#139: La Holly

The Bar

La Holly. 2500 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 4/16/19 @ 9pm.

The Drink

Jamaica y Mezcal. Kimo Sabe mezcal, hibiscus syrup, triple sec, lime. $9.

One of the consistent benefits of doing the Sixth Street Complete project is that I get to learn new things all the time, but rarely have I had my mind blown as much as I did by my visit here. La Holly is a mezcal joint, so I gave my usual spiel in the expectation that I would get a mezcal drink. But while I was bantering with the bartender, who asked about my taste preferences in order to give me the drink that best showed off the bar, I said that I often enjoyed smokier mezcals similarly to how I often enjoyed peatier scotches once in a while. Importantly, I phrased it in a way that conveyed that I thought mezcal was a type of tequila in the same way as scotch is a type of whiskey.

Wrong! I couldn't have been more wrong. Upending everything I had ever thought or known, the bartender informed me that, actually, all tequilas are mezcals, but not all mezcals are tequilas. I might as well have been confusing squares and rectangles my whole life. Mind reeling amid the shattered fragments of my entire worldview, I accepted her suggestion of the Jamaica y mezcal a humbler but wiser man. I wasn't wise enough though: the drink was frozen, which as you know I normally dislike, and indeed it was almost the worst way possible to enjoy mezcal. The drink was indistinctly boozy and sweet thanks to the syrup and triple sec, reminding me of nothing so much as a New Orleans-style frozen daquiri with a toasted hibiscus flower on top. Evidently part of this was because Kimo Sabe mezcal is not one of your higher-end mezcals to begin with, which makes sense because you wouldn't put a high-end mezcal in a frozen drink at all. Much better was the mezcal Old-Fashioned I had as my second round, which you should get instead since it much more represents the bar. 

So please learn from my mezcal mistakes: mezcals are not a type of tequila, and never accept a frozen mezcal drink.

The Crew

Aaron, Elijah, Cat.

Notes

It's fortunate for Austin mezcal fans that La Holly is not only not the only mezcalería in Austin, it's not even the only mezcalería on Sixth Street. Unlike Mezcalería Tobalá just down the street, which perches above Whisler's at the head of the stairs out front, La Holly is housed at ground level in a charming little bungalow, and instead of a solemn, candlelit, sacramental air, La Holly is clean and modern and inviting. I had been to Taco Flats on Burnet Road a number of times and greatly enjoyed it, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that La Holly is a project by the same owner, Simon Madera, who converted an older dive bar named Kellee's Place into its current form about two months before my visit. Not having been to the old place, I can't comment on how La Holly compares to its forebear in terms of gentrification quotient or any other measure, but on its own I have to say that La Holly is a very pleasant venue, much like Taco Flats. The bar is neat and clean, the seating area is wood-paneled and welcoming, and though mezcal is potent enough to where a prolonged drinking session would probably leave you writhing around on the floor, La Holly almost couldn't be better tailored to staying for a few rounds while you explore a few new varieties of mezcal.