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 buildings. Over the next century it was a bakery, a drugstore and a shop, and since 1970 it has been a bar. Walking in feels like stepping out of the modern city: low light, candles in old bottles, walls crowded with photos and oddities, a jukebox that leans classic, and a creaky 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 street around Market Square.
What to order
- A glass of wine or a cold beer, and keep it simple
- A second round upstairs, where the room is quieter
- A song on the jukebox
- Kennedy Bakery, built about 1860Building
- Listed July 27, 1979National Register of Historic Places
- 1981Recorded Texas Historic Landmark
- 1970Bar opened