Austin’s Hottest Nightclub

HIGH ENERGY DANCE, WITH IBIZA-INSPIRED SOUND AND LIGHT SYSTEM, ON THE WAREHOUSE DISTRICT’S LARGEST DANCE FLOOR.

Highland features the creative cocktails and craft brews we all know and love, but seeks to elevate the level of hospitality its clientele receives. “Highland is a contemporary nod to attitudes toward the LGBTQ community in the year 2014,” Highland’s Chief Experience Officer Robert Grunnah tells CultureMap.

“We felt it was time a classy, sophisticated cocktail-driven lounge and DJ-driven dance club [should] be geared toward the gay community, but at the same time welcome straight people with open arms.”

The team behind Highland Lounge isn’t crazy about calling their new downtown bar a gay bar because it’s so different from all the others that have come to define the local scene over the years.

General Manager Elaine Everett prefers calling Highland an LGBTQ-friendly bar: a place where gay, straight, young, old men and women can come without feeling excluded because they don’t fall in a certain label. “Highland is a little ahead of its time in Austin,” she said. “We’d rather focus on service, on having friendly bartenders and staff who make anyone feel welcome, rather than on having events like ‘lesbian nights’ that imply only they can be here on that night and no one else.”

Highland Lounge — named after the seven lakes that flow in and around Austin — also offers a pretty comprehensive craft cocktail menu, something else that sets the bar apart. Created by Highland’s beverage director Joyce Garrison, a cocktail maven in Austin who previously worked at the W Austin, the menu is divided into a list of signature cocktails, featuring classics like the Brown Derby (with Buffalo Trace bourbon, fresh grapefruit juice, house-made honey syrup and grapefruit peel) and the Pimm’s Cup (with Pimm’s No. 1, fresh lime and lemon juice, simple syrup, ginger ale, cucumber and mint), and a list of signature shots such as the Red Snapper (with Old Overholt Rye, Amaretto and cranberry juice).