Lazarus Brewing Co.
The tacos here get a layer of cheese melted directly onto the tortilla.1
Why go
This is the East Sixth original, open since late 2016, and it does three things under one roof: brews its own beer, roasts its own coffee, and cooks Mexican street food from a scratch kitchen.23 Adele Hazan, writing for The Infatuation in September 2017, found a solid local craft beer list, plenty of bar seating, a shady patio built for a dog, and tacos where the cheese goes onto the tortilla rather than onto the filling.1 Six years on, Nicolai McCrary was still naming the same four things in one line. The coffee is the part the brewery talks about itself, and its stated aim is a house profile it says took twenty years honing,
pitched at smooth, rich, and balanced, with notes of berry, chocolate, and nuts.
3 That is a deliberately unfussy target rather than a single-origin showpiece, and it is worth knowing before ordering. All the beer is treated with the enzyme Clarex to land under twenty parts per million of gluten, which is again the brewery's own claim about its own product.3
Order this / avoid
- Order: tacos and a beer brewed on the premises. Hazan also rates the tortas and the coffee, which the brewery roasts itself.1
- Avoid: arriving hungry for the sizzling carne asada or the enchiladas. Those belong to the expanded Airport Boulevard menu; this room runs tacos and tortas.2
What locals & experts say
- Nicolai McCrary, The Infatuation (2023):
It became, and remains to this day, a buzzy spot for good coffee, solid beers, great tacos, and a spacious patio.
2 - Adele Hazan, The Infatuation (2017): the taproom is for
a long lunch or a late afternoon meet-up where everyone can show up wearing workout clothes or whatever they slept in last night.
That page is nine years old, which is the honest state of the record on this door.1 - No rating attaches. The Infatuation scores only places where you can eat a full meal, so both pages run unrated.
Good to know
- Which taproom: this is 1902 East Sixth. The Airport Boulevard room is a different premises with a different menu and its own entry.
- Gluten: all beer enzyme-treated to under 20 parts per million, per the brewery.3
- Hygiene: Austin Public Health scores the kitchen 73, inspected 20 May 2026, register name Lazarus Brewing Operations. The previous three readings are 72 in September 2025, 90 in March 2025 and 86 in January 2024. Austin's failing line is 70 and nothing here is below it, so this is not a failing finding, but two consecutive readings in the seventies after a ninety is a direction and it is recorded as one. The Airport Boulevard and Gene Johnson Street locations are separately registered and their scores are not this door's.4
- Price and hours: not published on the pages read.
Verdict
could-visit — The original Lazarus, on East Sixth since late 2016, brewing its own beer and roasting its own coffee, with a kitchen whose tacos put a layer of cheese straight onto the tortilla. Two Infatuation writers six years apart describe the same room: beer, tacos, patio. It sits mid-ladder because neither wrote an assessment beyond a paragraph, the newer one was reviewing the other taproom, and the current menu was not read.