#6: Café Josie

The Bar

Café Josie. 1200 B W 6th St, Austin, TX 78703

Visited 1/14/17 at 10pm.

UPDATE: Café Josie has closed.

The Drink

The Tenochtitlan. "A Manhattan with mezcal". $10.

In the same way you can judge a burger place by its beef, or taqueria by its tortillas, a lot of people use a Manhattan as a standard candle for a bar. Though this is so different from a regular Manhattan as to be practically in a different galaxy, sharing only the vermouth and bitters while swapping the whiskey for mezcal and the cherry for lemon peel, I thought it was "supoib", as The Simpsons would have it. Maybe not conquer-your-enemies-and-sacrifice-them-to-Tlaloc supoib, but depending on how many of them you drink, who knows where the night might end up?

The Crew

Aaron, our noble bartender, Travis.

Notes

We finished up the night at Café Josie and it was a blast. You know those barhopping nights where you get a good buzz going and the company gets better, the conversation improves, and everything you're drinking is just the best in the world? This was one of those. It's funny how much better everything gets when you're four drinks in, and also funny how the probability of you ordering a round of shots seems to rise by the minute.

In any case, even if I was getting up there on the drunkometer (I have the phrase "hat rack" scrawled in my notes and have no idea what the heck that could mean), I enjoyed this stop a lot. While the interior decor was oddly stark, due to some kind of complicated situation with the gallery next door who typically provides their artwork, it looked really nice. We arrived right before close and stayed for several rounds, including the aforementioned shots. We didn't eat any of the food that their website advertises, but if they put as much effort in creativity into the food as they did into the drinks, it would probably be worth the $45 for the all-you-can-eat Experience.