#146: The Upside

The Bar

The Upside. 1108 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 9/14/19 @ 8pm.

UPDATE: The Upside has closed.

The Drink

Peruvian National. Portón Acholado pisco, pineapple, apricot, lemon, egg white, Chuncho bitters. $13.

This was the first pisco sour I've been served on the journey so far, and for the most part it stuck to the script with the exception of swapping out the traditional simple syrup for pineapple and apricot, which was an inspired choice. Pisco is evidently having a moment, and Portón Acholado is one of the newer piscos attempting to capitalize on the pisco wave. Whiskey sours are by far the more familiar genre of sour cocktail, but pisco, being distilled fermented grape juice, goes just as well or better with the sourness of the lemon and the sweetness of the syrup, or pineapple and apricot in this case. It turns out that Chuncho bitters is a specifically Peruvian brand of bitters, and while I had not known that there was such a thing beforehand  I do think it was a good call to use it over the old reliable standby of Angostura bitters. The decorative arrow on top represents the "upside" of the bar's name; it's a nice touch, and seems tailor-made for Instagram (or this blog), even though whenever I spend too much time thinking about objects specifically designed for pictures my mind naturally goes to the "most photographed barn in America" from Don DeLillo's novel White Noise. Regardless, it was a fine cocktail when I stopped taking pictures of it and actually drank it, and it deserves all the hashtags I'm sure it's gotten.

The Crew

Travis, Michael, Aaron, Karen, Mark, Neil, Kathryn.

Notes

As I alluded to when I talked about Sixth & Waller on the ground floor, The Upside is the where the final boss of the hotel would be if this were a kung fu movie, because it's a high-end restaurant with a bar and view to match. If you were determined to spend your entire day within the walls of the East Austin Hotel, which I'm sure would delight the management, Sixth & Waller is where you'd have breakfast and a Bloody Mary, Pool Bar is where you'd day-drink, and The Upside is where you'd end the night with a nice dinner and cocktails. It's not quite a rooftop bar since it's not on the top of the highest floor, but it's easier to call it that than a veranda bar or penultimate floor balcony bar or whatever since it is in fact mostly open to the air above, and mostly importantly it offers the main point of a rooftop bar: a great south-facing view of Sixth Street and the city vistas beyond. We didn't eat here, but similarly to downstairs they have an international fusion-y menu that looked pretty good and would probably have been great, since the food at Sixth & Waller was excellent. The main bar area has a vaguely North African/Middle East vibe to it, and in addition to the outdoor seating there's a contemporary art-bedecked common dining room with a big TV that was showing the Longhorns busily destroying the Owls, which as you can see was helping our mood immensely (well, that and the several drinks we'd already had). 

Pro tip: I hope you remembered where the restroom was on the ground floor, because there isn't one up here. A cleverer writer than me would probably say something witty like "it was the only downside of The Upside", but you probably needed the exercise of going back down and up the stairs again anyway.

#145: Pool Bar

The Bar

Pool Bar. 1108 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 9/14/19 @ 7:30pm.

UPDATE: Pool Bar has closed.

The Drink

Neon Chi Chi. 4 white rum blend, blue curaçao, pineapple, vanilla bean coconut cream, lime flash. $12.

I'm gradually learning that "tiki" is just industry shorthand for "sweet rum drink", so by that metric this is basically the ultimate tiki cocktail, since it's made with a house blend of not one, not two, not three, but four different rums. The bartender didn't know offhand exactly which specific rums went into this particular mishmash, but that just made me smile a little bit - you know all the time and care and thought and artistry and blah blah blah that goes into making blended whiskies? What if instead of doing all that, you just dumped a bunch of rums into a glass? I don't want to diminish the artistry of the bartender here, who was a perfectly pleasant guy (as you can tell from our group photo, we made life easy on him and just got one each all the way around), but it makes you think about what makes for an appropriate drink for specific times and places. Here, floating atop the abundance of rum was a mixture of closely-related sweet flavors, like a painter going through a blue period who decided to lean heavily on one particular area of his palette. Convenience is another virtue of the tiki tradition as well, I'm sure. Aside from having a bit too much ice it was a solid cocktail, perfect for a summer evening poolside.

The Crew

Mark, Karen, Michael, Aaron, Travis, Kathryn, Neil.

Notes

The second stop on our quest to drink at each bar of the hotel was Pool Bar, which is right by the interior pool, although not quite close enough to swim up to it. Something about a swim-up pool bar has always felt like the ultimate in decadence to me, and though you're cruelly forced to climb onto dry land and sit barside to get your next round of drinks, the appeal of having a convenient cocktail source remains, and it's probably for the best anyway that you can't just chug booze from plastic cups while splashing about - that's a spring break move. Pool Bar is underneath a covered roof for protection against the elements in a semi-enclosed area away from the poolgoers, so as a barfly you do get basically the best of both worlds as you enjoy close bar access without having to dodge soaking wet swimmers wandering around. There weren't a ton of people around when we visited, so our people-watching was limited, but I can see this bar being a fun hangout spot during the dog days of summer, as long as you can handle the cocktail prices. We couldn't linger, however - we had more drinking to do!

#144: Sixth & Waller

The Bar

Sixth & Waller. 1108 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 9/14/19 @ 6pm.

UPDATE: Sixth & Waller has closed.

The Drink

Isla Buck. Vodka, vinho verde, hibiscus, ginger, cucumber, lime. $10.

This was just a really great and inviting cocktail, despite the ominous Shining-esque red tint that the hibiscus gave it. Vodka being a neutral spirit, all of the flavor action came from the other ingredients, which were all tasty and refreshing. Vinho verde is a bubbly Portuguese wine, and though it comes in several different types, the kind that Sixth & Waller uses is the friendlier, more effervescent variety that gives drinks a little carbonation along with the mellow wine flavor. Coupled with the ginger, cucumber, and lime, this was a slightly sweet - but not too sweet - cocktail that left me raring to go for another. As luck would have it, we were waiting around for the rest of our crew to arrive, and our bartender happily helped us kill time by making us about 1 of everything from the rest of the cocktail menu. I highly recommend the Pisco Punch and their version of a sazerac (which uses whiskey AND cognac instead of the traditional either/or), but the Isla Buck is a killer first-round round.

The Crew

Aaron, Travis, Michael.

Notes

Much like the Arrive Hotel just down the street, the similarly just-opened East Austin Hotel has thoughtfully included multiple different bars within its walls, which means that the interested drinker has to put in just about the bare minimum of effort possible to check out another drinking scene should the current one grow stale. Sixth & Waller, conveniently named after the intersection of the hotel's street address, is at the ground floor just off to the left when you walk into the lobby from Sixth Street, like the first level of a pagoda of drinking. It's primarily a diner-ish restaurant with a focus on fusion-y dishes (though don't sleep on their burger), but it also offers a solid cocktail listing. I felt right at home when we sat down - something about the bright lighting from the south-facing windows, the warm wood walls, and even the blue-tiled tabletops felt very comforting. Austin is of course famous for diners, and a newcomer like Sixth & Waller is just a cleaner, nicer version of the old standbys, though it's sadly missing the crucial ingredient of 24-hour migas availability. Maybe someday. In the meantime, it's an excellent place to grab a cocktail and build up a solid food foundation for the next drinking levels.