Seven & Seven: 7 ways to drink at 7 fresh places

Cocktails, beer (and a recipe) from Garrido's, Annies, Roaring Fork Stonelake, Fion Wine Pub, East Side Show Room, Paggi House and the Ginger Man

By Mike Sutter
AMERICAN-STATESMAN RESTAURANT CRITIC
Thursday, September 17, 2009

Drinks help restaurants pay the rent. Drinks help you spend the rent. Glad we could get you kids together. These seven places share the novelty of having arrived (or re-arrived) on the scene in only the past year or so. And they all understand that though food might fill the belly, a decent drink is food for the soul.

Paloma at Garrido's

360 Nueces St. 320-8226, garridosaustin.com

Unashamed of its simplicity, the paloma is a splash drink: fill a glass with crushed ice, splash in some tequila, splash in some grapefruit juice, some Mexican Fresca and there it is. The dusky taste of El Jimador Blanco tequila comes through, propelled by the dry grapefruit and the effervescence of the soda. Unlike its American cousin, Mexican Fresca is full-on sweet, not an apologetic diet drink. The paloma is something you could make at home, but for $6 (just $4 at happy hour from 4 to 7 p.m. daily), it's worth being part of Garrido's for a while, on the cushy leather stools at the wide, polished wood bar or - in more welcoming weather - on the palm-shaded patio overlooking Shoal Creek. For $1.50 more, splurge on thick fresh tortilla chips and a bowl of warm guajillo salsa, or for $2.50, get a full bottle of Fresca just to admire the old-school weight of the green glass bottle.

Framboise Flip at East Side Show Room

1100 E. Sixth St. 467-4280, eastsideshowroom.com

What kind of place is this? Every detail is obsessively rendered in soft-focus retro-shab, down to the bartender smashing ice to order in a green Swiss Army-style bag for the pricey, show-crafted cocktails. A woman in a vintage-store strapless flapper ensemble plays the piano and the kazoo (at the same time). Dark red curtains shield the big main room, a patchwork of exposed bricks, painted ductwork and concrete floors. The furniture looks like it was made for overimagined puppet people, like having a tea party with the robots from the new animated fever dream called '9.'

The Framboise Flip is a $9 drink of doll-like proportions in a wee sherbet goblet, something like a pleasantly sweet raspberry-bourbon smoothie with a dash of peach bitters, made frothy with an egg and finished with a mint leaf the bartender smacks between his palms to release the oils. It's a fussy concoction made by true cocktail believers. In fact, after eyeballing my half-drained drink, bartender James Chauncy didn't like what he saw. So he remade it - colder, more finely muddled and strained, sporting sharper teeth. Elsewhere on the early-last-century cocktail list is a Pisco Fuego, made with grape brandy, lemon, elderflower liqueur and fire. Yes, for $11, you get to see the thing get sprinkled with sugar and torched to make just a whisper of a brûléed floater on the sweet, floral drink. Not in the mood for a show? The beer list is medieval in strength, and the menu moves from charcuterie to shrimp and grits to short ribs.

(512) Brewing Co. beers at the new Ginger Man

301 Lavaca St. 473-8801, gingermanpub.com

The relocated Ginger Man feels about the same inside as the old one, which still stands cater-corner across the street, calling itself the Ghost Room now. The new digs are narrower and lower, and there are side rooms and niches like before. But it's still a sit-at-the-bar place, the better to soak up the wisdom of the tap wall, not the to mention the philosophical inebriates around you. The patio out back seems to have been hoisted from the old place and set down here, now magically cleaner, with a higher class of table-scratch graffiti, beset on all sides by darkening towers.

I christened my first visit with Texas pints, just $3 on Tuesday nights. The (512) Pecan Porter, brewed in Austin, is on the sweet side, floral even, with a little kiln-dried wood on the way down, a fleeting reminder that this dark style can swing to the dry or sweet side and stay true to its roots. The (512) Wit is bready and spicy, cloudy but not opaque in the orange-juice style so common in wheat beers now (though I like that sunrise-in-a-glass effect). But this is cleaner on the finish, a thorough remedy for thirst, with or without the lemon slice.

The Old Austin at Annies Café & Bar

319 Congress Ave. 472-1884, anniescafebar.com.

'The way you can get a Sazerac anywhere in New Orleans, I'd like to see this cocktail be the same thing for Austin,' David Alan says of the Old Austin, a reimagining of the fashionable-again old-fashioned. Alan is a bartender at the resurrected Annies Café & Bar, whose comeback includes a 30-foot horseshoe-shaped bar topped with zinc and stocked with drinks developed by Fino Restaurant and Patio Bar mixologist Bill Norris.

Sweet, sour, tart and hot all at the same time, the Old Austin is something you can get at Annies for $9. Or you can try making it at home with this recipe, developed by Norris and explained to me by Alan, known in the blogosphere as the Tipsy Texan.

The Old Austin

1 orange for zesting and peeling

1 lemon for zesting and peeling

1/2 oz. pecan syrup (made by simmering roasted, unsalted pecan halves in simple syrup for 15 minutes, then removing the pecans)

2 oz. Wild Turkey rye whiskey

2-3 dashes Fee Brothers Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters or angostura bitters

Cracked ice

Over an old-fashioned glass, use a vegetable peeler to cut a wide, thin section of zest from the orange and lemon, being careful not to include the white pith underneath. Express the oils of the zest into the glass by squeezing lightly, then drop the sections of zest into the glass. Add pecan syrup, bitters and rye whiskey. Add ice and stir to combine.

Margarita flight at the Roaring Fork Stonelake

10850 Stonelake Blvd. 342-2700, www.eddiev.com .

The Roaring Fork is a cowboy place at heart. Lots of smoke, chiles and grilled meat, with side dishes in cast-iron kettles. But at the Stonelake location, the bar could have been taken from almost any nice place with a lake view and patio seating, its horseshoe-shaped red banquettes and modern light fixtures a New American canvas for whatever you want.

No matter. How cowboy could I get with my itty-bitty margaritas, anyway? I'm talking about the frozen margarita flight, with tasters of the huckleberry, house lime and mango blends ($8, $6 during happy hour from 4 to 7 p.m. daily). It's served in a wire boat that holds three tall shot glasses, like the kamikazes you used to power-slam during spring break at Padre. The huckleberry has no real discernible flavor of its own, but the swirling red juice paints a pretty picture. The house lime margarita is strong and slightly sweet with a big lime pucker. The mango tastes the most like its color, a bright orange burst of straight-up mango purée. All three pack a punch. A punch from three cute little fists in a stainless-steel canoe, but still.

Also available at: The Roaring Fork, 701 Congress Ave. 583-0000.

Blood orange margarita at Paggi House

200 Lee Barton Drive. 473-3700, paggi house.com.

The same swollen-sunset hue as the Paggi House itself, the blood orange margarita is served in a tall glass rimmed with fat crystals of salt. It's a ruddy color out of the crayon box (the big one, with a built-in sharpener) for $8, only $4 at happy hour from 5 to 7 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. The margarita's salty with a sultry citrus bite, rimmed with slices of the namesake fruit, a ruby shade so saturated it looks synthetic. The drink is emblematic of the restaurant's ability to take a classic and breathe new life into it with a taste of the unexpected, like venison with an espresso rub and vanilla-parsnip purée.

Paggi House is a graceful old homestead repurposed with a modern breezeway bar and an expansive wooden patio in front with plush lounge seating. Inside, it's renovated to suit modern tastes with straight chairs in black leather and classic sensibilities with scuffed wood floors and thick mouldings. A changing happy-hour menu might include dense, luscious Niman Ranch pork belly ($12/$6 at happy hour) and crispy fried halibut strips with spicy remoulade ($10/$5). The patio lounge was sheltered from the direct sun by a dappled tree canopy, but it was still warm enough to melt herbed butter. Nothing a second blood orange margarita couldn't fix.

Beer flight at Fion Wine Pub

11715 RM 2244, Suite 100, Bee Cave. 263-7988, www.fionwinepub.com.

It takes a contrarian to order a beer flight at a wine pub. Or just somebody who can't resist a tap wall with more than 40 beers, heavy on the domestic - and specifically Texas - microbrews. Fion, which opened its Bee Cave location earlier this year just a few doors down from Zoot restaurant, is one of those convenient places where you can have a drink at the bar, have a cheese plate with nuts and fruit and buy a few bottles at retail prices to take home, whether it's one of the hundreds of wines or a big bottle of Affligem Belgian ale from the beer cave. But the flight's the way to go, with your choice of four beers in four-ounce glasses for $6. The taps change out regularly, the bartender said, but she helped me pick four winners from the stock that day.

• Biere de Mars from Colorado's New Belgium, a dry and fruity saison-style beer with a touch of spice and a golden pale color.

• Fuller's ESB, the malty English warhorse ale.

• Blanche de Bruxelles , a hazy yellow, cloud-soft Belgian witbier .

• Lost Gold IPA from Real Ale in Blanco, a pale ale with a hop bitterness almost rosemary bright. It reminded me of Collin County Pure Gold from a brewery in Plano years ago, the first pale ale I ever drank.

About time Bee Cave got a beer cave.

Other locations: In Steiner Ranch at 2900 N. Quinlan Park Road, Suite A150. 266-3466.