Nickel City
The food comes from a trailer in the back yard, Delray Cafe, doing fried bologna sandwiches, burgers and what The Infatuation calls some of the best wings in town.3
Why go
The bar itself is the draw, and the argument for it is that the dive-bar act does not survive contact with the back bar. Travis Tober opened it in the old Longbranch Inn in August 2017 after running the drinks at Vox Table, with the Via 313 owners Brandon and Zane Hunt and Javelina's Craig Primozich, and CultureMap counted almost 300 whiskey labels on the shelf that first week.1 It trades noon to 2am every day of the year, Christmas and Thanksgiving included, and Tober's own framing is the any time, everyone bar. We have regulars from 21 to 91.
2 No published source names a cocktail on the list, so none is named here either.
What locals & experts say
- The Infatuation, Nicolai McCrary (on-page 20 April 2023), unrated:
But the servers are too friendly, the cocktails are too developed, and the whiskey selection is too extensive.
He calls it one of his favorite bars in Austin.3 - On the food, from the same review:
There's also a great food trailer out back (Delray Cafe) serving up perfectly-executed bar foods, like fried bologna sandwiches, burgers, and some of the best wings in town.
3 The page has no score, because the outlet only rates places where you can eat a full meal. Note the date. Trailer tenancies turn over.
Good to know
- Where it is: 1133 East 11th Street.
- The kitchen is not the bar's. Delray Cafe is its own business parked out back, and it carries no city inspection record, because mobile vendors sit outside the register that covers fixed premises. That is a gap in the data, and it is not the same thing as a clean result.
- Hygiene, for the bar itself: Austin Public Health scored it 92 on 28 February 2025 and 90 on 22 February 2024. Nothing below 70, so nothing here is a finding under the Austin scheme.4
- Nickel City trades under the same name in more than one city. This is about the East 11th Street room in Austin and nothing else.
Verdict
could-visit — Nickel City reads as a dive until you look at the back bar. Nicolai McCrary's line is that the servers are too friendly, the cocktails too developed and the whiskey selection too extensive for the costume to hold, and he calls it one of his favorite bars in Austin. The food is a separate business, the Delray Cafe trailer in the back yard, doing fried bologna sandwiches, burgers and wings that the same review calls some of the best in town. No named drink has been published, so the drinks case rests on that one line.