#106: Zilker Brewing

The Bar

Zilker Brewing. 1701 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 7/30/17 @ 12am.

The Drink

Zilker Marco IPA. $6.

I like American IPAs - they're hoppy enough to have a good bite to them to them, yet are smooth enough that I don't get sick of them after one or two, plus there's usually some other interesting flavors going on. Zilker's entry in the famous category that played such a big role in the craft beer movement is no exception, with enough hops to be noticeable but not overwhelming, and a good malt background. My favorite IPA is still 512's superb edition, but this hangs right in there with it, and at 7%, it's nearly as alcoholic as 512's 7.2% contender. Plus they advertise it as being burnt orange in color, and while it might not be up to Pantone standards, as a shameless Longhorns fan I can't help but be charmed by such open pandering.

The Crew

James, Aaron, Rome, Wolf, Anthony.

Notes

If you've been to one brewery you've been to nearly all of them - big gleaming fermenters, spools of tubing, harsh fluorescent lighting over unadorned concrete floors, hastily scribbled-on chalkboards, long wooden picnic tables, and (most importantly) a row of taps for the beers. Zilker's layout checks off just about every one of those boxes, so don't go in expecting some kind of ornate, elaborate Settecento architecture. The focus is on the beer, as it should be. The brewery itself has been open for a bit over two years, although it feels like I've seen their beer around for longer than that. Has it really only been since 2015 since we've had the Coffee Milk Stout and the Parks and Rec Pale Ale? False beer memories aside, they've become a great meeting place on that stretch of East Sixth, a worthy place to grab a beer and wait for the rest of your party to show up before you go elsewhere. Or, in our case, a great place to end the night on.

#105: Milonga Room

The Bar

Milonga Room. 1201 E 6th St., Austin, TX 78702

Visited 7/29/17 @ 10pm.

The Drink

Milongüero. Bulleit rye whiskey, amaro meletti, Angostura bitters, orange. $12.

A milonga is a variety of tango, and güero (or güera) refers to lighter/paler persons, so a Milongüero might best be translated as a "white guy's dance". But, since we're here for mixology as opposed to the etymology or choreology, no matter how amusing the drink puns might be, I will concentrate more on the gustatory qualities of this riff on an Old-Fashioned than the linguistics. The major high point of this drink was the inclusion of amaro meletti, one of the many delicious Italian liqueurs I've become such a fan of. The meletti is not as astringent as some of the other amari, so it gave the Old-Fashioned a richer, more savory complexion than I'm used to, which was further reinforced by its lack of sweetness compared to an off-the-shelf model. We really liked ours, and since this was so good, we also had some other drinks: they made a killer version of a Last Word, an underrated cocktail if there ever was one, and the bartender was determined that we try a few selections from their legendary fernet selection. Well, if you insist!

The Crew

Anthony, James, Aaron, Wolf, Rome (not pictured), Will (not pictured), Jackie (not pictured), Chris (not pictured), Jessica (not pictured).

Notes

Milonga Room is nestled below Buenos Aires Cafe, an excellent Argentinian/Argentine restaurant with phenomenal food and a welcoming, homey atmosphere. Unfortunately "welcoming" is decidedly not an adjective I would use to describe Milonga Room, which follows the age-old speakeasy custom of artificially fostering an air of exclusivity solely to make its patrons feel like they're part of a club. Yeah, their reservation-only policy is not very different from many other places like Midnight Cowboy, but they were far harsher than they needed to be in accommodating members of my party that arrived separately, especially when we were nearly the only ones in there, spending heavily at the bar. I will never shake my affinity for the democratic spirit of the dive bar, even if I recognize that enforcing exclusivity makes the inside more pleasant than the outside. So if you have the stomach to make it past the door, you'll find an excellent little bar with a classy interior and some seriously skilled bartenders. There's one main room with a bar that seats about five or six, lined with benches and a few tables and couches, upholstered and wallpapered to evoke the kind of languorous Argentine brothel you'd visit after a good tango session. The lighting was at just the right mix between intimacy and darkness (dimtimacy?), and the drink service was pretty excellent. If you can handle some snobbery, a one-two combo of the restaurant upstairs and the bar below would make for a great date night.

#104: The Grackle

The Bar

The Grackle. 1700 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 7/29/17 @ 9pm.

The Drink

Old-Fashioned. Draft. $10.

Before this bar crawl, the idea of an Old-Fashioned on draft would have blown my mind. Just imagine - the nectar of the gods on tap! Ingredient quality and mixology skill be damned, the convenience alone could be revolutionary, worthy of a slot in the Pee-Wee Herman breakfast machine. Of course, now that I've become an impossibly jaded drinking veteran, who's even received Old-Fashioneds in a can on Sixth Street, an Old-Fashioned on draft is a bit less revelatory than it might have been before. If you suspected that this wouldn't be the most immaculately prepared Old-Fashioned you've ever seen you'd be right - at least the ice and the peel were added by hand - but it was still a worthy cocktail, since The Grackle is justly famous for its liquor selection and there's no way they'd skimp of the underlying ingredients. I got a smooth, strong Old-Fashioned for about what a regular Old-Fashioned would cost, and it was very similar. I wouldn't call this the world's greatest innovation, compared to all the other great labor-saving inventions in history, but it was one of the more drinkable cocktail advances I've come across.

The Crew

Wolf, Jessica, Rome, Chris, Aaron, James, Will, Jackie, Anthony (not pictured).

Notes

In terms of animals in Austin, the grackle is far from the most loved. Armadillos, salamanders, and even golden-cheeked warblers and black-capped vireos have traditionally gotten more respect than the grackle, which is just what you'd expect from a bird whose mass noun is an "annoyance". Yet maybe those heroic attempts to hipsterize the grackle have worked - even I have grackle socks from KUTX - and so perhaps we should learn to love those feathered hustlers as much as this bar does. They've been around for a little over 6 years, working as both a bar and a concert venue. I've seen some great bands like Magnet School and Peelander-Z here, as well as plenty of other SXSW bands; their outdoor seating is spacious and comfortable, to say nothing of the big caliche front lot where the bands actually set up. I dig the interior too, which gives their impressive liquor selection top billing while allowing for enough seating for you and your crew. I'm not sure what the mass noun is for drinkers, but either way, The Grackle is a good place to roost for a while.

#103: The Liberty

The Bar

The Liberty. 1618 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 7/29/17 @ 8pm.

The Drink

Party Radler. Jimador tequila, grapefruit Stiegl radler. $10.

Like most people, I get a little involuntary smile on my face whenever I'm presented with a giant pitcher of anything. "Quantity has a quality all its own", as the saying goes. More booze = better than. But there's a time and a place for everything, and so I was glad that instead of a pitcher of whiskey coke or Long Island Ice Tea, we got something more appropriate to the miserable summer heat. A radler is a shandy, a low-ABV mix of beer and some type of fruit soda. Stiegl's grapefuit radler is no exception, at 2% ABV and a nice grapefruit flavor. However, any reduction in strength provided for by the shandy was easily outmatched by the tequila, except that all you could taste was the refreshing tang of the radler. If you can handle tequila and grapefruit, this might be the ultimate summer patio drink, a tasty way to get hammered in the sunshine.

The Crew

Rome, Wolf, Aaron, Anthony.

Notes

The Liberty is another member of the family that includes siblings Shangri-La, the Grackle, and the Brixton. It's existed for 8 years with a silent owner - to most bar managers, the best kind of owner - on the same rapidly changing stretch of road as my namesake apartment complex the Arnold, as well as famous concert/festival promoters C3 Presents. I know that the category of "upscale dive bar" was designed to be mocked, but it seems to leap naturally to the mind when I try to describe The Liberty. The interior is dim, but it's clean; the drinks are cheap, but the selections are varied and there's nicer cocktails; the clientele includes a lot of regulars, but they seem like they all live in loft apartments. Even the bar food is awesome: East Side King has a trailer set up out back to serve up its incredible Asian fusion, so you don't have to worry about being stuck with the same old burgers-and-fries options when you're a few beers in. I'll be honest, when we were out relaxing on their spacious back patio, sipping away at our refreshing tequila pitchers, snacking away on some karaage chicken and jasmine rice, it was tough to leave. If this is what a profanation of the concept of a dive bar is like, then bring on the sacrilege.

#102: Hotel Vegas

The Bar

Hotel Vegas. 1502 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 7/29/17 @ 7pm.

The Drink

Lone Star. $3.

Another refreshing Lone Star! Apparently this bar was the top-selling Lone Star vendor on all of Sixth Street for 2016, and they even have a plaque to that effect affixed to the wall behind the bar that was bestowed by the brewery itself. I can't find any statistics on Lone Star sales in Austin, let alone on Sixth Street specifically, but knowing the local love for Lone Star, that's an impressive feat. I wonder how you would do the Fermi problem for this:

• Hotel Vegas' sales = (Total sales) / (Austin's share of total sales) / (Sixth Street's share of Austin) / (Hotel Vegas' share of Sixth Street)

As with all math involving alcohol, this problem would best be tackled after about three beers, which is enough to start wondering about numbers like this, but not so many as to get belligerent when you realize that you can't even guess at the relevant quantities involved. The third Lone Star is known as the "mathematician's Lone Star" for precisely this reason, and as it happens, this was the third Lone Star I was recommended on this quest. I leave the solution as an exercise for the reader.

The Crew

Rome, Aaron, Wolf, Anthony (not pictured).

Notes

I've seen a lot of great shows at Hotel Vegas. Like I've mentioned, it's the sister bar to the Volstead, and it focuses more on live music as opposed to being "just" a bar. The stage is centered in the room when you walk in, so that it gets really really loud during each band's set. Of course, if for some reason live music isn't your thing yet you happen to be at the bar anyway, you could escape to the outdoor patio... except that sometimes there's bands playing there too! At least outside you can sit down on their park benches, under tents that protect you from the burning sun, which is an amenity that not all bars remember to provide. It might not matter during the winter, but during the appalling Texas summer there's not much worse than feeling yourself cook like an egg under the pitiless gaze of our greatest nemesis. One feature of Hotel Vegas that I can't believe I never noticed was the apartments on top. According to the bartender they used to be the rooms of a brothel, which is a fun historical tidbit. Those days are sadly long gone, thanks to the grim march of gentrification (and the onset of the age of Tinder), but as colorful as the epoch of the no-tell motel must have been, I'm glad that it's become Hotel Vegas.

#101: The Volstead

The Bar

The Volstead. 1500 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 7/26/17 @ 10pm.

The Drink

Irish Tenant. Jameson Caskmates whiskey, lemon, apricot, almond, Bittermen's ‘Elemakule Tiki bitters. $8.

For this night only, their specialty drink got renamed to "The One With Whiskey" because there was a Friends trivia night going on when we visited. Much as I'm sure everyone is dying to hear my opinion of Friends, it has nothing to do with the drink, which I would have preferred on the rocks. Just as with all frozen drinks, the Irish Tenant forces you to drink it slowly. I'm not sure if this is one of those angry-old-man things, but I've found myself increasingly irritated by drinks that force me to go at their pace and not at mine, even if taking it easy might be a good idea after a few rounds. If I want to pass out in the gutter like a Flann O'Brien character that's my right! I had never heard of Jameson's Caskmates brand, but it's interesting - a whiskey that's aged in a barrel that was previously used to condition a stout, which was itself conditioned in whiskey barrels. The circle of life complete! You are unfortunately not able to taste any of this cosmic journey through the whiskey Lifestream because the drink is so damn cold; that's what happens when you turn what would have been an excellent cocktail into a snowcone flavor. However, the drink itself was still not bad at all, with a pleasant sweet taste, and it even introduced me to a new and excellent type of bitters, which is from Austin. Not bad!

The Crew

Hannah, Travis, Kaylee, Aaron, Michael.

Notes

For a long time, like years and years, I wasn't really sure what the deal was with The Volstead and its next door neighbor Hotel Vegas, so eventually I did what I should have done from the very beginning and just asked the bartender: it has the same owner but a different manager than its sister bar. Mystery solved! There's a very loose separation between the two, and I've seen drunk people try to cross back and forth many times. This is the more bar-focused venue, as opposed to the more show-focused Hotel Vegas, though there is often a DJ for regular hip hop nights. When we were there it was Friends trivia night, as I said, so every square inch of the spacious outdoor patio was crammed with people who wasted their lives memorizing details of that terrible show. Those people made it a drag to get to the awesome food trucks in the back, to get more of the great drinks from the bar - it was awful! Nothing is worse than other people having a good time that has nothing to do with you.

#100: The Eastern

The Bar

The Eastern. 1511B E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 7/26/17 @ 9pm.

The Drink

Lone Star. $3.

"We're a dive bar, man, so what you see is what we are." Thus spake the bartender, shortly before handing me a Lone Star, which is for me the beer that truly defines not just Sixth Street, but a huge percentage of my drinking life. I know that Austin Beerworks' Pearl Snap is the "official beer of Austin", and that there are plenty of other pale lagers that rank even higher than Lone Star on review sites, and there are hundreds of individual beers on tap across the whole length of the street, but for me it doesn't get any simpler than a Lone Star. Even though its parent company Pabst is now partly owned by a Russian and headquartered in LA, which I can hardly believe, Lone Star itself has such a strong connection to Texas that no one would mistake it for anything other than a cheap and reliable standby beer. This was only the second time I had been recommended it, and the first on its own. But as long as your tastes run towards the cheap and simple, you can't go wrong with anything else here.

The Crew

Kaylee, Michael, Aaron, Travis, Hannah.

Notes

The bartender was exactly right about what kind of a joint this is; among my circle the Eastern possesses a certain amount of infamy for its particular brand of squalor and peculiar clientele. Though property values on East Sixth are rising fast enough to make your head spin, The Eastern remains resolutely low-rent; the kind of place where, when you're asked what kind of whiskey you want, the answer is always "well". Normally they have live music, typically hip hop on the weekends, but this Wednesday was fairly silent. That gave us the space to start chatting with the bartender about the venue, its history, and Austin more generally, but you shouldn't expect that kind of intimacy on regular nights, when it's all about inhaling as many cheap but potent drinks as possible and seeing what kinds of fascinating people you bump into.

#99: Kuneho

The Bar

Kuneho. 1600 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 7/26/17 @ 7:30pm.

UPDATE: Kuneho has closed.

The Drink

Cheeky warbler. Suntory Toki whiskey, Blanco tequila, yellow chartreuse, honey butter gardenia syrup, orange, lemon, absinthe, passionflower sprig. $15.

As Kuneho is relatively famous for their craft cocktails, despite only recently opening, it would have been a crime not to order the craftiest of them all as determined by my bartender. Wonderful choice: this was one of the smoothest cocktails I've ever had, to the point where I would have bet money on this having some egg white in the mix. The combination of whiskey and tequila might give some people pangs of incipient hangovers, but the mix was quite congenial. Suntory itself is a global behemoth, and the Toki brand is one of its blended whiskies. You can't really taste it, since there are so many other flavors in here, but they all blend to a really creamy, harmonious whole. Sometimes you get a cocktail that you want to savor like a meal, and this was one of them. I would call this a high point in cocktail-drinking, except for the very next one I ordered....

Rosso G&T. Genius Old Highborn gin, cannonau tonic, Topo Chico. $12.

I loved the last cocktail so much I decided to order a second, and because it was one of the greatest gin and tonics I've ever had, I decided to include it here as well. The first thing you're probably thinking when you look at it is "Why does a gin and tonic look like a watered-down Bloody Mary?" That's because the tonic is infused with cannonau grapes, a variety of Grenache red grapes primarily produced in Sardinia.You can read all kinds of those amusingly dubious articles about how wines made with those grapes make you live longer; marketing nonsense aside, the resulting tonic was absolutely delicious, with a rich wine flavor that went incredibly well with the gin. Old Highborn is a product of the Genius distillery from right here in Austin, and I can vouch for how smooth the gin is on its own, with some really tasty botanicals. With the tonic, it was incredible. This might in all seriousness be the best gin and tonic in Austin, and if it isn't, someone needs to tell me where a better one is pronto.

The Crew

Travis, Aaron, Hannah, Kaylee, Michael.

Notes

Kuneho is another Paul Qui product, which very recently replaced the modestly-named Qui. The name is Tagalog for "rabbit", which presumably indicates that there's some sort of continuity between the last restaurant and this new "concept" (I hate that term - why can't a restaurant just be a place to get food?). I never ate at Qui, and we didn't eat here either, although I have been to Uchi and Uchiko, but Kuneho looked of a piece with the new wave of high-end restaurants washing up on the shores of Sixth Street: classy, elegant, expensive. The bar has a very carefully curated bottle selection, and the rest of the restaurant has plenty of wood paneling and minimalist design accents to "enhance the value-add proposition", as they say. The bar section itself is not very large, but the service is excellent, and the bartender was funny, helpful, and quite good for having only worked there for a month and a half. I don't think I'll ever make enough money to be the kind of person who comes to Qui frequently, but their cocktail selection is so good that between our party we tried every single one on the list.

#98: La Perla

The Bar

La Perla. 1512 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 7/26/17 @ 7pm.

The Drink

ArModelo. Modelo Especial, Tabasco sauce, lime juice, salt. $3.

A humble specialty for a humble establishment, this working-class tribute to the noble animal so beloved in Austin gives one of the least pretentious beers out there just a few sidekicks in a sort of very low-key michelada. There's a ritual to consumption: after the bartender pours the additions on top of the beer, you pop the top, let those additions mix in a bit by tilting and rotating it, and then drink it either fast or slow, depending on your tolerance for Tabasco in your beer. I had never thought to put Tabasco in my beer before, although I've had it in cocktails (and, regrettably, in shots), and it turns out that Tabasco sinks to the bottom and makes the final few sips an unpleasant vinegar stew. I should have chugged it faster - aren't specialties generally meant to be savored, not to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible? - but perhaps that's my fault for treating a 4.4% ABV beer like Modelo Especial like a Scotch. Read the room! This would be a good first beer to buy your friend on a birthday bar crawl.

The Crew

Aaron, Kaylee, Michael.

Notes

Despite what Google tells you, La Perla is not related to either the lingerie maker or to the South Austin oyster joint, although I'm sure some entrepreneurial mind has had visions of synergies dance in their head in the past. It's a traditionally Hispanic working-class bar with a multi-decade-long history in one of the fastest-changing parts of Austin, sharing basically nothing with the upscale craft cocktail joints and high-price restaurants springing up around it. In a different world, La Perla might be considered in the pantheon of beloved longstanding dive bar institutions like Deep Eddy Cabaret or Barfly's, but instead it'll probably end up like Poodle Dog, shuttered and sent off to a Sixth Street upstate one day. There's a documentary about its place in the community in the works, but for now it's still here, a cheap, dingy, not especially well-lit bar with a small drink menu and loads of regulars. Tejano on the jukebox, fútbol on the TV, borrachos at the bar. You can tell a lot about a bar by its decor, and this is the kind of place that coats its walls with graffiti and curling Polaroids of regular patrons from decades past rather than polished sconces or $400 abstract paintings. For that exact reason it's unlikely to attract enough new patrons to be able to keep up with the rising rent and property taxes in this area for too much longer, but for now you can still step in and be transported back to a different era of Austin. We shouldn't romanticize the past - this is, objectively, not a fantastic bar for an outsider - but we shouldn't forget it either, and I'm glad that this place is still resolutely perched on its rapidly changing street corner.

#97: The Brixton

The Bar

The Brixton. 1412 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 7/22/17 @ 1am.

UPDATE: The Brixton has closed.

The Drink

Brixton mule. Tito's vodka, ginger beer, lime, jalapeño. $8.

A fairly standard take on the Moscow mule, with the daintily floating jalapeño the lone deviation from the mule script. Nothing fancy, which suits me - despite Tito's not actually being "handmade" (it's just as industrial an operation as you'd expect anything selling over a million cases a year to be), it and fellow hometown hero Deep Eddy are my favorite vodkas, and they don't need any special twists to shine in a drink. One thing that I've learned throughout this journey is that it really doesn't matter much to me how closely drinks adhere to their traditional formulas. I've had excellent drinks that fit the dictionary definition to a T, and excellent drinks that share nothing but the name with their supposed archetypes. That infamous American Standards Association Safety Code and Requirements for Dry Martinis document which declares that vodka "is never employed in a dry martini" is both a laudable attempt to provide some clarity to drink preparation, and a Sisyphean struggle against the human desire for novelty. Sometimes you want a classic, sometimes you want to roll the dice, but either way, only the skill of the bartender and the quality of the ingredients stands between you and disaster. I survived this experience just fine.

The Crew

Aaron, Alexis, Chris.

Notes

I first knew The Brixton as a punk-themed bar, named after the Clash song of course! They've undergone some changes in the years since they've opened, most famously due to their appearance on Bar Rescue. I'm not sure how accurate this account of that interaction is, but I'm glad they declined to stick with the stupid "Rocket Room 6" name that the show suggested. It's one thing to spruce up the interior, get nicer cups, and add some higher-margin drink options to attract more patrons, even if that's hardly the "punk" thing to do; it's another thing to pick a name that was almost certainly inspired by some consultant literally just looking around the room ("The name was inspired by a rocket tattoo on Tim’s arm with the number due to the bar being at Sixth Street"). 

In its current form, The Brixton is somewhat cleaner than it's been, with the hardly the scuzzy atmosphere you'd normally associate with punk. I vividly remember it being the very first place I ever saw Shiner Ruby Redbird on draft, which converted me from a hater to a fan. They've usually got multiple movies showing on the TVs around the interior - I've seen everything from Godzilla to Escape From New York to Independence Day playing. To even further enhance the viewing experience, they've also added a projection screen outside, which was showing The Craft when we were there. Also not the most punk movie! Oh well, at least the bartenders are still friendly, and if you can hang onto that, then you've got most of what counts.

#96: Revelry

The Bar

Revelry Kitchen + Bar. 1410 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 7/22/17 @ 12am.

The Drink

​RKB Mint cherry limeade. ​Zodiac black cherry vodka, mint syrup, lime, Topo Chico. $8.

Sometimes it pays to read. When I saw this drink on the menu right before the bartender suggested it to me, I was hoping it would be an alcoholic version of the famous cherry limeade from Sonic, one of the best fast food drinks out there. I've drank gallons of Sonic's copiously-iced beverages over the years, so I had an immediate reaction when the taste of Revelry's liquor drink did not quite match up: it had a better cherry flavor (though I was quite fond of Sonic's wildly artificial cherry syrup), less lime, and far more mint than I was expecting, even though it's basically the first word in the title of the drink. Maybe I should pay more attention sometimes! I don't know how you feel about the combination of sweet and minty flavors: sometimes it works, as in the mint julep; sometimes it feels a bit off. I think I honestly would have preferred the equivalent of some vodka dumped into a Sonic cherry limeade, but perhaps that says more about where I was at that point in the night than the drink itself - you really can't blame a bartender for the low class and dull palate of her patrons.

The Crew

Chris, Alexis, Aaron, Lisa, Jeff.

Notes

Revelry was one of the places that wasn't on my list, so I had to find it the hard way: on foot, as a serendipitous discovery right before The Brixton. You get to it by climbing up some stairs, where you're greeted by a patio centered around a massive, beautiful old pecan tree. The pecan tree is rightly the state tree of Texas and a valuable part of the Austin treescape, even if we have far more ashe junipers, cedar elms, and live oaks by the numbers, and despite our esteemed governor's pontifications, I think the economic, environmental, and social benefits of our efforts to preserve our trees result in much more pleasant buildings, bars included. The interior also makes great use of wood, as seen in the bartop, the tabletops, the exposed rafters, and so on, so as long as your idea of great decor involves varnish, spalting, and chatoyance, you'll be in heaven. They've got a bunch of TVs and an excellent kitchen as well, which makes it one of the more inviting establishments on the street for a long stay. I could see myself spending a pleasant afternoon here if I wanted the amenities of a sports bar without the atmosphere.