From a business perspective, Halloween-themed cocktails and pop-up bars feel like an easy win. Put up some spiderwebs, add red food dye to a frozen piña colada, and wait for the Instagrammers to start posting. But in Austin, bartenders don’t want to take any shortcuts during scary season.
“To quote Hunter S. Thompson: ‘Anything worth doing is worth doing right,’” says Antonio Matta, general manager at the Treasury in East Austin. Matta goes on to say that “it’s fun to create kitschy cocktails based on themes like Halloween, but when you make cocktails that are well-balanced, people will think of them year-round.” To find out what makes a Halloween beverage program Austin-appropriate, we asked the bar pros bringing the seasonal spirit in in 2024.
When a bar decides to do a full pop-up concept devoted to Halloween, an enthusiastic team is the ultimate non-negotiable. Black Lagoon, an immersive Halloween bar experience that hosts its Austin outpost at East Austin’s King Bee (1906 E. 12th), was born out of the interests of its two veteran-bartender founders, Kelsey Ramage and Erin Hayes. “Kelsey and I both grew up very into the alternative/goth/metal music scenes and we are both horror fanatics and big-time Halloween lovers,” Hayes tells us. “When we discovered this about each other, we started ideating and dreaming about creating something that encompassed all of those things.” After the pandemic, Hayes and Ramage channeled their fondness for all things eerie into Black Lagoon, which launched in 2021 and now has a presence in over 25 U.S. cities. In addition to a vibey Goth-influenced decor scheme created in collaboration with their host bars, Black Lagoon offers polished on-theme cocktails like the Siren’s Song with aged rum, rye whiskey, pineapple liqueur, spiced oat orgeat, Amontillado sherry, lime, saline, and Caribbean bitters.
Another bar that goes big on the visual Halloween vibes is Gibson Street Bar (1109 S. Lamar), which started its “Nightmare on Gibson Street” pop-up in 2018 and has featured a new theme (and a new cocktail list) every year since. Brandon Sanchez, area manager for FBR Management (the hospitality management group that handles this bar), sees Gibson Street as a perfect venue because “it’s a good neighborhood bar with a very inviting space. And for everybody on the team at Gibson, Halloween is their Christmas. It’s their time of year to really celebrate, and they get really excited about it. They all have tattoos, they’re all in bands and involved in music, and that’s what Halloween really is: a little punk, a little metal, a little rock.”
This year’s Nightmare on Gibson Street theme, Twisted Carnival, offers everything from laser skeletons to smoke machines to a giant clown head that you walk through to get into the “circus tent” behind the bar. This attention to detail also extends to the cocktails. One such drink, the Freak Show, happened because head bartender Hayley North “knew I wanted to do something with lychee, and after playing around with a hibiscus and lemongrass gin infusion at home, I knew that those flavor combinations were going to work really well together.”
Because Austin drinkers tend to have high standards for their cocktails, bartenders seek to create Halloween libations with quality ingredients, excellent flavor balance, and a sense of story. At the Treasury (1012 E. Sixth), Matta and his team were inspired by “the nostalgia of iconic 80s cereal monsters. Count Chocula seemed to naturally lend its flavor profile to an embellishment of an espresso martini,” Matta says of the Count Chocula Sprotini made with vodka, coffee liqueur, cold brew, cacao, and chocolate bitters.
The Driskill Bar (604 Brazos) in Downtown Austin builds their brand on perfecting classic cocktails, so it’s no surprise that their seasonal Halloween drink comes with a healthy dose of history. “The Batini was created back in 2009 for a vodka competition, and it won first place. Our wonderful bar team created it as a homage to the Congress Ave Bridge bats,” says manager Julia Martin. The Batini combines Tito’s with housemade hibiscus-ginger syrup and sweet & sour syrup, and the drink’s moody red color fits the Halloween theme.
Speaking of red cocktails with history, John Solis Jr., the bar manager of the Fierce Whiskers tasting room in Southeast Austin, looked to Caribbean folklore by way of New Orleans to inspire his 2024 Halloween creation. La Diablesse “is a play on the Trinidad Sour” and is named for a mythical semi-demonic seductress. This drink “is heavy on Angostura bitters, which are from Trinidad and Tobago.” Solis Jr. pairs the Angostura with Fierce Whiskers rye, which boasts “wonderful bitter black tea notes,” orange blossom-infused orgeat from local brand Liber & Co, lemon, and a dehydrated rose garnish to cement the bloody-yet-romantic vibe.
Ultimately, Solis Jr. feels that “cocktails are supposed to be fun. We’re here to drink, and when a drink is good and the environment is good, the lights are low, and the music is loud, then you [can] get everything right.” Quirkiness meets quality in Austin’s 2024 Halloween bars & cocktails, and that’s exactly how it should be.
This article appears in October 18 • 2024.