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AUG 2022Beat the Heat, Find the New Spots and Rediscover Austin’s Best Dive Bars
Posted by Dominic M | A Ballin' Lifestyle, Food/DrinkAugust in Austin is a month of survival—and knowing where to go makes all the difference.
The temperatures are high, the afternoons are hot enough to make a short walk feel like a workout, and most Austinites have figured out that the best summer plans involve cold drinks, air conditioning, swimming pools, live music and restaurants that don’t require you to spend much time standing outside.
But August is also a surprisingly interesting month for Austin’s food and nightlife scene. New restaurants are opening, established local businesses are expanding, new concepts are arriving from outside Austin, and the city’s legendary neighborhood bars continue doing what they have always done: providing a place where you can grab a cheap drink, sit down, listen to music and forget how hot it is outside.
One of the biggest restaurant stories this month is the arrival of Paris Baguette, the South Korean bakery chain that has opened its first Austin location in the Highland neighborhood. The bakery brings together French-inspired pastries and Korean bakery traditions, with items including croissants, cakes and mochi doughnuts.
For Austin, this is another sign of how international the city’s food scene has become.
The traditional Austin food conversation usually begins with tacos, barbecue and breakfast tacos. Those foods remain essential, but the restaurant scene has grown dramatically beyond them. International chains and independent restaurants are increasingly looking at Austin as a city where customers are willing to try something different.
Paris Baguette is a good example.
It isn’t simply another coffee shop.
It is a bakery experience, and the combination of French-style pastries and Korean influences gives Austin diners something they may not have seen before at a neighborhood bakery.
Another interesting opening is Choo Sando, the Japanese sandwich pop-up that is moving into a permanent location in Brentwood. The restaurant specializes in Japanese katsu sandwiches and is also offering pre-order omakase experiences.
That is another example of Austin’s food scene moving toward specialized concepts.
Instead of trying to serve everything, newer restaurants are often building their identity around one particular type of food.
Japanese sandwiches.
Omakase.
Regional Mexican seafood.
Vegan Oaxacan food.
Cuban sandwiches.
Austin diners seem increasingly willing to seek out those specific experiences.
And August is bringing plenty of them.
Another new arrival this month is La Plancha, a Mexican restaurant in the Blackland neighborhood focusing on breakfast, lunch and dinner, including breakfast tortas and vegan-friendly options.
North Austin is also getting more attention with Nissi VegMex, a vegan Mexican restaurant that moved from food-truck service into a permanent restaurant in the Wooten neighborhood. Its menu includes vegan birria tacos and burritos.
This kind of move is worth watching because Austin’s food-truck culture continues to act as a pipeline for new restaurants.
A food truck can test a concept.
Build a following.
Develop a menu.
Then, if the customers keep coming, the owners can eventually make the much larger investment required for a permanent restaurant.
Austin has produced countless restaurants this way.
August is also bringing a Cuban influence to the city’s food scene.
Oye Chico is setting up at Better Half, bringing Cuban sandwiches and Little Havana-inspired food to the Austin restaurant scene.
It is exactly the kind of smaller opening that can easily get overlooked when people are focused on Austin’s biggest restaurants, but these are the businesses that make the city’s food scene interesting.
You don’t have to spend $100 on dinner to experience something new.
Sometimes the best discovery is a sandwich from a small counter or food truck.
That brings us to the other major Austin story this month:
the dive bars.
Austin’s dive bars have always been one of the city’s greatest forms of entertainment.
They don’t need rooftop views.
They don’t need elaborate cocktail menus.
They don’t need velvet ropes.
They don’t need DJs standing behind a $30,000 sound system.
Sometimes you just need a cold beer, a jukebox and a bartender who doesn’t care what you’re wearing.
And in 2022, Austin still has plenty of those places.
The Austin Chronicle’s 2022 Best of Austin readers poll named Nickel City the city’s Best Dive Bar, with Back Lot, Barfly’s, The Grackle and Lala’s Little Nugget as finalists.
That gives us a pretty good starting point for an August dive-bar tour.
10 Austin Dive Bars to Know in 2022
1. Nickel City
Nickel City is the dive bar that manages to feel both genuinely comfortable and extremely Austin at the same time. Located on East 11th Street, it has a large selection of drinks, a relaxed atmosphere and food from an onsite kitchen. The Austin Chronicle’s readers officially selected it as the city’s Best Dive Bar in 2022.
The important thing about Nickel City is that it doesn’t feel like a bar trying desperately to convince you that it is cool.
It simply is.
Grab a drink.
Order some food.
Find a spot.
Stay awhile.
2. Deep Eddy Cabaret
If Austin dive bars had a hall of fame, Deep Eddy Cabaret would have a permanent spot.
Located near the original Deep Eddy swimming area, the bar has been part of Austin’s drinking culture for decades. It is the kind of place where the jukebox matters, the drinks are straightforward and the atmosphere feels lived-in rather than designed.
In a city where many new bars are trying to create an “Austin” aesthetic, Deep Eddy doesn’t have to try.
It already is Austin.
3. Donn’s Depot
Few places capture old Austin quite like Donn’s Depot.
The West Austin bar has a reputation for its unusual setting, live music, cheap drinks and eccentric atmosphere. The interior is famous for its train cars and Christmas decorations, creating a bar experience that would be almost impossible to replicate intentionally.
Donn’s is one of those places where you can walk in not knowing anybody and leave having talked to half the room.
That is the point.
4. Barfly’s
Barfly’s is another classic neighborhood dive that Austin locals repeatedly mention when discussing the city’s best low-key bars. It is unpretentious, comfortable and exactly the kind of place where you can actually sit down and have a conversation.
In 2022, locals on Austin’s Reddit community repeatedly recommended Barfly’s when asked about the city’s best dive bars.
That matters because dive bars aren’t really defined by marketing.
They’re defined by regulars.
If people who live in Austin keep recommending a place, pay attention.
5. Lala’s Little Nugget
Lala’s is one of Austin’s most recognizable old-school bars, particularly because of its famous Christmas decorations.
The bar’s holiday theme stays up year-round, which means you can walk in during the middle of August and feel like Christmas has somehow arrived early.
That is precisely the kind of weirdness Austin does well.
Lala’s is also a good reminder that a dive bar doesn’t necessarily have to be ugly or miserable.
It can simply be quirky, comfortable and different.
6. The Grackle
The Grackle on East Sixth Street represents another side of Austin’s dive-bar culture.
It has a strong music connection, a casual atmosphere and the kind of East Austin location that makes it easy to turn a night there into a larger bar-hopping adventure.
The Grackle was also one of the finalists for Best Dive Bar in the Austin Chronicle’s 2022 readers poll.
It is a good place to start if you want a dive bar that still feels connected to Austin’s music scene.
7. The Skylark Lounge
The Skylark is technically more of a dive-juke-joint hybrid, but that’s exactly why it belongs on the list.
Located on the east side, the Skylark has long been associated with live music and a neighborhood atmosphere. Austin locals frequently mention it alongside Sahara Lounge as one of the city’s great “dive juke joints.”
This is the type of bar to visit when you want the music to be as important as the drinks.
8. Sahara Lounge
Sahara Lounge is another Austin institution that doesn’t fit neatly into one category.
It is a dive bar.
It is a live-music venue.
It is a neighborhood gathering place.
And it has one of the most distinctive music calendars in town.
The bar’s international musical programming has helped make it one of the city’s most interesting places to hear something different.
The Austin Chronicle’s 2022 Best of Austin listings also recognized Sahara as one of the city’s standout intimate live-music venues.
If your idea of a great Austin night involves discovering music you weren’t expecting, put Sahara on the list.
9. The Cloak Room
Downtown Austin has plenty of bars, but very few feel like The Cloak Room.
Hidden underground near the Capitol, it is tiny, dark and deliberately old-school.
It doesn’t look like a modern cocktail lounge.
It doesn’t need to.
The Cloak Room has the atmosphere of a place that has been there forever, which is exactly what people are looking for when they say they want an authentic Austin bar.
10. G&S Lounge
South Austin’s G&S Lounge is another longtime neighborhood favorite.
It’s the kind of bar where the atmosphere matters more than presentation. Regulars, inexpensive drinks and a laid-back South Austin personality make it a classic choice for people looking to escape the more polished parts of the city’s nightlife.
Austin locals discussing dive bars in 2022 repeatedly singled out G&S as one of their favorites.
And that’s the beauty of this list.
None of these bars needs to be the newest.
In fact, that’s part of the point.
Austin’s nightlife is constantly changing, but the best dive bars have survived because they provide something that newer establishments can’t easily manufacture.
History.
Regulars.
Stories.
Character.
A jukebox.
A bartender who remembers your order.
A pool table that has probably seen better days.
A neon sign.
A strange decoration.
Maybe a little cigarette smell permanently trapped in the walls.
That’s Austin.
And in August, when the heat makes you want to find somewhere dark and cold, a dive bar can be exactly what the doctor ordered.
Of course, Austin’s nightlife isn’t only about dive bars.
Newer cocktail lounges and restaurants continue to appear, and the contrast between those businesses and the old neighborhood bars is part of what makes the city interesting.
You can spend Friday night at a sophisticated downtown cocktail bar and Saturday night drinking cheap beer at a place that looks like it hasn’t changed since 1987.
Both experiences can be equally Austin.
The restaurant scene is moving forward.
The bar scene is moving forward.
But the old places remain.
That balance is important.
Because if Austin becomes nothing but new restaurants, luxury apartments, rooftop bars and expensive cocktails, it loses part of what made the city special.
The dive bars are a reminder that Austin nightlife doesn’t have to be complicated.
Sometimes you just need somewhere to go.
August is also a good month to pay attention to restaurant closings and redevelopment.
One of the biggest stories late in the month is the announced closure of a longtime Rainey Street bar because of downtown development. The story is another reminder that the Rainey Street neighborhood is changing rapidly as large-scale development moves into an area that was once primarily known for small houses converted into bars.
That transition is going to be one of the defining stories of Austin nightlife in the years ahead.
Rainey Street helped establish Austin’s modern bar-hopping culture.
But the neighborhood’s future is becoming increasingly dominated by larger development projects.
Some longtime bars will survive.
Others won’t.
And that makes places like Donn’s Depot, Deep Eddy Cabaret, Lala’s and the other old-school bars even more valuable.
They represent a version of Austin that is increasingly difficult to find.
August is therefore a good month to get out and explore both sides of the city.
Try one of the new restaurants.
Check out a bakery you’ve never visited.
Grab a Japanese sandwich.
Find a Cuban food truck.
Then, when the sun goes down, skip the rooftop for one night and visit a dive bar.
Order a beer.
Put some money in the jukebox.
Talk to somebody.
Don’t worry about taking the perfect Instagram picture.
That’s the beauty of a dive.
Nobody cares.
And maybe that’s exactly what Austin needs in August.
A place to escape the heat.
A cold drink.
Good food.
Live music.
And a little bit of the old Austin still hanging around.
Because the new Austin is exciting.
But the old Austin is worth protecting.
