#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.