Headed to Austin for a boy’s weekend with @metter98 and @smithj4 in early July. First visit for those guys and I have not been back for approximately 15 years. Planning on hitting up lots of breweries but was looking for a little advice on a couple of other aspects of the trip. We are staying in SoCo. First off, best coffee and breakfast places that we should not miss. Bonus if they have god tap lists as well. Best food at breweries so that we can plan our lunches/dinners when we are exploring different areas of the city (lots of BBQ already on the list to try). Any recommendations for really good pho in case we need a break from BBQ? Any other can’t miss things for our visit?
Wright Bros Brew and Brew is a great all day spot for coffee, breakfast stuff and an excellent tap list. It is also fairly close to just about everything worth noting in central/downtown Austin. Franklin's BBQ, Lazarus Brewing, and La barbaque are all close by. My personal pick for Austin BBQ is La Barbaque, and they also have a pretty good beer list. Loro is an Asian/BBQ "fusion" place opened by Franklin, the one in Houston I'm a bit mixed on, but other people love it...and maybe the original in Austin is more worth taking a look at. Best pho and Vietnamese in general is in Houston (sorry, Austin can't be the best in everything ha). Kidding aside, I remember Elizabeth Street Cafe being a good mix of American and Vietnamese, by South Congress. I don't think I can steer you to an ultra traditional pho spot like I could in Houston though, but I know they are around. Outside the usual Jester King/Live Oak, etc. recommendations which I'm sure you have at least noted...I would highly recommend a trip to Acopon Brewing in Dripping Springs if you can make it. (not that far from Jester King). Great traditional cask ales, and up the block is the Great British Bakery which makes excellent English sausage rolls. Tons of other places of course...and just scratched the surface with the above.
If you have the time/patience I would recommend Interstellar BBQ along with LeRoy and Lewis. Interstellar will allow order ahead (approx 3 days in the future, 4lb min) if you don't want to stand in line. Slackers Brewery is next to Interstellar so you can go grab beers there while waiting. When you get closer to the door there is a cooler with Lone star and a few others on the house. As for Breweries, I am really partial to Lazarus on airport, nice location and great food. Meanwhile is another great destination and there are pretty good food trucks there. Make sure you hit one of the Pinthouse locations while there, I am partial to the one at Ben White. St Elmo moved to a new location and their beers are pretty legit and you can grab something from the Spicy Boys food truck. Old Gregg is another solid brewery that is by my daughters house and has pizza (good pizza) Might be out the way but Special Noodle is a great place for Dumplings and Noodles + more For Breakfast: Mercado Sin Nombre, Paperboy, Bird Bird Biscuit, Comedor for Brunch (weekends I think, get the pancakes), Better Half Coffee & Cocktails (right next to Hold Out Brewing, another good brewery) As for Pho, can't really recommend anywhere, if I am getting Soup & Noodles it is going to be Ramen. There are some great Ramen places if interested let me know and I will have my daughter send me the names (I forget them, only done a couple, but they were really good)
Thanks for replying with the suggestions, I’m working on updating the information into our map. Also thanks for the tip on Interstellar allowing ordering ahead (we will have no problem consuming 4 lbs). Do you know if any of the others offer that as well?
Most do it (Exception being Leroy and Lewis), since you are downtown you need to hit up Frankin, the OG and you can do the same there, their BBQ is great, sides are much better at Interstellar. Ramen tatsuya is a chain with several locations, I think there is one on the east side. Sazan Ramen, on airport not far from Lazarus and right next to a killer Asian bakery 85Degrees If you want to hit up a dive bar go to Nickel City, great bourbon selection and good bar food. The one in Houston (I think they all do) does a Recession buster where you get a fried Mortadella sando with a Miller Pony and a shot of Benchmarks for like $10 (or a little more, always on special) pro tip, add the tots.
So as time goes on, more pops up Bangers Sausage House and Beer Garden: epic taps and nice Sunday Brunch, but if not planning on eating, stop in for a beer, nice setup Karaoke Bar: Ego's, right across the bridge from downtown on South Congress, Dive bar with Karaoke The Roosevelt Room: When beered out and want a drink, good selections here. Have never been served a bad drink. Place you won't tell people you went to: Barbarella, dance club with video. Total shitshow yet oddly entertaining, great mix of people and open until 3 am (quit serving at 2).
Part 3 Was in the car for 8 hours today with my daughter from ATX. Another shout out for a bbq joint Parish BBQ is a food truck at Batch Craft Beer & Kolaches. Daughter said when they went the line wasn't bad, she said brisket was good and they had a crawfish corn dressing that was to die for along with pulled duck. Plus side is it is outside a brewery and though I have never been, people in ATX say their NE IPAs were pretty solid. You are also less than a mile away from OddWood Ales, which if you go there,there is another BBQ truck KG BBQ. Here I would pass on the BBQ and get the sides. The Brisket Rice Bowl is killer along with the Pink potato salad. Pro move, send someone down to KG to get the rice bowl, potato salad and bring them back to Batch, or just do a progressive and sample a bit from each. I would probably do the later. Ya'll have fun and enjoy yourselves
Really appreciate all the tips. We are looking forward to our food and beer adventure. We have been doing these for close to 20 years and always find some great food and beer.
You chose a great place, maybe not the best time of the year though due to the heat. So champ mentioned Loros above which is Aaron Franklins (of Franklin BBQ) & Tyson Cole (of Uchi) brain child and one of the places I like to hit up in Houston. There is one on South Lamar that is a hop skip and a jump from Austin Beer Garden, which doesn't get much hype these days, but if you want some good drinking lagers you have to check them out. They are known for their Hell Yes (Helles), Industry Pils & Rocket 100 pils. If you go anywhere to eat and see Zilkers Icy Boys on tap grab it, it is made for the heat and goes will with spicy food.
Not sure if either of you @donspublic or @champ103 are in Austin this upcoming weekend but would love to grab a beer if you all are here and thank you for all the help.
Oh I wish, but can't get away from Houston ha. I did make a trip to Dripping Springs last summer, that was when I visited Acopon Brewing and fell in love with their cask beers. Anyway, if its not on your list another bar/brewery to check out is Draught House Pub & Brewery. A long standing beer bar that makes a few house beers as well. Still on the cask note, and the last time I was there, they had a house ESB and Fullers ESB on cask. That was pretty cool, but that was years ago now. Don't know if that is still something they provide or is popular. I know its still a good beer bar...
Man would love to, catering a baby shower for the mom and hosting one for the dad, so weekend is shot. Have fun and be sure to post back what you did and what you thought. These are the best threads for locations especially when those attending comment on the experience. Be safe and have a good time.
I love Draught House. Great atmosphere. I try to stop there on every trip. Unfortunately I have never been to impressed with their house beers. Link to draft list. One tab for house beers and one tab for guest taps https://www.draughthouse.com/drinks They use to always have extensive list of great guest taps, but not as much recently. Solid food truck always onsite. https://www.draughthouse.com/nosh
I second Bangers Sausage House and Beer Garden. Always one of the must stops for me. Great tap list. It makes me miss Craft Pride which closed in 2021. One of the Pinthouse locations is close to Meanwhile brewing. I enjoy Meanwhile brewing, but it can get crowded and have lots of kids. Big area in the back to enjoy if the weather is nice. Solid BBQ food truck, Distant Relatives. The food truck lines can get long when crowded. If you want a quick breakfast. I recommend Taco Xpress. Tacos are great. They have coffee but I have know anything about it. It is close to SoCo. Just a food truck with some tables. If you are into Belgium beers you can go to Mort Subite Belgian Beer Bar. Just across the lake from SoCo. Austhentico traditional Spanish food truck onsite.
The East 6th streeet is closer to where he is staying. They have really good beers. I can't comment on their coffee except they roast their own. They open early for breakfast. You can go for breakfast and coffee and then switch over to beers. https://lazarusbrewing.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/L1_Menu_2025_07_03.pdf
Thoughts after the visit… So while we appreciated all of the suggestions that we received, Austin was just too spread out for us to be able to visit all of the places that were suggested and/or sounded interesting to us. We tried to visit small groupings of places close to one another in order to maximize our time and reduce the amount of time we spent in Ubers. Here is our feedback on our Austin visit. Please correct any places that I might have overlooked @metter98 and @smithj4. Thursday afternoon started with a bit of a delay for some people’s flights and as we were meeting up at the airport and couldn’t check into our Airbnb until the later afternoon, I started by visiting places in the Austin airport. I grabbed some Taco Deli (a favorite of mine from my regular travel to Austin in the early 2010s) and headed down to Austin Beerworks Beerdrop to grab a pint and do some people watching to kill time. After a further delay I found a couple of other new beer/brewery combination as the Destination Lounge and killed a little more time. Once we got settled in, we headed out for dinner and some fun down on Rainey St - we started off with Bangers for dinner and quite a few samplers from the extensive tap list. The food was really solid - we got some sausages and some smokehouse foods and shared tapas style. We were also really impressed with the tap list and tried a quite a few. Pretty sure we would revisit Bangers if we came back to Austin. Next up we walked a couple of doors down and checked out The Stay Put which had a few of their own house beers for us to try. On the way back home we swung by the 1st Food Mart and picked up a few beers from their fairly extensive selection (especially for essentially a bodega). On Friday we started out the morning trying Manaña Coffee which was close to our Airbnb and made an excellent house special earl grey infused latte. From there we took our long Uber ride out to Interstellar BBQ to pick up our order (thanks for that tip as the line was already long at just shy of 11:00 AM) and headed over to Slackers Brewing in the same shopping plaza to enjoy our BBQ with some beers. The BBQ was excellent with our favorites being the peach tea glazed pork belly and the Hefeweizen brined turkey (most moist smoked turkey I have had). The brisket and jalapeño cheddar sausages were really solid and the sides (smoked scalloped potatoes, smoked gouda mac and cheese, and jalapeño slaw) were good too. Next up we went to Lazarus Brewing on 6th where we felt slightly out of place as 50+ year olds and without any laptop setups - beers were really good (probably my favorite based on beers). From there we walked over to Zilker and enjoyed the beers there as well. We decided to continue our walk along 6th and ended up grabbing dinner at Eureka! which were some solid burgers with a decent sized tap list. We finished up 6th St with a quick beer outside at The Rusty Tap with some live music and then a little shopping at the Whole Foods for some Airbnb beers for the evening. We started Saturday morning at Joann’s Fine Foods (in the Austin Motel) which was right outside our Airbnb - breakfast was fantastic. From there we headed over to “The Yard” area in Austin to check out a few places. We started at The Yard with St Elmo Brewing (solid), then moved on to Ants Beer Cave (pickle ball meets bar), The Spokesman (hidden gem coffee shop with solid tap list), and Vacancy Brewing (easy drinkers). Finally we moved on from The Yard and headed over to Meanwhile. Meanwhile was probably my favorite space/vibe and beers + food trucks were solid. On our way back from Meanwhile, we decided to pop into Austin Craft Brewing where we met some interesting folks and enjoyed a couple of pint. Being pretty tired and full, we just popped into The White Tiger in our neighborhood for some quick dinner. Finally we decided to try Hi Sign on our way back to the airport in that massive thunderstorm on Sunday midday - again a solid spot to enjoy some beers.
@dbrauneis glad ya'll enjoyed. Hope the weather behaved while ya'll were here. Bit of an oddity for this time of year in Texas to be getting all this rain. Sound like ya'll were able to hit some solid spots.
