#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 beer 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 Buddy's Place, 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 perched on its street corner.