#185: Pecan Square Cafe

The Bar

Pecan Square Cafe. 1200 B W 6th St, Austin, TX 78703

Visited 10/21/2022 @ 7:30pm.

The Drink

Blazin' Fury. Venezuelan rum, Jamaican rum, spiced pineapple cordial, pecan orgeat, habanero shrub, lime. $18.

I was complaining earlier in the Howards post that $18 for an espresso martini was on the high side for even high-end cocktails, so naturally the fates gifted me with another one mere hours later. This is essentially a hurricane, and like all hurricanes it's designed to have its rum foundation overlaid with a strong structure of sweetness. I thought this was a good hurricane, although I wish the bartender would have picked something else, as my last 2 drinks had also been on the sweet side and I was hoping for a changeup. It's not the drink's fault though; never blame a drink for the bar's mistake. I will say that one thing I didn't like about the drink was the glass it was served in; the large quantity of ice in it condensed and made it slippery enough to slide right out of my hand after I drank about half of it. Luckily they made me a new one, but not before half a hurricane was tragically lost. You might not experience the same issue, but as they say about hurricanes, sailor take warning!

The Crew

Aaron, Karen, Sienna, Mark, Elijah.

Notes

Pecan Square Cafe is not to be confused with the Old Pecan Street Cafe, a wedding venue adjacent to but not quite on Sixth Street. Pecan Street is of course the old name for Sixth Street itself before all the east-west tree streets were given numbers in 1886, but you can still see traces of the old name in things like the famous festival and restaurants like this. The 3rd MML establishment of the evening after Howards and Rosie's, I had previously visited this building when it was Cafe Josie. The new ownership has maintained the somewhat churchlike interior but given the layout an overhaul, most noticeably replacing the bar nook with an open kitchen layout, and adding an oddly large amount of paintings of arches on the walls, as in dozens of extremely similar paintings of arches. We were here to both drink and eat, as the restaurant is a pan-European fusion joint, and we were getting pretty hungry after several rounds of drinks. I had their marinated olives, which were fantastic, and their Neapolitan pizza, which was also really good; everyone else enjoyed their meals. 

MML has gotten a reputation as the cutting edge of restaurant gentrification, which is both somewhat undeserved (it's not like pricey restaurants have never existed in Austin before) and completely valid (while the old Ski Shores Cafe business model might not have been working too well, the new MML edition is unequivocally too rich for my blood). Since Pecan Street Cafe is replacing a restaurant that was broadly similar in its target audience and price point it's hard to complain too much about its current status, but if you have a bone to pick with one of the major players in the current Austin restaurant scene, keep that in mind. Besides, exactly what would you say is reasonable for a "pan-European fusion" restaurant in this city? Austin has transformed itself from a sleepy little college town to a major culinary center, and now we have the scene to match, no more and no less. For myself, I'm just here to drink.

#184: Rosie's Wine Bar

The Bar

Rosie's Wine Bar. 1130 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78703

Visited 10/21/2022 @ 6:30pm.

The Drink

Ovum Hell For Leather. $162.

The bartender was thoughtful enough to ask if I had any price restrictions first when I asked him what wine best represented the bar. I try not to limit the bartender, which can be dangerous (see the 96 oz of Moscow Mule I got at Unbarlievable), but occasionally it works out quite well, as it did when I was recommended this bottle. Previous wine bars offered drinks by the glass, and Rosie's does as well, but when you're buying a round at a wine bar, you might as well buy the whole bottle! This wine is a riesling mix: 50% Beerenauslese riesling, and 50% of Ovum's Old Love riesling, which itself is a mixture of rieslings from several different vineyards scattered around Oregon. Ovum itself is located in the Columbia gorge wine country along the Willamette river just south of Portland. By coincidence, around the time of this visit I was reading a paper highlighted by the American Association of Wine Economists (don't laugh, they are one of the most interesting specialty economics publications I've come across) titled The effects of knowledge spillovers and vineyard proximity on winery clustering; it was unfortunately focused on vineyards across the Columbia river in Washington state, but it stood out to me that Ovum is in a vineyard cluster, and I imagine the same clustering dynamics apply there too. 

How did it taste? Well, their website somewhat mystifying claims that "Drinking an OVUM wine should be like listening to AM Radio, in Stereo" (a thing that does actually exist, to my surprise). I cannot overemphasize enough that I am not a wine guy, but I did think that it was really good. Rieslings tend to be very sweet but this was not at all, so if you're put off by the "dessert wine" reputation that rieslings have, fret not. Tasting notes I found for it contain the following description: 

White gold in the glass, its aromas of ripe Bartlett pears and golden delicious apple are deceiving. Under the fresh fruit layer sits a brooding sea of herbs. A lightning bolt of acidity strikes your palate upon first taste, and then begins the cascading flavors of salted lemon and white pineapple soaked in chamomile tea. The finish is dry, and layered with dried herbs as the wine warms in the glass.

That same site has it for much cheaper, so if that description sounds appetizing to you, I can vouch that it was a really tasty wine. 

The Crew

Sienna, Elijah, Karen, Mark, Aaron.

Notes

While we were waiting for our reservation at Pecan Street Cafe to become available, I had noticed that Howards was open. Then when we were leaving Howards I noticed that this wine bar was open, and that even though it faced onto Blanco St opposite Pecan Street Cafe, it had the same Sixth Street address that Howards did, so we were able to cram it in between visits. What luck! Rosie's is the 6th MML joint covered on the crawl, and the third wine bar, after The Grove and Lolo's. I think Rosie's had the nicest vibe out of all of those wine bars - the interior might be cramped, as a legacy of the somewhat odd way that MML redivided the property after they bought out the old Wiggy's liquor store, but we were able to grab a space at the end of the bar and feel quite cozy. Furthermore, there were a ton of people sitting out front along the side of the street in a very casual, relaxing, inviting setup. Much was made about the introduction of parking lot conversions due to COVID; I think they're an excellent idea and I hope the trend continues, because they make a charming little spot like Rosie's even more attractive if you're just walking by, like we were. There's no appeal like curb appeal, and has the kind of vibes that are tailor-made for the social media of your choice.

#183: Howards Bar & Club

The Bar

Howards Bar & Club. 1130 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78703

Visited 10/21/2022 @ 6pm.

The Drink

Draft espresso martini. Vodka, St George NOLA coffee liqueur, Amaro Montenegro, Proud Mary Humbler blend cold brew coffee. $18.

At one point draft cocktails were fairly polarizing in the high-end cocktail scene, but I think they're now common enough to have reached that "they're fine if you do them right" stage of general resigned acceptance, meaning the use of high-quality ingredients, keeping draft lines clean, knowing what's okay to keep in the tank vs what really needs to be mixed in at the point of serving, etc. Of course, no one ever said that consistency was the spice of life, but consistency doesn't have to be monotony. Howards' draft espresso martini, one of their signature drinks, is not monotonous, and also isn't sickeningly sweet. Espresso martinis always lean way more to the espresso side than the martini side, but often tend to add a sweetener so that the coffee bitterness doesn't overwhelm the gin (or in this case vodka; yes yes I know), theoretically while being careful not to turn the drink into an alcoholic Starbucks milkshake. Despite its name, the coffee liqueur they use is from the Bay Area, and adds just enough sweetness and other chocolate/vanilla flavors to mix nicely with the coffee base, which is a Brazilian/El Salvadorian cold brew from Proud Mary, a new Australian coffee joint and roastery on South Lamar. There's also some additional orange citrus bitterness from the Amaro Montenegro, one of the many excellent Italian liqueurs I've discovered while doing this extended bar crawl. Poured from a nitro tap and served with some dark chocolate on top, overall it's a great-tasting cocktail.

Of course, $18 is on the high side of cocktail prices, at least at the bars I go to, which affects the recommendation even if this is perfectly normal in the aforementioned high-end cocktail scene. Devil May Care's espresso martini was $16, so maybe that's just the going rate for this drink, but you'd better be really certain that you want one. I'm too old these days to look at cocktails solely from the perspective of "how much would it cost to get drunk on these?", but I hope one day to make enough money to live the kind of life where drinks of this tier are in the regular rotation.

The Crew

Elijah, Aaron.

Notes

Tonight was an all-MML extravaganza, but please hold all comments about the hospitality juggernaut's effects on affordability issues in the Austin restaurant scene or if it's a leading indicator of unhappy trends in gentrification, etc for the moment. The first of 3 MML joints we visited tonight (and the 5th overall), Howard's is "part neighborhood tavern, part dance party", replacing the former Wiggy's liquor store original location. Now, my neighborhood doesn't have a tavern anywhere near this nice, but if you are fortunate enough that your neighborhood is Clarksville, then you're in luck. I say "nice", but you can see in the background of my picture that it has a distressed/peeling/rundown aesthetic that's intended to convey the impression of age, which is the kind of atmosphere that an aspiring local haunt needs to conjure, even if the rest of the joint is obviously brand new and all of your fellow patrons look like they just got off the clock at their high-roller jobs. Most of them were fairly dressed up to some extent, but the doorman took one look at my Shiner t-shirt and waved me on in, after reminiscing about how he went to high school with their frontman. It's nice that even in a city that's getting as expensive as quickly as Austin is, there's still room for a cool music connection with someone. 

#182: Lonesome Dove

The Bar

Lonesome Dove. 123 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 8/13/2022 @ 4:30pm.

The Drink

The Willie. Lonesome Dove's Stranahan's single barrel single malt cask strength whiskey, Dolin Rouge vermouth, Angostura bitters, cherrywood smoke. $19.

The Willie is essentially a fancy smoke-infused Manhattan, named thusly because "if you smoke anything in Austin, you have to name it after Willie Nelson". The ingredients are premium: Stranahan's is a well-regarded Denver-based distillery that the restaurant partnered with for the cocktail (though I got confused: the bartender said that Lonesome Dove partnered with Stranahan's for the specific whiskey used in this cocktail, but the bottle he used looked like their standard single malt; the cocktail menu says they use the Blue Peak whiskey, but that was clearly not what he used to make our drinks), Dolin Rogue is a venerable French spirit-maker, and Angostura is of course the OG bitters. However, what you are here for is the final ingredient, which puts the "craft" in "craft cocktail" - the drink is carefully assembled, some kindling from Texas black cherry wood is placed on a platter and set alight, then a glass bell jar is inverted above to let the wood burn itself out to infuse the drink with its flavor, whereupon it is literally handed to you on a silver platter. It's a great show.

I liked it, but... $19 is just too much for a cocktail. There are half price cocktails at happy hour, but I got conflicting info on exactly which days happy hour was on and exactly what drinks it covered, so if you're coming to Lonesome Dove specifically to try this drink, just assume you're forking over at least $20 no matter what. 

You can't argue with the presentation though: you can't possibly be upset at a drink that arrives on a silver platter wreathed in a nimbus of fragrant cherrywood vapor (no "smoke and mirrors" jokes please):

The Crew

Ashley, Cristy, Elijah, Ishani, Aaron.

Notes

Lonesome Dove takes the place of Italic, the Italian restaurant that was yet another unfortunate Covid casualty (incidentally, after Easy Tiger's split and then closure, this leaves 24 Diner as ELM Restaurant Group/WIP Hospitality's sole Sixth Street outpost). Quite obviously named as a homage to one of the all-time great Texas novels, Lonesome Dove is a "Western bistro" originally from Ft Worth which has been in Austin for several years a few blocks away on Colorado Street. I enjoyed what they did to the interior - in keeping with the Western/rustic/cowboy theme, stacks of the wood they use in their ovens and cocktails form an integral part of the décor (insert your own "spruced up" puns), along with antlers and other taxidermic accents. One of the cooler touches was a pair of the owner's guitars by the reception lounge that had been signed by a number of famous musicians. We decided to have dinner here, and it was fantastic, though pricey:

• Wild game fettine (cuts of rattlesnake sausage, wild boar, rabbit)
• Blue corn-lobster hushpuppies with smoked tomato butter
• Texas red chili
• Rack of elk, with crispy maitake, parsnip puree, broccolini, and candied blueberries
• Burnt carrots, with Texas honey, meyer lemon, goat cheese
• Roasted Texas mushrooms, with house vinegar and olive oil
• Mac & cheese, with orzo for macaroni and topped with fried artichoke hearts

You get the picture on the type of cuisine they specialize in, although my favorites were the hush puppies, the chili, and the mac and cheese. Overall this is absolutely not a place I would return to if it was on my own dime, but it would be a superb on a company credit card.

#181: Soho Lounge

The Bar

Soho Lounge. 217 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 2/11/22 @ 8:30pm.

The Drink

Green tea. Jameson whiskey, peach schnapps, simple syrup, lime. $9.

I've had a couple of green tea drinks so far on Sixth, but they've all been shots. Since I had just spent an hour drinking 32 oz of Blue motherfucker at Wild Greg's, I was not exactly looking forward to a shot, so I was glad for this more manageable sipping drink served in a reasonable 16 oz volume. This rendition dropped the sweet & sour, but lime + simple syrup was a reasonable facsimile. Of course, now that I had the chance to drink a full green tea cocktail, it became funnier to me that this drink was just invented by Jameson to sell more whiskey, given that green tea is famous for its alleged health benefits. What if we gave you a drink with all of the taste, but none of the antioxidants? What if all you were really interested in was the scent of health, without doing the real work to partake in its full flavor? No one is upset that a Flaming Dr Pepper has no Dr Pepper in it, but shouldn't a trace of the true self exist in an actual cocktail? Heavy questions for a light, refreshing drink. 

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

I'm not sure exactly why, but this place took me like 5 tries to be able to visit successfully. Every time I would walk past this storefront in between the venerable Lit Lounge and the newer Gnar Bar, it wasn't open for patronage. Evidently it had had an ownership change in 2017 when I was doing the original crawl, and then a city-induced covid shutdown after that, which explained why I hadn't been able to swing by before, but it seemed harder than it should to grab a drink here now in the year 2022. Well that finally changed tonight, and when I finally entered, it was... fine, the typical backlit bar with a dimly lit dancefloor, the ideal generic blurry barhopping memory you'll end up backdating from bar tabs and group texts after a long night of Fireball rounds and singalong interludes. I was actually the only patron here for essentially my entire stay, although the owner/bartender told me that that was due to complex business conditions that I didn't really understand. To be honest, this seemed like the kind of bar that should be packed at all time. But far be it from me to tell a bar how to do its job. I was just glad to finally check off an elusive bar target before I went to the Agent Orange show, which turned out to be excellent. If you haven't listened to Agent Orange, you have to fix that posthaste. Everything Turns Grey!

#180: Wild Greg's Saloon

The Bar

Wild Greg's Saloon. 302 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 2/11/22 @ 7:30pm.

The Drink

Blue motherfucker. Vodka, gin, rum, blue curaçao, sweet & sour, triple sec, Sprite. $15.

Almost but not quite the same as an Adios, motherfucker!, the Blue motherfucker distinguishes itself by dropping the tequila and subbing in Sprite, though it maintains the all-important blue tinge that tells onlookers that you're not afraid to be drinking something that looks like antifreeze. The change in recipe means that all of you tequilaphobes can drink this up, secure in the knowledge that without that one deadly ingredient, your drink is now salubrious, invigorating, and hangover-free! Until, that is, you notice that you're still holding 32 oz of liquor drink that you've got to drain. While not quite the bargain that the $5.50 Adios, motherfucker! at Peckerheads was (still the gold standard for booze per buck), this drink does everything that you would want a quarter gallon of assorted alcohols to do. The keen-eyed among you might notice that the cup I'm holding (which I got to keep) says Minneapolis on it; the bartender said that this location is still new enough that they hadn't gotten their own merch yet, so just be patient if you refuse to drink out of a vessel with the name of another city on it for some reason.

The Crew

Aaron.

Notes

Wild Greg's is an outpost of Florida culture on Sixth Street, as ominous as that might sound, the chain having been formed in Pensacola back in 2015. It showed up in Austin about a year ago, replacing Terminal 6, which closed just before the pandemic started. Apparently the owner likes to set up shop in college towns, which I suppose Austin technically still qualifies as. Not that the actual bar is particularly college-oriented - it's a similar permanent concert venue as Terminal 6 was, with a little more emphasis on the bar instead of the venue side of things, though there was the obligatory solo guitarist playing away on the ground floor stage. I don't know exactly what tips the scale for a concert venue to become a bar or vice versa; presumably if the revenue from hosting occasional large shows outweighs the revenue from continuously being open for drinks, then you make the change, but who knows how the pandemic has scrambled the equation for the humble Sixth Street bar. I didn't notice a dramatic change from the Terminal 6 setup (much like the US has flyover country, Sixth Street definitely has flyover bars), but here's to a longer life than the old joint.

#179: Canje

The Bar

Canje. 1914 E 6th St, Austin, TX 78702

Visited 2/4/2022 @ 9:30pm.

The Drink

Ti' Punch. 3 rums (El Dorado 8 year, Smith + Cross, Hamilton Jamaican pot still), vanilla, bitters, lime oil. $15.

We ordered some waiting cocktails so we would have something to sip while our table was prepared, but this was the drink recommended to me, so it's what I'll review. It's hard to improve on Canje's capsule summary of it on their Facebook page, so please allow me to briefly plagiarize: 

The Ti' Punch is the Old Fashioned of the Caribbean, and is the national drink of Martinique. We replace the rhum agricole made from sugarcane juice with three types of dark, aged rums made from molasses, creating a complex and balanced profile.

The first word in the name is the shortened form of "petite" in the French Creole language spoken in Martinique. The mixture of three different rums makes it impossible to taste any individual rum, like the philosophy of blended whiskey taken to the extreme, so while I am not sure I would use either "complex" or "balanced" as adjectives to describe the resulting "rum drink" product, I can tell you that it was sweet, strong, and tasty, though $15 is testing the limits of my willingness to pay, even for cocktails as good as this one. The other cocktails are similarly good, and similarly priced to match.

The Crew

Brent, Karen, Aaron, Neil, Kathryn.

Notes

Canje replaced unfortunate Covid casualty The Last Straw a few months ago, which itself replaced Chicon several years prior. I really liked the previous two establishments, but based purely on its own qualities, Canje is plenty good enough to soothe the pain of their absence. Austin is not exactly overflowing with Caribbean food, but the places we do have are generally quite good, and Canje is almost certainly the best of all of them. The Caribbean is an extremely culturally diverse region, reflecting the interaction of different native populations, the various colonial powers, and the immigrants (both voluntary and not) who later arrived, so you can find a little bit of just about anything at a good Caribbean place. Head Chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph is Guyanese, but much of the menu also reflects influences from other areas of the Caribbean, as well as the US and other countries. We tried just about everything on the menu, sharing family-style, and it was all wonderful (reflecting the Indian presence in the Caribbean, the Guyanese roti in particular was spectacular). I found myself comparing somewhat to Vixen's Wedding just a few blocks to the west, not merely because of the shared Indian connection, but in the dedication to a fusion cuisine, in the full sense of the term, as well as the great food and drinks at both places. If you're looking for a special occasion restaurant and want to check out some of the best Caribbean food in the city, look no further.

#178: Favorite Pizza

The Bar

Favorite Pizza. 801 W 6th St, Austin, TX 78703

Visited 1/31/22 @ 8pm.

The Drink

Genesee Cream Ale. $5.

I was incredibly happy to see this beer on draft here, on this second stop of my birthday night. My mom's whole side of the family is from Buffalo, and my grandfather consumed this beer by the case. I still remember him pulling can after green can out of the fridge. Brewed in Rochester, Genny Cream flows like water all throughout Western New York, but it's very rare that you see it in Texas, even in cans. Part of that is because it's not exactly a premium beer - as far as I know it's more of a downscale working-class beer, if that category makes sense - but even though it is less well-known than other Northeastern beers like the infamously right-wing Yuengling, which also recently arrived in Austin, this "smooth like a lager and crisp like an ale" beer makes up for its low profile with a smooth, crisp, slightly sweet taste that has earned it stout loyalty in regions lucky enough to have it.

The Crew

Aaron, Brent, Karen (not pictured), Mark (not pictured).

Notes

You might think that a name like Favorite Pizza was chosen as a cynical SEO optimization strategy, but no: it replaced Favorite Liquor & Wine in August, and the new owners, the inevitable MML, decided to pay the old place a nominative homage. This corner has undergone a large amount of turnover recently, with the replacement of Frank & Angie's by Taqueria Mucho's and Hut's Hamburgers by Sammie's Italian, but swapping out a liquor store for a pizza joint usually gives people a lot less heartburn than ousting a beloved restaurant in favor of a dangerously new experiment. Favorite Pizza is not particularly radical - an attempt to bring the laid-back ambience of the no-frills pizza parlor that you find tucked away every other block in the tri-state area to Austin. Perhaps the boldest choice here was to make it a Mets bar, given the team's well-known struggle to match the popularity of the other team in NYC. But there's nothing wrong with supporting the underdog, and that arguable decision only enhances the way it looks every inch the unpretentious by-the-slice joint that you'll find the Northeast. More importantly, I can fully vouch for their pizza - big thin floppy foldable New York slices with both basic and also more exotic toppings that would fit in nicely to whatever Home Slice/Little Deli rotation you might have going on. I wouldn't say it's my favorite pizza joint just yet, but I am glad that this sort of low-key Long Island neighborhood aesthetic exists on Sixth Street.

#177: Velvet Taco

The Bar

Velvet Taco. 522 Congress Ave Suite 100, Austin, TX 78701

Visited 1/30/22 @ 7pm.

The Drink

Kickass margarita. Lunazul blanco tequila, orange liqueur, agave nectar, lime juice. $10.50.

A chain fast food taco joint is naturally not going to have an overflowing menu of drink choices, but sometimes a few good options are all you need to go with your chips and queso. Velvet Taco only offers a Paloma and Ranch Water in addition to this margarita, but it was solidly respectable: Lunazul is a good tequila, and I appreciated that they didn't cheap out with some off-brand margarita mix to go with it. I also appreciated that the bartender/cashier picked on the rocks instead of frozen, which as you are all already aware of is the superior way to drink just about any cocktail. This drink from an out-of-town Dallas chain almost certainly won't ever become as locally beloved as, say, a Trudy's Mexican martini, but it was my birthday, as it happens, and this drink at the first stop of the night brought back pleasant memories of drinking lots of margaritas at Taco Cabana (itself a San Antonio chain) on Sundays evenings with friends in college, and that's plenty good enough for me. 

The Crew

Aaron, Brent.

Notes

I did some mild panicking when I first learned that there had been a booze-serving Velvet Taco on Sixth Street for several years. I had been to the one at the Domain, but how had I missed this one on my initial crawl? But no, this outpost on Sixth Street arrived in 2019, so I was free to enjoy it at my own pace. Velvet Taco originated in Dallas in 2011 as a sort of rough equivalent to Torchy's, meaning more premium (some might say premium mediocre) tacos with offbeat ingredients, aimed at a slightly more upscale audience than your average Taco C. They've recently been sold to a private equity company, which is rarely a positive sign, so time will tell if their expansion through the double digits results in the same drop in reputation that Torchy's has suffered. Personally I have found their tacos just fine, particularly the chicken tikka masala and the Cuban, but today I wasn't there to eat, just to sample their drinks, so we sat there and discussed the woeful Chiefs-Bengals game from last night before departing for happier vibes.