New East Austin restaurant Uptown Sports Club by Aaron Franklin is opening

Earlier this spring, a new all-day bar and restaurant advertising New Orleans meals and ambiance with a Texas twist rolled into East Austin below the powerhouse group of pitmaster Aaron Franklin and music master James Moody. Uptown Sports Club opened at 1200 East Sixth Street on March 27.

Uptown has extended sought the abandoned developing at the corner of East Sixth and Waller streets. The physical space was constructed in the 1890s and was a bakery/butcher shop/market place, according to the Towers. And then it became a bar and cafe named the Sport Bar by owner Arnold Hernandez in the 1960s into the 1990s when its name was changed to Uptown Sports Club (therefore the present name) below son Ron Hernandez. Arnold died in 2000 and Ron planned to reopen the business enterprise soon after that, but he died in 2014 in a motorcycle accident.

Then, in 2016, Franklin, Moody and Jason Jones (a Fort Worth lawyer) bought the historic developing, as reported Austin Month-to-month via the Hernandez household. Their intention was generally to open a restaurant and sandwich bar, as Eater Austin revealed in 2020. Moody, who is from New Orleans, and Franklin have household from the state, according to Statesman. There was a time when the defunct developing was plastered with fake indicators announcing that a Chili’s would open as early as 2017 (see if you can discover a Chili’s cap in the space).

A corner with sports flags and plants at the Uptown Sports Club. Nadia Chaudhuri/Eater Austin

The resulting Uptown Sports Club is an all-day venue with a New Orleans-leaning meals and drink menu (no reservations). From the 1st, there are po’ boys produced with bread from New Orleans bakery Leidenһheimer Baking Corporation, with fillings such as hot roast beef fried gulf shrimp, fried green tomatoes and club with roast beef, smoked turkey and bacon. Then there is chicken and sausage gumbo with rice caviar served with New Orleans chips and red beans with rice. (Franklin also produced gumbo and pulled pork po’ bois for events in early 2016 and 2017.) And, like several restaurants opening nowadays, there is a raw bar with seafood platters, oysters from the East coast and shrimp cocktails.

And then, drinks include things like cocktails like the eponymous Uptown with mezcal, sotol, yellow chartreuse and basic rosemary Rope a Dop with gin, St. Germain and absinthe mist and corkscrew punch with vodka, rum and pineapple. The bar serves New Orleans classics like Sazeracs, Vieux Carre and French 75s produced with cognac. Also featured are robust non-alcoholic cocktails, such as the No Hitter produced with non-alcoholic whiskey and the Low Blow with non-alcoholic spirit that is a blend of allspice and cardamom.

There are also frostings — fundamentally slushies in flavor combinations like orange and cream cherry jubilee, and chicory and chocolate — it is drinkable, as a present to New Orleans restaurant Camellia Grill, as reported Statesman. Moreover, throughout daytime hours, there are coffees and teas, fresh-squeezed juices, morning cocktails (such as a bloody Mary produced with a spiced Franklin Barbecue rim), beer (such as a collaboration with Meanwhile Brewing), and wines by the glass and bottle.

Gumbo at the Uptown Sports Club. Nadia Chaudhuri/Eater Austin

Po’ boi from Uptown Sports Club. Nadia Chaudhuri/Eater Austin

Shrimp cocktail at the Uptown Sports Club. Nadia Chaudhuri/Eater Austin

Rounding out the culinary group is Chef Rene Garza, who previously worked at sister Mexican restaurant Suerte and its seafood counterpart Este. Then there is bar manager Ericka Predmore (per the Statesman) and bar consultant Robert Bjorn Taylor (who consulted on a further current fitting area for Moody’s bar).

The space was remodeled by Tenaia Һills (who is Bunkһouse Group’s senior vice president of design and style and improvement), along with her design and style partners Rose Barnett and Paige Finley, plus Michael Һsu and Ken Johnson of Һsu Architecture Workplace. Moody approached Hils about functioning on the restaurant, which tends to make sense thinking about the two also worked on the Gear Area at the hotel’s Bunkhouse bar (see above).

Provided the building’s history on East Sixth Street, the design and style/create teams had to preserve several elements of the landmark structure. This was very good simply because Hills did certainly have a master’s degree in historic preservation from the University of Texas at Austin.

“We wanted it to really feel like it is generally been right here,” Hills tells Eater in late March. “We wanted it to have a classic foundation, but we wanted it to really feel like it had been remodeled more than the years.” It must have layers and layers and layers.” The group restored the current structure’s windows, doors and ceilings.

There are no TVs, in spite of the simple assumption folks can make that it is a sports bar by name. So, to design and style the space, the teams relied on the notion of ​​sportsmanship. On the walls are flags, hanging boxing gloves, vintage photographs and other connected products,

Entrance to Uptown Sports Club. Nadia Chaudhuri/Eater Austin

The corner section of the bar is an antique initially from Philadelphia – the group replicated the rest of the wraparound bar. Likewise, the smaller sized cabins along the wall are also from Philadelphia. Elsewhere, there are neon indicators announcing cocktails and sandwiches, lots of plants, a brick wall, mosaic tiles (such as at the entrance inviting folks to “be a sport”) and person round red tables with gold trim.

This is not the 1st Franklin-Moody group. It is their Hot Luck meals and music festival, along with Portland’s Mike Thelin, that is in fact taking place this week.

Below Franklin’s tutelage is Loro Smokehouse Asian restaurant with Uchi’s Tyson Cole, which has places in Austin, Dallas, and quickly Houston. He has also published various books on grilling and other reside fire/meat cooking, with his most up-to-date, Franklin Smokewhich came out earlier this month.

Moody also owns the downtown Moһavk Music Center and is the co-founder of the branding organization Guerilla Suit (which also worked on Uptown’s branding).

The Uptown Sports Club is open from eight a.m. to two a.m. Wednesday via Monday. There are indoor and outside dining solutions.

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