Whisler's

Whisler's occupies a hundred-year-old building on East Sixth Street that started life as a 1916 grain mill, and it is one of the most decorated cocktail bars in the city — an eleven-time nominee and five-time winner of Austin's Best Cocktail Bar. The Infatuation's Nicolai McCrary described it as built into an old warehouse that feels more like it belongs in Brooklyn than across from a hotel in East Austin, and called it home to some of the best cocktails east of I-35.

The interior is candlelit and rustic, variously described as Gothic and castle-like, with palo santo burning at the door. The back patio is large and misted for the Texas summer, Thai-Kun serves from a truck on it — the food truck named to Bon Appétit's Hot 10 in 2014 — and Mezcalería Tobalá, a weekend-only Oaxacan mezcal bar, sits upstairs.

For a non-drinker the position is honest but limited. Whisler's produces four seasonal cocktail menus a year and the bartending is genuinely accomplished, so a well-made zero-proof drink is within easy reach of anyone who asks. But there is no published, named non-alcoholic list, and the rotation means anything you are told today may not exist next season.

What makes it work anyway is the shape of the place. Two full bars, a large open patio with a food truck on it, and a rooftop mezcaleria mean the evening does not have to happen at a bar counter — you can eat, move between spaces, and sit outside, which is most of what makes a long night out manageable without drinking. It is also open from 4pm on weekdays and from 2pm at weekends, so it works as an afternoon patio rather than only as a late-night room.

Go for the patio, the food and the room. Ask the bar for something bitter and dry rather than for a mocktail, and expect it to be made properly.