Second Bar Closes Domain Northside Hotel Location

New American restaurant Second Bar + Kitchen closed its hotel location up in the Domain Northside at the end of 2022. The last day of service at the Archer Hotel on 3121 Palm Way, Suite 101 was on New Year’s Eve, Saturday, December 31, 2022.

However, a new restaurant is already planned for the hotel space. The Archer will expand its already-existing hotel bar mini-chain AKB into Austin starting on Wednesday, January 25.

The New American food menu includes items like glazed pork ribs with a pickled cherry hoisin glaze; a NOLA barbecue shrimp dish, ahi tuna taquitos, thin-crust pizza pies, branzino with potatoes and mushrooms, and steaks. Drinks include cocktails such as its Citrine Sands, a chile-tequila drink with a mango-tamarind puree; an Old Fashioned made with a brown butter-infused rye whiskey; and the Violet Sky made with a butterfly blue-infused gin. The walls will include a new mural created by Show Goat Mural Works, depicting the city’s purple sunset.

Overseeing the bar/restaurant will be executive chef Kendal Duque and chef de cuisine Mario Medina. Duque had been the chef of the executive chef of the South Congress Hotel, as well as many Chicago restaurants such as Sepia, Everest, City Tavern, and American Junkie. Medina had been the executive chef of also-Domain restaurant Mia Italian Tapas & Bar and closed Austin restaurant Malaga and the chef de cuisine of closed hotel restaurant Dine, among positions at other Austin restaurants.

Second Bar + Kitchen opened its original location back in 2010 by founder and executive chef David Bull. And then, as part of its new parent company La Corsha Hospitality, it expanded with this Domain Northside hotel location in 2016 and the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport location in 2017. The original location closed in 2020. And then the group expanded Second into all of the food-and-beverage spaces of its East Austin Hotel in late 2022.

There are AKBs within almost every single Archer Hotel in the country, including New York, Virginia, and Washington state, but not in the Napa one.

AKB’s Austin hours are from 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday, and 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday.

Eater has reached out to both Second Bar for more information; watch this space for updates.

Update, January 25, 11:37 a.m.: This article, originally published on January 3, has been updated to clarify Duque’s and Medina’s work histories.