#154: The Lucky Duck

The Bar

The Lucky Duck. 1300 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 3/7/2020 @ 7:30pm.

The Drink

Mezcal Old-Fashioned. Ilegal Joven mezcal, agave, Angostura bitters. $11.

For a drink whose name literally translates to "out of date", the number of variants on an Old-Fashioned I've encountered is truly amazing; as I keep saying, it's far and away the most-recommended drink I receive. But there are still plenty of surprises to be found in such an antique framework, including what's even in this variant. I am still not sure exactly what the mezcal was; I was told that it contained "El Silencio Ilegal", but since that's impossible (those are two completely different brands), I think that it's most likely it's Ilegal Joven, since they list Ilegal on their drink menu in their watermelon punch, and it's most likely to be the Joven variety specifically since it's unaged and therefore cheaper. Using a rawer and less polished liquor in a cocktail isn't a crime if you know what you're getting into, and the bartender did tell me that this was sort of a second choice since she had run out of an ingredient for the drink she really wanted to make me, so all's well - the drink would have been better with a nicer mezcal, but that's true of every drink, and the agave helped to take the edge off of the youthful roughness of the mezcal quite nicely.

The Crew

Kathryn, Neil, Aaron, James (not pictured), Geoff (not pictured), Karen (not pictured).

Notes

The Lucky Duck replaced Attabar, to my regret (which in turn replaced Sputnik, to my even greater regret), but the latest bar in this spot is a good general everyman bar, with enough cheap drinks to lure casuals and enough high-end but not TOO high-end cocktails to satisfy people who want those instead. The vibe is friendly, with the same solid dance-friendly but not dance-mandatory floor, and the outdoor patio is still spacious and welcoming. There's now a machine where you can acquire cute little rubber duckies to play around with, which turns out to be irresistible fun even to people in their 30s. It was my last official stop for the night, but we actually ended up coming back here many hours later after we had a long bar crawl to celebrate James's birthday the day prior, so clearly The Lucky Duck was good enough to make a solid immediate impression on all of us as both a good intermediate stop and as a later stop. It's always a little puzzling to me when a location can boast multiple bars that are all individually excellent but end up always going under, but there's a lot to a bar beyond just having strong pours that you as a patron don't see; a bar can look very different on the other side of the register! Here's hoping The Lucky Duck lasts a little while longer, because there's no such thing as having too many solid all-purpose bars.

#153: Lolo

The Bar

Lolo. 1504 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 3/7/20 @ 6pm.

The Drink

2018 Lirondo Verdejo white wine. $10.

I've talked before about how I feel like I have a less developed palate for wine than I do for beer, and that seems odder and lazier the more I think about it. Flavors are flavors, no matter where they come from, so why should you be less able to discern the subtleties of a grape alcohol vs a grain one? When I drank this, the sum total of my tasting notes were "drier, not sweet", which is... not exactly insightful. Awesome work, dude! Compare this to how one website describes it:

Tasting Notes: Salty, a touch yeasty but with such a refreshing citrus and pineapple springtime glow. A light maceration gifts the wine a bit more structure in the palate.

Another site describes it very similarly:

Verdejo is usually a simple, easy-drinking, fresh, fruity orange wine. A natural wine from the Rueda region just north of Spain, it's made in a style that gives it funky, floral, spicy flavors. It is made without any sulfur and with some grape skin contact to the juice, which makes the wine cloudy and a bit dark in color.

Even if both of those places are working off of the same vineyard advertising copy or something, I either just didn't notice or didn't care about the details, which is not great. Then again, perhaps some of the subtleties become apparent only with time in the same way that a seasoned beer drinker can tell if a beer is dry-hopped specifically or just really hoppy, so I need to keep working at being more of a Wine Person if I want to pick up on those things. Either way, I liked the wine, and I commit to doing a better job at trying to actually taste my wines in the future.

The Crew

Aaron, Kathryn, Neil.

Notes

Lolo replaced Gypsy Lounge, an alright but fairly unmemorable bar that I hadn't been to in years before this project started. Its replacement is valuable: the only other wine bar on Sixth is The Grove all the way over near Lamar, so it's good that wine fans out east have someplace a bit closer to them. Lolo isn't really positioned as a bar specifically for oenophiles though, instead they pitch themselves as more of a place for wine dummies such as myself to elevate my understanding of the product, with a heavy focus on natural wines (i.e. wines that don't have lots of sulfites). Wine is a famously snobby drinking subfield, where it can be difficult to consume intelligently even if you've got an open mind and an eager palate and you know what you're doing, so it was nice to visit a place as welcoming as this. Even their logo looks a bit like the smiling Mac OS Finder logo. I'd definitely recommend them as a place to drink wine and hang out, even if you're already a seasoned wine fan, since they have a nice artsy contemporary interior and a solid back patio. If you fall in love with a particular bottle they'll even sell more of it to you, so you basically can't not be a fan.

#152: Drop Kick

The Bar

Drop Kick. 1630 E 6th St #100, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 3/7/20 @ 5:30pm.

The Drink

Elephants On Parade. Solerno blood orange, muddled blackberries, lemons. $13.50.

Sometimes it can seem like the "craft" in craft cocktails just means that the ingredients are expensive. Not here! The bartender was excited to both offer and make one of their house specialties, and I have to say that I have never seen more lovingly muddled blackberries or more carefully wedged lemons in my life, each citrus slice carefully arranged like a little mosque tile or something. The result of the  blackberry + lemon + orange poured over the ice was delicious, like the adult Froot Loops of your dreams. It was a nice cool afternoon so its effect was a bit muted, but on a hot summer patio afternoon this would be perfect, though unfortunately this place doesn't have a patio.

The Crew

Kathryn, Neil, Aaron.

Notes

Drop Kick is one of the new fancy high-end craft cocktail bar/eateries that have lately been sprouting like bluebonnets after a spring rain on this portion of East Sixth. It had just opened when we stopped by, and the bartender was eager to talk up the provenance of the food (the chef had been all over the place; the fare is fancy bar food) and how happy she was to be working there (her enthusiasm was contagious, as you can see in the picture of us). We didn't eat, instead concentrating on our drinks, but I could easily see this place neatly filling the "after work neighborhood bar" niche (as opposed to sports bar, date night bar, etc) for a bunch of the new places around here.