Equipment Room.

Equipment Room

Obscured by Clouds takes its name from the 1972 Pink Floyd album and pours Suntory Toki whiskey with lavender honey, lemon, blue spirulina and egg white under a dust of lavender.1

Why go

The drink list is organized the way the records are, in A-sides and B-sides, classics on one half and new builds on the other. Beverage consultant Robert Bjorn Taylor wrote it so that Every B-side cocktail has a reference to a genre, an album, or a song.1 The collection came first. Gabe Vaughn and Josh LaRue of Breakaway Records assembled most of the 1,200-plus records, and agreed to start buying long before the business existed.1 Breakaway staff take the turntables on a rotating schedule and play full albums, and the cocktail waiters hand out written cards naming what is on.3 The room was built to hold that up. The door is a soundproof foam portal. Two-inch acoustic panels run across the ceiling, and a felt-upholstered wall curves toward the speakers. Where you sit changes what you hear, because the speaker configurations differ around the room.3

Order this / avoid

• Obscured by Clouds. Suntory Toki whiskey, lavender honey, lemon, blue spirulina, egg white, lavender dust and a flower, named for the Pink Floyd album.1
• The Oaxacan Old Fashioned. Cimarron reposado tequila and Ilegal joven mezcal with agave, grapefruit oils and mole bitters.1
• Spicy tuna onigiri, with gochujang, pickled piparra peppers, rice seasoning and Kewpie mayo, off a snack menu Hotel Magdalena executive chef Jeffrey Hundelt describes as several delicious snacks from across the globe.1
• Caramel puffed cheese corn, which a staff member described to CultureMap as Pirate's Booty under a sweet, glossy coating.3
• Also on the list: a tinned seafood board of Spanish octopus and mackerel with saffron aioli and marinated tomatoes, chile-lime peanuts, an okonomiyaki waffle and whipped guacamole.2
• These come off the March 2023 opening coverage, so ask what is still poured before you order from this list.1
• Avoid requesting a record. The kissa format the bar takes from treats a request as a faux pas.1

What locals & experts say

• Nicolai McCrary, The Infatuation Austin, on the room: the vinyl listening and cocktail spot Equipment Room looks more like the living room of a very wealthy audiophile. He notes the theme stops at the music, where you might hear bits of David Bowie and the Beach Boys mixed in with SZA and Janet Jackson, and points at a cocktail with sesame-washed sake, orgeat, and furikake dust. The review carries no number, because the outlet only scores places where you can eat a full meal. It sits on The Infatuation's best cocktail bars and best bars guides for Austin, and on its national It Bars list.2
• James Moody, Mohawk's owner and a partner here, on the idea, after watching JBS in Tokyo: It was like a quiet, confident, focused art curator managing a very deliberate and special collection inside a cool museum with whiskey.1
• CultureMap Austin reported the opening and found the room almost too intimate to invite any kind of distraction. The byline is a house one, so it is carried as a report.3
• The venue on itself: it describes the space as a private basement hideaway holding one of Austin's most special record collections played on custom vintage hi-fi equipment. That is venue marketing, used as a statement of intent.4

Good to know

• Closed Sunday. It opens in the early evening the rest of the week, runs late on Friday and Saturday, and Saturday is the only afternoon.4
• Booking: the bar takes reservations, holds some tables for walk-ins, and asks for 24 hours notice on a cancellation.4
• Finding the door: the entrance sits in a different building from the hotel lobby and is marked only by a small floating E, opening onto a candlelit vestibule with a stained-glass window.3
• The side room: a semiprivate space seats parties of up to ten on its own speaker system, and is open to anyone when nobody has reserved it.1
• Which premises: the bar is inspected as its own establishment, separate from Hotel Magdalena above it at the same address.5
• Hygiene: Austin Public Health scores it 94, inspected 4 September 2025, on a 100-point scale where 70 is the failing threshold. The previous routine was 96 in February 2024.5

Verdict

should-visit — Book a table, and ask for a seat where the sound is best when you book it. Then let the album run.