Hillside Farmacy

Hillside Farmacy is a family-owned New American bistro at 1209 East 11th Street, in a Texas Historical Landmark building that spent its earlier life as a 1950s pharmacy. The restaurant leans into that history rather than decorating with it, and the result is the most literal soda fountain in the city: a menu section of house-made syrups and herbal blends that Visit Austin described as craft elixirs rather than standard soft drinks.

The house framing is the detail that makes this venue genuinely useful. Any drink on the fountain menu can be ordered with or without a splash of booze — which quietly removes the whole social transaction of asking for a mocktail. Nobody has to specify a category, order off a separate list or explain themselves; two people order the same drink and one of them has alcohol in it. That is a small piece of menu design doing more for a non-drinker at a table than most dedicated zero-proof lists manage.

The Country Doctor is the signature, served hot or cold, built on ginger, fresh apple and cinnamon — a drink that works in a Texas August over ice and in January warmed through, which is more range than most cocktails have.

The kitchen is farm-to-table in a way that is specific rather than decorative: proteins from Texas ranchers and the Gulf Coast, Texas wildflower honey, microgreens from Joe's, mushrooms from Hi-Fi, locally roasted Proud Mary and Fara coffee, and Evergreen Chai brewed in East Austin. The same sourcing runs through the fountain syrups.

There are three dining rooms and heated and cooled outdoor patios, both dog-friendly, and the room is genuinely family-friendly — which, combined with the all-day trade and the soda fountain, makes it one of the easier places in Austin to bring a group with mixed drinking habits and have nobody's evening be about it.