#191: IYKYK

The Bar

IYKYK. 1221 E 6th St., Austin, TX 78702

Visited 7/28/2023 @ 9pm.

The Drink

Pineau colada. Cognac, white Pineau de Charentes, pineapple, coconut + lemon. $14.

My personal gold standard for Sixth Street frozen drinks remains the Iron Whip at Violet Crown for its unbeatable combination of taste, strength, and price, but this was pretty good in its own right, avoiding the twin hazards of sickly sweetness and harsh alcohol bite that many lesser establishments frequently fall victim to when assembling their own frozen drinks while still being decently strong, although it is not as conveniently priced due to its fancier ingredients. An obvious pun on the trusty piña colada, the drink gets its booze from Pineau de Charentes, an aged fortified admixture of young cognac and unfermented grape juice, AKA must, that's a bit strong than ordinary wine. They used the white variant (which typically has notes of "honey, plum and cinnamon"), as well as coconut, which you often see used in frozen drinks since it's very sweet (although this one was not). Interestingly, this appears to be a standard cocktail, but most versions include some form of strawberry syrup, which this one did not. Then again none of those versions were frozen or premade, so perhaps they figured that they could get away without it here. An acceptable summer rooftop frozen cocktail.

The Crew

Ishani, Elijah, Aaron, Cristy (not pictured), Louis (not pictured).

Notes

I would have preferred the name of this bar to have been a reference to Biggie or Pynchon, but instead it's an awkwardly winking reference to the fact that this bar is nominally a "speakeasy", that most misused of bar descriptors. An unhidden speakeasy is the "planned unplanned encore" of bars, a term that's been functionally meaningless for nearly a full hundred years and yet the glamour of the word is so strong that its appeal endures even though a modern speakeasy has essentially nothing in common with its ancestor. IYKYK is a perfect example of how a term can become its exact opposite; rather than a dingy collection of potentially lethal bathtub gins crammed into someone's basement, it's a rooftop bar with plenty of lounging space, a small DJ area/concert stage, and an excellent view of Sixth Street out towards downtown. And rather than being restricted to "those who know", we weren't even able to visit it last weekend since it was too crowded with tourists (they have a waitlist to manage demand). But, in fairness, IYKYK offers such a good rooftop experience that if it becomes the new type species for speakeasies, I wouldn't mind. I promise I will stop complaining about speakeasies someday.