The Bar
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.
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