One causes hangovers and one cures them, but UT alumni Josh and Noah Lit still found beer and kolaches to be a perfect combo on which to base their restaurant, Batch Craft Beer & Kolaches.
“It just makes sense once you think about it,” Josh said. “Kolaches are a perfect pub food, especially late at night or the next morning if you’ve had a few too many. Beer and kolaches go hand-in-hand.”
In addition to being served in the afternoon along with beer, the Batch kolaches themselves are also pretty atypical. Instead of the basic sausage or ham options that Shipley has made the norm, the folks at Batch fill their kolaches with everything from fresh local fruit to smoked sausage and brisket sourced from Austin’s own Micklethwait Craft Meats.
“Our chef Jasmine (Jones) has done a great job of taking this concept and making little masterpieces with it,” Josh said. “She was also the one who got us involved with Micklethwait, which we were really lucky for. Working with them has been awesome.”
Just as important as the kolaches at Batch is the vast selection of craft beer it offers to its customers.
“The beer selection is kind of my baby,” Josh said. “It’s only craft beer, so it’s only breweries that produce under a certain number of barrels. None of the big boys like Coors or stuff like that.”
An entire wall of the restaurant serves as a grocery store-style refrigerator containing an impressive selection of craft beer where people can build their own six-packs. In addition to that, Batch has 12 different taps running that contain some more ambitious beer options.
“The idea of the taps is since you have all the packaged core stuff from the breweries, we’re trying to keep the taps to kind of the funkier, fun and sour and super hoppy stuff,” Josh said.
Everything about Batch screams comfort. With a cozy dining area, and a beautiful outdoor patio and a menu centered on perhaps two of the most comforting things a person can eat or drink, Batch is a wonderful spot to take a load off.
The beer selection can be a little overwhelming at first for people who aren’t well-versed in the world of craft beer, but the staff behind the bar is extremely helpful in figuring out what kind of beer a customer might enjoy.
The bottled beer section of the restaurant is great, as all the beer is sold by the single bottle instead of in six-packs or cases. This is an ideal setup for customers to sample different things and explore their tastes. Between the bottled selection and the 12 taps that constantly rotate, patrons are sure to try something they’ve never tasted before.
As for the food, it truly is impressive how exciting Batch makes an item as simple as a kolache. High-quality cheese, organic ingredients and bread baked to soft perfection come together to form kolaches that will make anyone think long and hard about what they’ve been missing in the kolache department all these years.
It’s no surprise that stuffing a kolache with local smoked meats and jalapenos yields phenomenal results, but even the more basic options are executed at a higher level than the average kolache. Make no mistake, the pepperoni pizza and PB&J kolaches are just as delicious as some of their more extravagant counterparts.
With less than one month of operation under their belts, the folks at Batch are on track to become one of the more popular joints on Manor Road.
