The East Side Showroom, 1100 East 6th Street, Austin, TX
Imagine opening a door covered in ironwork on the eastside of Austin, Texas. Stepping over the threshold, you realize you have crossed oceans and decades, arriving in a bombed out ballroom in Berlin during WWII. But the ballroom’s interior, instead of being a sad ruin, has been magically transformed into a place where absolutely everything is art.
It’s not just the curving iron chairs—both industrial and playful—the elegant chandeliers dangling glass baubles, the bar itself, a masterpiece of steel and gleaming bottles. It’s also the cocktails, the food, the art on the walls, the band playing music, and the building itself.
Order a Stoli O and cran and the bartender will let you know that won’t be possible. The Showroom doesn’t carry name brand liquors, preferring better quality artisanal spirits brought in from all over the world. But the bartender will happily fix you a signature drink inspired by pre-Prohibition era concotions. The drink might include ice crushed with a mallet, real juices, bitters, or egg.
An ESSR signature cocktail.
Ask for a Pabst or a Lone Star and the bartender will let you know the current $2 beers available are from Guatemala and Germany. “There are cheap beers from all over the world,” owner Mickie Spencer explains. “Everyone’s had a Lone Star before. In the East Side Showroom, you can try something else.”
Drink in hand, you settle into an artful metal chair and table with your friends and sip your drink. You order from the weekly selection of dishes made from produce and grass-fed meats available from local farms. The menu reflects chef Sonya Cote’s French training, but also runs towards upscale soul food, because greens and okra are what grow in this part of the world.
More about the East Side Showroom (ESSR) at the jump….
As you wait while your meal is prepared, you sip your cocktail and listen to the band. Perhaps it’s a Hawaiian band, the sounds of the ukulele and steel guitar floating sweetly around you as you visit with friends.
ESSR soup made from local produce.
You are in the East Side Showroom, the brain-child of owner Mickie Spencer, a metal worker and furniture designer who welded the Showroom’s magnificent bar, tables, chairs, bar stools and chandeliers, as well as the metal work outside on the windows.
Mickie, who spent years metalworking in both Barcelona and Brooklyn, dreamed of having a showroom for her designs. Despite success with her art, she had to find other ways to supplement her income. “In those days I said, ‘Man I don’t want to wait tables on the side anymore, I want to weld on the side.’ But I made more money waiting tables.” So she continued to work in restaurants to support her habit of designing and creating metalwork influenced by art nouveau, as well as modern and industrial design.
Mickie Spencer welding periscope.
Though she wanted a showroom, she didn’t imagine it would be a traditional gallery space. “I didn’t really want to own a gallery. Galleries don’t fit in with most furniture spaces. But I wanted a place to showcase my art. I knew I could open up my own restaurant and bar. I knew about that from waiting tables, from being a starving artist. And I could sell my work out of it.”
At the time, Mickie still lived in Brooklyn and began looking for a space there. A couple of times, she found suitable locations, but they fell through and, after a visit to her native Texas, she decided to move to Austin. Once she arrived, she searched for an available building for her showroom, as well as financing for the project, but nothing came through.
Just as Mickie was about to give up on her dream, her mother, Trudy Spencer, moved to Austin and moved in with Mickie and her identical twin sister Mindie, a bilingual teacher at Brown Elementary. Trudy and Mickie decided to go in on a restaurant and bar together.
Mickie and Trudy found their location three blocks east of I-35 on East 6th Street. As soon as the lease went through Mickie, Mindie, Trudy and friends went to work gutting and transforming the property, which had housed both a bike shop and a Mexican-American wedding shop. Mickie worked as the general contractor on the job.
Mickie on her first day of work creating the ESSR's bar.
Mickie and Trudy hired contractors to do the plumbing, electricity, h-vac and cement floors. But the Spencers did much of the work themselves. “My mom and I carried all the brick from the wall that separated the two businesses out back and paved the patio with it,” Mickie said. “But the hardest job ever was taking all the plaster off of the walls. We had the chef and the bar man peeling plaster.”
They chose to maintain the original feel of the building itself in any way they could, keeping a bullet hole in one window and the sign for ice cream sodas that revealed itself as the plaster came down.
The renovation was not without major frustrations. “I bought a small welder to get up there and weld the awning outside,” Mickie recounts. “Someone spotted us welding, came back that night, threw a brick through the window and stole my welder and all my tools.
“I had to go back to Home Depot and buy everything again. The very next day I put metal bars up on all the windows.”
Sonya and Mickie paint above the ESSR's awning.
When the nine long months of work on the space was finished, the East Side Showroom quietly opened its doors one Saturday night. “We didn’t even tell our friends we were opened. We were short on people. There were only six of us, and we didn’t really want to be busy. We opened on a Saturday and we didn’t think anybody knew about it. But we got slammed.” And they’ve been busy ever since.
In the first few months there was a learning curve for the East Side Showroom staff as they dealt with a packed bar every night; as well as for customers, who had to be open to the cultural movement of slow food and unconventional drinks that the bar offers.
But these days, Mickie and Trudy Spencer and the ESSR staff have hit their stride, serving up a vision of a bohemian takeover of a “bombed out” space transformed into a place for people to enjoy themselves as they take in art in many forms. And Austinites continue to flock to the bar, hungry for a dose of Sonya’s slow food, the signature drinks and—most of all—the sight of Mickie’s original metalwork designs.
That sounds like such an amazing place! Austin seems like a unique place where extraordinary businesses like this can exist and thrive.
Wow! This place looks amazing! Scott and I can’t wait to go have a beer and check out the art. Thanks for sharing.
Great piece, as always, Mary. And timely, too. I have a young friend who is coming up with ways she could open a music space/bar. This will be great food for thought!
Too bad that neither the Statesman or Chronicle have writers who can turn out great feature stories like you do so regularly,Mary. I’m off to the Eastside Showroom for a shot of Slovakian vodka chased by an Albanian beer.
This place has a serious problem. It's not the service, it's not the drinks, it's not the food.
It's the owners.
They have their heads so far up their asses they wouldn't be able to smell success if it was a booger in their nose.
These people have absolutly no idea how to run a restaurant let alone a bar. They should have stuck with an art gallery.
Just because you waited tables does not mean you understand the restaurant industry!
The food here is excellent, unfortunatly it rarely carries it's excellance to your mouth.
Instead it is lazily slopped on unflattering serviceware along with fast food paper napkins
after sitting on the line for way too long because the wonderfull floor staff are so swamped by the by the ridiculous amount of seating in the place.
Here's a restaurant tip for the owner:
Less chairs= less people=quality products= happy employees= satified customers.
I know I know: it goes against every rule in the "joes crab shack handbook"
listen up grasshopper there's more:
Decide what you want to be and do it.
Bar? Localvore Eatery? Rehearsal space for novelty acts that wear thin by your second visit?
Unfortunatly I think the owners just like the idea of owning something, anything, and while I can't disagree with the motivation I still beg them to take this as a learning experience and either grow up or move on.
Lee, what restaurant do you own? I would love some constructive advise from someone who knows what he is talking about. You said it was not the service, the drinks or the food…so what exactly is important for a restaurant and bar…the plates and the napkins? We are trying to learn from our mistakes and have in fact, been making changes. Prior to reading your suggestion, we removed bar stools, tables and chairs. Which has helped satisfy some of our customers. But still others complain about the wait to get into the restaurant and they suggested that we add bar stools, tables and chairs. We made up our minds what we wanted to be before we opened…we want to be different! We want to serve good, fresh, local food and not fast food that was frozen, filled with hormones and pesticides. We want to serve unique drinks that are made with the finest ingredients and not just pop a open a can. We want to offer a wide variety of entertainment from all over the world and not just something rehashed you have seen on American Idol. I do like the idea of owning something or I would not have invested my entire retirement into E.S.S.R. Obviously you do not like what we are trying to do so perhaps you should stick with going to Joe's Crab Shack, pop open a can of Bud, have some crab out of a frozen bag and watch the football game on the big screen TV. But what ever you do to entertain yourself, please, leave my "ass" out of it.