Honey Moon Spirit Lounge
The charred cabbage is a wedge salad taken apart and rebuilt, blue cheese and buttermilk dressing against chili oil and five-spice pecans.1
Why go
Nicolai McCrary rated this 8.0 for The Infatuation and was specific about how to use it: small plates and cocktails are where Honey Moon really shines
.1 The kitchen ranges hard. Creole shrimp and grits sit on the same card as Seoul fried chicken. The plates that land are the ones built on contrast.1 It runs out of a renovated old house near the UT campus. Creaky floors and attic doors are part of it.1
Order this / avoid
- Order the charred cabbage. McCrary calls it an excellent combination of textures and global flavors, and says to make sure it is part of the order.1
- Also: chilled roasted carrots and burrata under pistachio, and the shrimp and grits, where the sauce balances acid against sweetness and the tomato chunks arrive bigger than they need to be.1
- Avoid: the Seoul fried chicken. McCrary calls it inspired-by rather than Korean, and less crisp than the city's better versions.1
What locals & experts say
- Nicolai McCrary rated it 8.0 for The Infatuation on 12 June 2025, and on the cabbage:
This is a wedge salad that traveled the world and came back inspired.
1
Good to know
- Booking: tables are bookable through the link on the review page.1
- Hours: I haven't found published hours, so check before you go.
- Hygiene: Austin Public Health scores the kitchen 87, inspected 9 December 2025, filed as Honey Moon. Austin runs a 100-point scale where higher is better and 70 is the failing line, so this is not a finding. The two earlier readings are 92 in September 2024 and 75 in February 2024, so the trajectory is upward.2
Verdict
should-visit — Book a table and order it as a bar with a kitchen. Start with the cabbage; what you make of it will tell you how far to go down the rest of the card.