#158: La Holly

The Bar

La Holly. 617 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 6/12/20 @ 8:30pm.

The Drink

La Sancha. Del Maguey Vida mezcal, triple sec, hibiscus syrup, lime. $12.

Much as I generally dislike most frozen drinks aside from Violet Crown's excellent iron whips, I do occasionally find one that I begrudgingly approve of. Interestingly, I had almost the polar opposite reaction to this cocktail than to the nearly identical one that I had at the regular location of La Holly further east, even though this is also a house special and in fact is essentially identical to that one (the Jamaica y Mezcal) except for the type of mezcal used and the lack of garnish. One reason for my different reaction might be that mezcal is a base liquor that can defy the usual tendency of frozen drinks to blend flavors into an icy mush. They used Vida mezcal for this one, which is a generally highly rated mezcal that's also affordable enough to be the mezcal of choice for bars. The La Sancha has more more actual liquid and less ice than most frozen drinks (including the Jamaica y Mezcal), which helped to bring out the sweet fruit flavors of the other ingredients as well as the superior taste of the mezcal itself. 

Or maybe I actually just don't hate frozen drinks as much as I think I do, for whatever reason, and you should ignore me when I start to complain about them. In any case, cold + smoky + sweet + tart is a good combination for the end of a typically hot summer afternoon, so I approved of this cocktail, consistency be damned. 

The Crew

Karen, Aaron.

Notes

Your eyes do not deceive you - Key Bar has been rebranded as a new location of the very same La Holly mezcal bar that's all the way down at the other end of Sixth Street. It's a joint project between them and Taco Flats, another very solid local institution which happens to be owned by the very same guy, Simon Madera. I am not sure what sort of deal he worked out with Key Bar, but I was told by the bartender that this was sort of a temporary thing. My guess is that the new Taco Flats food truck that's also on premises is here to both provide additional cash flow as well as get the percentage of revenue from alcohol sales under the magic 51 percent figure which distinguishes a bar from a restaurant in the eyes of the TABC, whose regulations which bring so much joy to all of our lives. Aside from the food truck and the updated signage there is not much to physically distinguish the new arrangement from the old, so time will tell if the addition of a broader array of mezcals to the Key Bar cocktail menu has an effect on its clientele, a few of who were out this evening. One reason for me to refrain from trash-talking the kind of people who go to West Sixth bars is that I have been to literally all of them, technically making me the ultimate West Sixth Person, so all I will say is that I am glad that this bar is open, whatever form it takes.

#157: The Belmont

The Bar

The Belmont. 305 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 6/12/20 @ 7:30pm.

The Drink

Music City Mule. Maker's Mark whiskey, ginger brew, lime. $7.

Of COURSE the very next bar after Unbarlievable would recommend almost exactly the same drink that made me swear off Moscow Mules entirely. Lightning strikes, not once but twice. This gave me a real moral dilemma, since it's one of my rules that I always the bartender which drink best symbolizes the bar - do I ask them to try again, even though they've given me dealer's choice? Or do I gag down another rendition of the horrible concoction that gave me a permanent distaste for ginger beer just 2 weeks ago? Since the bartender had no way of knowing he was triggering the alcoholic equivalent of PTSD, I let it stand and drank what he made me. This version had whiskey instead of vodka, which was different enough that it was merely unpleasant instead of unbearable, and if I hadn't been suffering from booze flashbacks, it would have been a fine Mule variant on its own due to Maker's Mark being a pretty solid bar whiskey. This is the 8th version of a Moscow Mule I've been served so far, and hopefully the last.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

I had known The Belmont as an entertainment venue (a friend of mine had their wedding reception there, they do SXSW and regular concert shows, etc) and not as a bar, so I had marked it off my Sixth Street Complete list, since another rule of mine for this project is that you have to be able to wander into a place and just order a drink without having to buy a ticket or something. Well, desperate times make for flexible business models, so The Belmont had just decided to pivot to being a regular bar when we were walking by and saw a chalkboard notice saying that they were open for business. Alright!

I've already talked enough about the perception of West Sixth bars, so I won't rehash those here; given that The Belmont had only been open as a regular bar for like a week, it remains to be seen how it finds its place as a regular nightlife spot. But it has plenty of room to be a real megabar if it wants to be one. since between the interior, outdoor patio, and rooftop area it must have capacity for about a thousand people. We were the only people there at the outset of Friday night, but I can see this venue eventually providing a valuable link between the bar cluster that tapers off after Devil May Care/Maiko and the one that begins around the intersection with Congress.

#156: Unbarlievable

The Bar

Unbarlievable. 513 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 5/29/20 @ 8pm.

The Drink

Elephant Mule. Kruto Vodka, Owens Ginger Mix, lime. $50.

I'll say it: 96 oz of Moscow Mule is too much Moscow Mule. Actually, 96 oz of anything is a great way to ruin a drink for yourself forever, the way people did back in college with the infamous "tequila nights", where for years afterwards they'd physically recoil at the mere mention of the dreaded liquor. There's a famous quote about law school that "it's a pie-eating contest where first prize is more pie", and this drink is an endurance contest that is so grueling that by the end you're practically begging for a swift drunken death. Unbarlievable makes a decent Moscow Mule, though they lean as heavy on the ice as Sonic does, but it becomes more and more hateful by the drop. It took the two of us nearly two hours to drink, but eventually we retired in defeat, drunker but sadder. 

Incredibly, they also sell an even bigger version: 196 oz, for double the price. The "small" version we got works out to $0.52/oz, so by getting the ludicrous size, which works out to $0.51/oz, you're saving an unbelievable $0.01 per fluid ounce. Act now while supplies last! A regular Moscow Mule copper mug is usually 12 oz, and prices for a Moscow Mule on Sixth Street have ranged anywhere from $5 ($0.42/oz) to $10.50 ($0.88/oz), so if you're looking for an affordable rendition of the last Moscow Mule that you'll want to drink for years, possibly ever, this place does an alright version. Speaking of college memories, if you were thinking of indulging your inner undergrad and absconding with the admittedly pretty cool gigantic copper mug, just know that they make you give them your ID when you order one for exactly that reason. As for me, it'll be a long time before I can even think of a Moscow Mule again without shuddering in horror. This is one of the rare occasions where I do actually resent the bartender for their choice.

The Crew

Karen, Aaron.

Notes

Interestingly, this spot was originally supposed to be another location of the Goodnight, but it appears that coronavirus changed those plans. Unbarlievable was originally a Rainey Street bar, and its new outpost on Sixth had only been open for a week when we spotted it on foot as we were trying to go somewhere else. I've never been to the Rainey location (though I have learned of its owner's charming reputation), so I can't speak for it, but the Sixth Street location is... fine. Unbarlievable leans heavily into the circus/carnival theme, so you'll see lots of big knickknacks strategically placed so that people can take selfies with a big elephant and so forth. It's got a solid patio, and an interior that I bet gets really lit around midnight. 

In terms of culture, it was hard to say how "Rainey Street" it was since so few people were there when we were. Rainey has a very distinct reputation in Austin (I've heard it compared to Uptown Dallas more than once), just because of the yuppie/arriviste/new money bro crowd it attracts, though frankly many bars on West Sixth also have those same vibes to me. Rainey Street has mutated spectacularly in an extremely short amount of time (the inimitable Fed Man Walking's 2012 guide makes for a fascinating time capsule), and while most people probably aren't excited about this particular bar planting a colony on Sixth Street, it honestly didn't feel much different than the bars near it. Oh god... am I a Rainey Street person?

#155: The Iron Bear

The Bar

The Iron Bear. 301 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 5/29/20 @ 6:30pm.

The Drink

Frozen swirl. Rum punch, blue raspberry vodka lemonade. $6.

I hate frozen drinks, but if you make it sweet and (more importantly) cheap enough, you'll have a a happy hour drink I can grudgingly get behind, especially if the temperature is bumping up against 90 degrees like it was that day. The red swirl is the rum punch, with the blue raspberry lemonade entwined. I've been a big blue raspberry fan ever since I was a child, and I'll drink just about anything with that flavor. I didn't know that it wasn't invented until 1958. The highest compliment I can give a frozen drink is that I'm not disgusted with it by the time that I finish it, and I would put this in the upper echelon of the frozen drinks I've been served.

The Crew

Karen, Aaron.

Notes

Replacing Austin Ale House at the corner of Sixth and Lavaca, The Iron Bear is a gay bar that moved to this location due to the redevelopment of their old location on Eighth. I never went to the old location and quite frankly I didn't actually get to see much of the new location since we spent basically the whole time people-watching on their patio, but in the brief moments I was inside it seemed pretty understated and almost divey compared to the other gay bars I've been in, and I understand that this is a deliberate choice on the part of the proprietors. I can't really evaluate it well in terms of its function as a gay bar, but it was a fairly chill spot to hang out and just drink, which is good enough for me.

#154: The Lucky Duck

The Bar

The Lucky Duck. 1300 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 3/7/2020 @ 7:30pm.

The Drink

Mezcal Old-Fashioned. Ilegal Joven mezcal, agave, Angostura bitters. $11.

For a drink whose name literally translates to "out of date", the number of variants on an Old-Fashioned I've encountered is truly amazing; as I keep saying, it's far and away the most-recommended drink I receive. But there are still plenty of surprises to be found in such an antique framework, including what's even in this variant. I am still not sure exactly what the mezcal was; I was told that it contained "El Silencio Ilegal", but since that's impossible (those are two completely different brands), I think that it's most likely it's Ilegal Joven, since they list Ilegal on their drink menu in their watermelon punch, and it's most likely to be the Joven variety specifically since it's unaged and therefore cheaper. Using a rawer and less polished liquor in a cocktail isn't a crime if you know what you're getting into, and the bartender did tell me that this was sort of a second choice since she had run out of an ingredient for the drink she really wanted to make me, so all's well - the drink would have been better with a nicer mezcal, but that's true of every drink, and the agave helped to take the edge off of the youthful roughness of the mezcal quite nicely.

The Crew

Kathryn, Neil, Aaron, James (not pictured), Geoff (not pictured), Karen (not pictured).

Notes

The Lucky Duck replaced Attabar, to my regret (which in turn replaced Sputnik, to my even greater regret), but the latest bar in this spot is a good general everyman bar, with enough cheap drinks to lure casuals and enough high-end but not TOO high-end cocktails to satisfy people who want those instead. The vibe is friendly, with the same solid dance-friendly but not dance-mandatory floor, and the outdoor patio is still spacious and welcoming. There's now a machine where you can acquire cute little rubber duckies to play around with, which turns out to be irresistible fun even to people in their 30s. It was my last official stop for the night, but we actually ended up coming back here many hours later after we had a long bar crawl to celebrate James's birthday the day prior, so clearly The Lucky Duck was good enough to make a solid immediate impression on all of us as both a good intermediate stop and as a later stop. It's always a little puzzling to me when a location can boast multiple bars that are all individually excellent but end up always going under, but there's a lot to a bar beyond just having strong pours that you as a patron don't see; a bar can look very different on the other side of the register! Here's hoping The Lucky Duck lasts a little while longer, because there's no such thing as having too many solid all-purpose bars.

#153: Lolo

The Bar

Lolo. 1504 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 3/7/20 @ 6pm.

The Drink

2018 Lirondo Verdejo white wine. $10.

I've talked before about how I feel like I have a less developed palate for wine than I do for beer, and that seems odder and lazier the more I think about it. Flavors are flavors, no matter where they come from, so why should you be less able to discern the subtleties of a grape alcohol vs a grain one? When I drank this, the sum total of my tasting notes were "drier, not sweet", which is... not exactly insightful. Awesome work, dude! Compare this to how one website describes it:

Tasting Notes: Salty, a touch yeasty but with such a refreshing citrus and pineapple springtime glow. A light maceration gifts the wine a bit more structure in the palate.

Another site describes it very similarly:

Verdejo is usually a simple, easy-drinking, fresh, fruity orange wine. A natural wine from the Rueda region just north of Spain, it's made in a style that gives it funky, floral, spicy flavors. It is made without any sulfur and with some grape skin contact to the juice, which makes the wine cloudy and a bit dark in color.

Even if both of those places are working off of the same vineyard advertising copy or something, I either just didn't notice or didn't care about the details, which is not great. Then again, perhaps some of the subtleties become apparent only with time in the same way that a seasoned beer drinker can tell if a beer is dry-hopped specifically or just really hoppy, so I need to keep working at being more of a Wine Person if I want to pick up on those things. Either way, I liked the wine, and I commit to doing a better job at trying to actually taste my wines in the future.

The Crew

Aaron, Kathryn, Neil.

Notes

Lolo replaced Gypsy Lounge, an alright but fairly unmemorable bar that I hadn't been to in years before this project started. Its replacement is valuable: the only other wine bar on Sixth is The Grove all the way over near Lamar, so it's good that wine fans out east have someplace a bit closer to them. Lolo isn't really positioned as a bar specifically for oenophiles though, instead they pitch themselves as more of a place for wine dummies such as myself to elevate my understanding of the product, with a heavy focus on natural wines (i.e. wines that don't have lots of sulfites). Wine is a famously snobby drinking subfield, where it can be difficult to consume intelligently even if you've got an open mind and an eager palate and you know what you're doing, so it was nice to visit a place as welcoming as this. Even their logo looks a bit like the smiling Mac OS Finder logo. I'd definitely recommend them as a place to drink wine and hang out, even if you're already a seasoned wine fan, since they have a nice artsy contemporary interior and a solid back patio. If you fall in love with a particular bottle they'll even sell more of it to you, so you basically can't not be a fan.

#152: Drop Kick

The Bar

Drop Kick. 1630 E 6th St #100, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 3/7/20 @ 5:30pm.

UPDATE: Drop Kick has closed.

The Drink

Elephants On Parade. Solerno blood orange, muddled blackberries, lemons. $13.50.

Sometimes it can seem like the "craft" in craft cocktails just means that the ingredients are expensive. Not here! The bartender was excited to both offer and make one of their house specialties, and I have to say that I have never seen more lovingly muddled blackberries or more carefully wedged lemons in my life, each citrus slice carefully arranged like a little mosque tile or something. The result of the blackberry + lemon + orange poured over the ice was delicious, like the adult Froot Loops of your dreams (or nightmares, given the reference in the drink name). It was a nice cool afternoon so its effect was a bit muted, but on a hot summer patio afternoon this would be perfect, though unfortunately this place doesn't have a patio.

The Crew

Kathryn, Neil, Aaron.

Notes

Drop Kick is one of the new fancy high-end craft cocktail bar/eateries that have lately been sprouting like bluebonnets after a spring rain on this portion of East Sixth. It had just opened when we stopped by, and the bartender was eager to talk up the provenance of the food (the chef had been all over the place; the fare is fancy bar food) and how happy she was to be working there (her enthusiasm was contagious, as you can see in the picture of us). We didn't eat, instead concentrating on our drinks, but I could easily see this place neatly filling the "after work neighborhood bar" niche (as opposed to sports bar, date night bar, etc) for a bunch of the new places around here.

#151: J. Stephens Bar

The Bar

J. Stephens Bar. 214 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 2/22/2020 @ 11:30pm.

The Drink

Roses are red, have three of these and you'll be dead. Everclear, St. Germain, yellow chartreuse, simple syrup, lime juice. $14.

Apologies for the extremely red photo - it's a red drink under red light, and so even a skilled, sober photographer would end up with this scarlet smear. But it was appropriate for the Valentine's Day season, because the extremely long name is just a poetic way to describe an extremely alcoholic version of the cocktail known as the love potion. Instead of vodka, sub in Everclear; for grenadine, replace with St. Germain; rather than cranberry juice, try yellow chartreuse; bit by bit you have transformed a reasonable update on the humble cosmopolitan which would be suitable for date night into a powerhouse booze delivery vehicle that, even if it didn't deliver on its name and kill you after you had 3 of them, would at least leave your date worried about your risk of alcohol poisoning, and what could be more romantic than that? However, before they abandon you face-down at the table they should make sure to try a sip of the drink, because it's not nearly as harsh as I've made it sound - St. Germain is the premier elderflower liqueur, which gives the drink floral notes; yellow chartreuse is the sweeter, mellower sibling of green in the chartreuse family; and there's enough lime juice and simple syrup to smooth over any remaining rough edges. I only had 1 of these, but I'd still go home with me after 3.

The Crew

Travis, Brent, Aaron.

Notes

At first I wasn't sure if this place was eligible for my quest - it has a Sixth Street address (in fact the very same one as its sister bars Happy Chicks and BBG's), but it's not on the street at all, you have to get to it via the alley in the back. Well we shouldn't neglect the alleys of Austin, as Michael Martin Murphey would remind us, and I'm not about to start an argument with the Post Office, so if you head up San Jacinto, duck into the alley, and head about halfway to Firehouse Lounge, J. Stephens is the unassuming entryway on your left. Inside is the dim, dank, snug atmosphere that's the signature ambience of a speakeasy, although this place doesn't make you jump through as many hoops to get in as Midnight Cowboy or Floppy Disk Repair Co., which I appreciated since life is too short to futz around with passcodes and other nonsense. You get the cozy convivial vibe of an exclusive establishment without the hassle, so if you're looking for a craft cocktail lounge off the beaten path that won't make you solve these riddles three in order to get into a goddamn bar, J. Stephens is a solid choice.

If you're curious who the bar is named after, I would be remiss if I didn't relate the backstory, which your valentine might appreciate:

Owner Doug Guller based the name of the bar on the story of a man, John Waller Stephens, Jr., who had been the bookkeeper of a furniture store at the Sixth Street space in the 1920s. After being accused of embezzling money from the business, he committed suicide. Over the past ten or so years that Guller had operated restaurants in the building, employees reported strange things happening, like water being randomly turned on. He named the bar after Stephens, Jr., as a way “to make peace with him and get him on our side,” he said.

We didn't run into any ghosts when we were there, so I think it worked. 

#150: TenTen

The Bar

TenTen. 506 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 1/31/20 @ 9:30pm.

The Drink

Yuzu picante. Tequila reposado, sake, yuzu, grilled pineapple, serrano. $13.

Now this is a great craft cocktail, named after its star ingredient. The citrus family never ceases to impress with its diversity. The yuzu is a Chinese (by way of Japan) variety of citrus that brings a much more noticeably tart and floral scent to a drink than the more familiar citrus varieties like lemon/lime/orange/etc, although there are enough ingredients that it doesn't overwhelm everything else (you can't really see the dried yuzu slice in the picture but it's there). I foolishly did not ask for the exact brand of tequila that they used, but according to this guide on how to replicate the drink that I found, they infused the tequila with pineapple as well as having additional pineapple flavoring, so it would make sense to just use any reposado ("mildly aged") tequila as a base. You probably wouldn't normally expect a tequila drink to be Japanese-themed, but in a world where Beam Suntory moves over a hundred thousand cases of tequila a year, anything's possible. This is TenTen's most famous cocktail and it deserves its renown.

On another note, that drink guide also describes the serrano as being included in the form of a "tincture", a word I always associated with Final Fantasy 6, but to my surprise is actually the correct word to use in this instance:

A tincture is typically an extract of plant or animal material dissolved in ethanol (ethyl alcohol). Solvent concentrations of 25–60% are common, but may run as high as 90%.

Yet another educational trip to the bar!

The Crew

Sonali, Karen, Kathryn, Aaron, Neil, Ryan.

Notes

After the first phase of birthday celebrations at Buford's, we significantly classed it up by moving to TenTen, a modern sushi restaurant that's a much more high-end joint all around. Traditionally there has been a big divergence in the marketing of Japanese cuisine as high-end compared to the lower-end presentation of other Asian cuisines, but the interior of this place was just fantastic, even in the gloom of nighttime cocktails. Since we had just gorged ourselves on pizza we didn't eat, but I can attest that the food looked top notch; evidently the guy who developed the menu has also been doing the same for some other nicer newer places. I can say that even though all we did was stand at the bar and order rounds, the atmosphere was never less than inviting. After enjoying ourselves immensely here, it was almost with regret that we retired to Garage Bar, which is sadly not on Sixth Street so I can't review it here, for copious servings of Austin's official cocktail.

#149: Buford's Beer Garden

The Bar

Buford's Beer Garden. 700 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 1/31/20 @ 7pm.

The Drink

Claw eraser. Vodka, kahlua, White Claw. $9.

White Claw is definitely Having a Moment right now, so I wasn't surprised to run into this hard seltzer-filled take on a Mind Eraser, which is basically a carbonated Black Russian. Did you know that the White Russian is a variant on the Black Russian and not the other way around? Despite having seen The Big Lebowski seemingly dozens of times (or maybe because of that fact), I didn't until I just looked it up. The carbonation that the White Claw provided reminded me of the Coke in the Colorado Bulldog I was served at Trophy Club, but it was hard to taste any difference between the White Claw and say, club soda. Kahlua is a fairly overpowering although undeniably delicious ingredient, so perhaps White Claw would shine best (if it can be said to shine at all) by simply swapping it in for tonics and sodas in simpler cocktails. In any case, this was a fine drink, a great way to start the night.

The Crew

Aaron, Kathryn, Neil, Ryan (not pictured), Karen (not pictured), Sonali (not pictured), Travis (not pictured), Cristy (not pictured), Louis (not pictured).

Notes

Buford's Beer Garden replaced the ill-targeted Steampunk Saloon, which never quite caught on. Partially that was due to the bar getting relentlessly mocked by the populace due to steampunk as a concept being many years past its prime and firmly in the "ironic nostalgia" downward phase of popularity, and partially that was due to the bar just not being anything really noteworthy on a crowded stretch of Sixth.

Now that it has new life, though, I like its updated incarnation more. I wouldn't immediately associate it with the phrase "beer garden" in spite of its large patio, since the admittedly large and almost cavernous enclosed exterior isn't open-air enough, but it has plenty of room to sit and watch sports like Mavs @ Rockets like we were doing while we waited for everyone else to show up for some birthday shots (in a weird coincidence, I was visiting Buford's on my birthday in 2020, and I had visited Steampunk Saloon on my birthday in 2017). There's a ton of room to hold crowds but it doesn't feel like the bar's just cramming 'em in. best of all, its secret weapon is a Via 313 trailer in the back - few post-shots drunk foods can compete with some deep-dish pizza.

#148: Bar Peached

The Bar

Bar Peached. 1315 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78703

Visited 11/20/19 @ 8pm.

The Drink

Beetlejuice. Tequila, beet, lime, cilantro. $11.

There's not a lot of beet cocktails out there, but luckily Bar Peached did the world a flavor and stepped up to the plate. It's hard to describe the taste of beets other than by saying that they taste "like beets", so I won't really try - just imagine "warm, earthy, not quite savory", and other handwave-y terms like that. The other ingredients suggest a Mexican cocktail, but the beets evened them out, leaving a cocktail that was really good even I couldn't put my finger on exactly what made it so good. It was like taking a bunch of paint colors and mixing them together, but instead of a brown sludge I got an attractive burgundy cocktail with enough notes of the other ingredients that I didn't hesitate to order another one.

The Crew

Misty, Travis, Karen, Aaron.

Notes

Normally when I review these bars, I try to review them primarily as bars, but even though it's perfectly possible to saunter up to the bar and just drink here like you would at any other bar, Bar Peached is the West Sixth spinoff of the Peached Tortilla Asian/Southern fusion restaurant up north on Burnet, and we were here for the food. It replaces the sadly departed Winflo Osteria with a slightly different menu than its parent restaurant but with the same neat mix of cuisines. We had a bunch of things:

• Mapo bolognese
• Malaysian fried rice
• Crab chili toast
• Banh mi tacos
• Brussels sprouts

All were wonderful. The interior itself isn't really changed much from the Winflo Osteria era - they took out the knickknacks, but kept the hardwood. The exterior patio level looked to be unchanged. I probably wouldn't come here for casual drinking, but I highly recommend Bar Peached as a nice meal out with drinks.