar, as our "official" city cocktail, but that's way too pleasant for our purposes. Malört's horrible taste draws deeply on old European folkways, but Austin is too new for us to have thought up our own terrible local distilled disaster (I have had menthol tobacco-flavored vodka, but that's imported), so the best we could come up with was to make our hypothetical gag spirit savory, reminiscent of breakfast tacos somehow. Upon further reflection, I think a good candidate would be a chorizo liqueur:

• Even the sound of that is disgusting, which is just what we're after.
• At least one person has made a chorizo negroni and not died instantly, so there is precedent.
• Filipino cuisine has not one but two types of pork sausage - Chorizo de Cebu and Chorizo de Macao - made with anise, which strengthens the Malört connection.

I'm not directly asking someone to make this horrific meat liqueur nightmare come to life, like Prankenstein's monster, but wouldn't it be fun if it did exist?

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

Somehow I had not noticed that Hen House had closed - maybe because the paint job on The Treasury when the door to the outside is closed camouflages it seamlessly with the rest of Shangri-La - but close it did after COVID, departing for a new life on Fourth Street back in 2021. This sad closure gave Shangri-La the opportunity to stealthily open up a more intimate high-end cocktail bar adjacent to their existing more laid-back dive bar. They call it a speakeasy, but it only sort of is - though the most common way to get in is indeed to follow a circuitous and non-obvious path through the bar and outdoors to travel up and down flights of stairs and then wait to be buzzed into the cocktail chamber, another way is simply to walk in whenever they have the outside door open during happy hour. 

Through some trick of interior design, the space itself somehow seems much smaller and more intimate than when it was Hen House. Perhaps it was the treasury/bank vault theme (not like a Fallout vault), but I felt securely ensconced at my front seat bar perch in a comforting way that I didn't at Hen House. One really cool thing they did that stood out was that on their menu they have recommendations for other cocktail bars to go to if you liked the vibe here. I have never seen a bar advertise other bars on their menu like that, but I really respect that attitude of friendly competition and mutual support for fellow establishments. That carried over to the bartenders too, who were all very well-connected and happy to be a part of Sixth Street. I felt like I could have stayed here and drank for the whole night, but I had places to be. This is a great place to drink, and you can take that to the bank!