Austin Bartenders On What Makes for Good Glassware

What a cocktail is served within is just as important as the drink itself. The selection is so wide and varied. For bartenders, it comes down to the purposes of taste, style, ease, and just plain personal preference. For Cocktail Week, Eater asked several Austin bartenders about their favorite glassware.

Trey Jenkins, bar manager of Isla
Glassware of choice: Tiki Mug
"While they look cool, the ceramic insulates a drink and keeps it cold. Nothing feels better than a heavy tiki mug that is ice cold. I usually put in drinks that look drab in a clear glass. Tiki drinks have a lot of darker ingredients that can muddy the color of a drink pretty quick." Another bartender added that the ceramic makes it easier for lit fires.

Nadia Chaudhury/EATX

Midnight Cowboy's Nick and Nora glass. [Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/EATX]

Michael Phillips, general manager of Midnight Cowboy
Glassware of choice: Nick and Nora
"I have two styles of glasses that I’m personally fond of here. The brand we’re using is called Rona by Steelite. This one’s called the Nick and Nora glass. It’s about a six ounce glass and real thin on the top. It’s simple, elegant, and has a really nice weight to it. It’s not terribly easy to knock over. The head of it is narrow, and you can fit a ton of these into the freezer. I always lean towards the 60/40 on functionality versus form. It’s really basic, but still nice and elegant at the same time."

The Tigress' cooler. [Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/EATX]

Pam Pritchard, owner of Tigress
Glassware of choice: Cooler
"I’ve gone through many loves of different glasses, but to tell you the truth, I’ve been falling in love with the cooler, because people have a tendency to be a little intimidated by the stem. It seems fancy, and sometimes the Old Fashioned glass comes off as too masculine, but everybody enjoys the cooler. If I was going out for a drink, I would like this." She described Eater's exclusive cocktail, Take Me Home, as a "French 75 in a cooler."

East Side Showroom's goblet-style punch glass. [Photo: Nadia Chaudhury/EATX]

Brandt Kempin, bartender of East Side Showroom
Glassware of choice: Goblet-style punch glass
East Side Showroom’s Eater exclusive drink, Consuelo's Departure, "is somewhere between a daquiri and a punch. The drink doesn’t quite fit in a normal sized coupe (3 ounces). The drink gets a little bit bigger after you shake it, roughly four and a half ounces or so. It’s got an ounce of rum and an ounce of meletti, and I wanted to stick with that. I couldn’t lessen the spirits in there without diminishing it. So this is a antique goblet punch glass that Juliana [Fry, East Side Showroom’s executive bar manager] found. It’s a combination of necessity and practicality because it’s such a big drink. It’s got this elegance to it and it lends itself well to a goblet-style glass."