#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.