#122: Attabar

The Bar

Attabar. 1300 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 9/7/18 @ 11pm.

UPDATE: Attabar has closed.

The Drink

Spicy margarita. Lunazul tequila, jalapeño syrup, agave nectar, lime juice, tajin. $9.

The spiciest drink I've gotten so far was the Bloody Mary at Casino El Camino; this was nowhere near as spicy as that, but you can't compare a prank cocktail to a daily drinker like this. Lunazul tequila has been a popular selection for margaritas on this quest, and it continued to ably fulfill its role as the "premium mediocre" tequila of choice. I'm not sure exactly which sugar they used for the syrup, or the sugar ratio, or any of the background details behind their syrup creation process, but I loved the balance between spicy and sweet and the acid of the lime, and of course tajin, king of seasonings, is always welcome. The bartender was REALLY excited about our project, having a total blast as she recommended and mixed our drinks, and you can see her frantic gesticulations in the background as we got ready to try our respective concoctions. 

The Crew

Aaron, Travis, Geoff, Karen (not pictured).

Notes

Attabar replaced the late, great Sputnik, one of my favorite stops on East Sixth back in the day. Sputnik was an unshamed dive bar/restaurant, with cheap drinks and great food. The new spot is absolutely not a dive, but since we're all about celebrating the present and not mourning the past, we will focus on the virtues of the new spot. They'd been open for slightly more than 6 months when we visited, and it seemed like had gotten into a solid groove. The new layout is more open-plan than Sputnik was, ditching the thick wood coziness (RIP to the sexy pinup posters) in favor of more space and an atmosphere of conviviality. One thing that I've noticed I like about bar interiors is what I call "chatting tables" for lack of a better term - the long thin double-sided countertops that let you sit closer to your friends to drink and talk than full-width tables, but still have room for your cocktails and snacks. Attabar has one of those front and center, and it's interesting how they allow both for intimate discussions with your friends, as well as for serendipitous encounters with friendly strangers who are just an elbow away. Everyone we saw was having a good time, so Attabar is as good an example as any of how individual bars can come and go, but even though it's appropriate to mourn the fallen, what better place to do it than at the counter of the living?

#121: Little Big Burger

The Bar

Little Big Burger. 1630 E 6th St #100, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 9/7/18 @ 9:30pm.

UPDATE: Little Big Burger has closed.

The Drink

Zilker Marco IPA. $6.

I last had this beer straight from the source at Zilker Brewing just a few blocks down the street. In a glass or a can, it's a fine American IPA. You might think that three dudes showing up to a fast food burger joint just to pound some brews would get odd looks, but fortunately for us, we were the only ones there! If the staff thought anything was amiss about our mission, they kept it to themselves, and as a result we were able to relax and savor this not-quite-sessionable 7% IPA, sipping our cans at our leisure. I really like the art on their cans - a product of Zocalo Design, an Austin firm that is itself just a few blocks further on East Sixth, the pattern is meant to evoke Saltillo blankets. This discovery could lead us on a further quest investigating more chains of references to things like Plaza Saltillo, and so on, but it's enough to say that it's a great can design, and a great beer.

The Crew

Travis, Geoff, Aaron.

Notes

Little Big Burger is based in Portland, Oregon, and this is their first outpost in Texas. Austin doesn't lack for excellent burger joints, but it's still nice to see what other parts of the country have to offer, even if ultimately they end up disappointing somewhat. Yes, I am referring to when In-N-Out showed up, everyone went nuts, and then we had to pretend like Whataburger was the greatest thing our state has ever produced in prideful self-defense. Not that I hate Whataburger (I have indelible college memories of happily devouring their breakfast biscuits at 2am), but let's let's keep some perspective here. Sadly we did not gain any additional perspective on this Portland product by actually consuming their burgers (be healthy - save those calories for beer), though from what I understand they're quite good. I can't claim that the restaurant itself makes for a top-tier drinking location - it has that familiar harshly echoing, oddly-lit, plainly functional fast-casual interior decor - but we're hardly the typical patrons, and it's probably not such a big deal when you're sitting down for a real meal. Sometimes it does occur to me, when I visit stops like this, how untypical our mission is, but all I can report is what I experience. Not every business is truly a bar at heart some are born a bar, some achieve barness, and some have barness thrust upon them. Little Big Burger is in the latter category.

#120: The Last Straw

The Bar

The Last Straw. 1914 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 9/7/18 @ 9pm.

UPDATE: The Last Straw has closed.

The Drink

Mai Tai. House rum medley (Rhum JM, Hamilton Jamaican Black, El Dorado 8 year), dry curaçao, orgeat, lime. $6.

I had been served a Mai Tai at COLLiDE atx, but naturally a more tiki-inclined establishment's version of the modern classic was always going to be more elaborate (check out the awesome carved wooden drinking vessel) and more in keeping with the official recipe. That means curaçao, which the other rendition lacked. This version has dry curaçao, which turns out to deserve its own historical tangent. Curaçao is named after the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao where it was first distilled. Like most liqueurs it's made with fruit, in this case specifically with laraha oranges, a bitter variant of Valencia oranges from Spain, which are in turn descended from wherever in Southeast Asia the first ancient citron reared its mighty head. Dry curaçao, however, draws on techniques pioneered in Burgundy to modify the recipe, using a different starting basis for the spirit and flavor profile development. Curaçao is the same thing as triple sec (the "sec" means "dry" as in "dessicate"), so you can think of dry curaçao as a dry Caribbean liqueur made from a variant of Spanish oranges made even drier by way of France. It's globalism at its best, and while the average joe like yours truly might only get a hint of the rich web of world-spanning connections among the various rum flavors and orgeat, it's the attention to detail and commitment to the experience that separates a top-tier Mai Tai like this one from less-successful attempts. I didn't even mention all the fancy rums they use, which you unfortunately can't really taste distinctly. or maybe I was just too busy admiring the cup.

The Crew

Aaron, Kyle, Travis, Geoff.

Notes

It's a shame that Chicon did not last longer in this space, since they had one of the best cocktail menus on East Sixth. But no matter, their replacement is quite good on its own. The Last Straw is not quite a tiki bar, but it's about as tiki-adjacent as you'll find on Sixth Street. They've redone the interior, so it's got an extremely colorful tropical interior that's inviting by day and still convivial at night, when the entire joint is bathed in crimson. Red glow at night, drinkers' delight! It actually somewhat reminded me of a late night on the Drag, in one of the coffee shops with similarly unusual lighting conducive to maintaining your night vision. It's all the better to see what you're drinking, as all of their drinks come in neat little tiki/Hawaiian/tropical delivery vehicles, possibly for immediate Instagram production but also because it looks fun. Everything about this place is seemingly designed for a good time - how can you hate owners who designed a cocktail to drink while watching Caddyshack? They have an extensive food menu (though oddly it's a Mexican-themed menu rather than anything tropical), but we didn't sample any of it.

#119: Via 313

The Bar

Via 313. 1802 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 9/7/18 @ 7pm.

The Drink

Old-Fashioned. Russell's Reserve bourbon, simple syrup, Luxardo cherry, orange peel. $10.

I once read some reviews of Beatles albums that I unfortunately cannot find now where, confronted by the psychologically daunting task of finding something new to say about the most comprehensively overanalyzed discography in rock history, the reviewer simply decided to give every album an 8/10 and just talk about how Ringo's drumkit changed over time. That's how I feel about encountering the Nth iteration of the Old-Fashioned: do I focus on the whiskey/bourbon, the syrup, the cherry? The ice cube? Let's just say that I liked the result: when I asked for the drink, the bartender decided to give me the bourbon variant instead of the rye whiskey (which they make with Balcones Texas rye), which was interesting since Russell's Reserve is a spicier bourbon, though still sweeter than a rye. The entire idea behind going with a bourbon instead of a rye is that you don't want that peppery bite which opposes and balances the syrup, but this managed to neatly split the difference between the two philosophies. After so many different variants on the humble standby cocktail, perhaps a return to the mean was all for the best. Despite being a pizza joint at heart, Via 313 does not skimp on their cocktails one bit.

The Crew

Kyle, Aaron, Travis, Geoff (not pictured).

Notes

I was excited to visit this stop, but if I'm being honest with myself, a lot of that anticipation was for the pizza factor rather than the bar factor. Via 313 is a dedicated fixture on every self-respecting best pizza in Austin list, and it's unquestionably the best pizza on Sixth Street (sorry Roppolo's and Paparazzi, and RIP Rounders), so a chance to grab a drink here is also a chance to grab a slice, or 2, or 3, etc etc. Very few people will ever come to a pizza joint like Via 313 purely for the booze, but one of the great things about pizza is that it goes so well with booze, it's as if the two were made for each other. This thick, bready, deep Detroit-style pizza in particular goes really well as a pregame or midgame snack, and I'm surprised it's not more common for specifically this reason. Interestingly, this market niche crying out to be filled opens up an opportunity for little old Via 313 here in Austin: the megachains from Detroit don't really focus on the native style (Little Caesar's sells Detroit-style as an afterthought; Domino's doesn't sell it at all), so it's entirely possible that given a few years of solid growth, Via 313, which has only existed since 2011, could soon become one of if not the largest Detroit-style chain in the country, if it isn't already.

This outpost of the Via 313 empire replaced the irritatingly-capitalized COLLiDE atx, which lasted for less than a year in this space even though I foolishly proclaimed at the time that it looked primed for success. However, if we pretend that what I actually predicted was that "a" pizza place here would do well, then it turns out that my misplaced prognostication was entirely correct! Something feels slightly off about the interior design of the new space (not cozy enough to be a pizza joint, just don't have the vibe to be a real bar), but there's a decent patio outside, and anyway it's hard to focus on much else once you've sat down for a drink and you've got some pizza on the way. Who chooses a bar based on the wallpaper? It's kind of funny: most people would never imagine telling their friends "guys, let's grab some drinks at Via 313!" and expecting a night full of rounds, but they lacks imagination! Via 313 had its genesis as a food trailer parked outside of Violet Crown, where I consumed it many a time, and I am glad that they're all grown up. The more pizza and booze the better!