The Roosevelt Room.

The Roosevelt Room

The house list runs 53 classic cocktails, filed by the era they came from, starting before 1880.25

Why go

Justin Lavenue and Dennis Gobis walked into 307 W 5th in October 2014, aged 26 and 30, and found a circa-1930 Warehouse District shell with a honeycomb back bar left behind by the last tenant.1 They drained their savings on two adjoining leases totaling 7,500 square feet, reopened the event room next door as the Madison, and opened this bar in June 2015. Gobis on the building: These Warehouse District buildings have so much history. It's such a cool building. This arched roof, you're never going to get that again with any of the new construction that's going up.1 Both men were decorated at the stick within months of opening, Gobis with an international bartender prize and Lavenue with the US Bartenders' Guild's Most Imaginative Bartender title, which put him on the cover of GQ's Men of the Year issue in late 2015. Business picked up considerably inside two weeks of that, the bar ran three deep on weekend nights, and the reservation desk exists because of it.1

Order this / avoid

• Order: off the classics list, which is the reason the room was built. Nicolai McCrary writes that this is one of the best places to try classic cocktails as they were meant to be enjoyed.5
• Then: the tiki section. Austin Monthly's bar writers go there at the end of a night, and the Zombie comes out in a flaming silver skull crowned with edible flowers.4
• Avoid: a walk-in on a weekend night. The booking system was built for the crowd that filled the bar three deep.1

What locals & experts say

• The Infatuation, Nicolai McCrary, describes a menu broken up into time periods, spanning everything from the pre-1880s to modern times and rates nothing, because the outlet's stated policy is to score only places where you can eat a full meal. The bar still sits on his Best Cocktail Bars guide, page dated 3 July 2026.57
• Austin Monthly's 40 Best Bars, December 2019, credits Gobis and Lavenue with an era-ordered menu carrying recipes as old as the 17th century, and then says which end of it they order from: it's the tiki section we crave at the end of the day.4
• 50 Best Discovery, 2024 debut, and it is a listing. The page carries no rank and no score. Its own description is a regal cocktail bar in Austin's upscale Warehouse District in a 1929 railroad warehouse, with the bar spanning over 6,000 square feet between main floor and mezzanine. CultureMap reported the debut and quoted Lavenue: This acknowledgment is a reflection of the hard work and passion our team puts into creating unique and memorable experiences for our guests.23
• On what the room is not: it holds no ranked North America's 50 Best Bars placing. Discovery and the ranked bar lists are different objects, and only the first applies here.

Good to know

• The room next door is theirs too. The Madison became the Eleanor, and the city's food permit still registers the premises as Of Rigor LLC DBA The Madison/Roosevelt Room.61
• Why it is still on this corner. A developer bought the block in 2018 and offered three to four years' profit plus a space in a planned 45-story tower, which would have meant two to three years dark. Lavenue and Gobis had signed a 15-year lease with no termination rights and use flexibility, so they could say no, and did.1
• Hygiene: clean. Austin Public Health registers facility 11301280 at this address, scoring 85 on 3 September 2025, 87 on 26 July 2024 and 82 on 21 September 2023. Nothing near the city's 70-point failing line.6
• Hours: the 50 Best Discovery page says Monday to Sunday and gives no times.2

Verdict

should-visit — The house list is 53 classic cocktails filed by the era they came from, running from the pre-1880s forward, and The Infatuation's Nicolai McCrary calls it one of the best places in the city to drink classics the way they were built. The people behind it are the argument: Justin Lavenue and Dennis Gobis remodeled a circa-1930 Warehouse District building themselves, opened in June 2015, and were both decorated at the bar in the same year, Gobis with an international prize and Lavenue with the US Bartenders' Guild's Most Imaginative Bartender title. Austin Monthly's bar writers go for the tiki end of the menu, where the Zombie lands in a flaming silver skull. It debuted on 50 Best Discovery in 2024, which is a listing with no rank attached.