La Carafe sits inside the Kennedy Bakery, a narrow two-story brick building that Irish baker John Kennedy put up around 1860, after a fire took his earlier bakery on the site. Over the next century it was a bakery, a drugstore and a shop, and for decades it has been a bar. Walking in feels like stepping out of the modern city: low light, big candles under years of dripped wax, a jukebox that leans classic, and a steep, narrow staircase to the upstairs room. Nobody comes here for a cocktail program. You come for the building, the company and a drink that tastes better because of where you are standing. It is the rare downtown bar that locals and first-time visitors love equally.
What to expect
- Parking is on the metered streets around Market Square or in a nearby garage.
What to order
- A glass of wine or a cold beer, and keep it simple
- A second round upstairs, if the upstairs room is open
- A song on the jukebox
- Kennedy Bakery, built about 1860Building
- Listed July 27, 1979National Register of Historic Places
- 1980Recorded Texas Historic Landmark