Firehouse Lounge — Restaurant in Austin

Consider yourselves warned. I have traveled across four continents, slept in countless lodgings including hostels and hotels and everything in between, and Firehouse is by far the worst that I have ever had the extreme misfortune to encounter. Allow me to review the list of amenities they offer.

Surly staff. Of course, they are friendly when you check in. The minute you ask them to do their job, however, their attitude flips and you become the biggest nuisance in their world. On my first night, the other lodgers on my floor decided to throw a surprise shouting party/drunken hallway hang-out/last-minute disco featuring the melody of one thousand door-slams. This began at 2:30am, even though the hostel has multiple posted signs announcing a 12am-8am quiet period. At 3am it was still going strong, so I phoned the front desk to ask them to enforce their quiet rules. Between 3am and 3:30, I was forced to call the desk three times before they actually did anything. On noting my displeasure the next day, the oh-so-helpful woman at the front desk shrugged and assured me of how little she cared.

Paperless bathrooms. Now, at first, this may sound like a modern innovation - some way to provide good service while being environmentally friendly. NOPE. They just refused to stock the shared bathroom with paper towels or toilet paper. I had to wait until arriving at a restaurant for breakfast before I could use a decent facility.

Unusual smells. The first place you’ll experience them is the elevator, which reeked of a combination of dead cab driver and fear. The second place is the bathroom, a pungent cocktail of old and new mildew. The third place is your room, which over time has become a storage box for the smell of decaying building materials and shattered dreams. The final place you’ll encounter the smells - your clothes, bags, and body after staying there for even a short time. You will not even notice how terribly you reek until you arrive at a non-reeking location and reacquaint yourself with smells that don’t crush your will to live.

Painfully regular garbage pickup. My room was situated with the paper-thin window facing an alley. Sometime between 2am and 4am each night, the world’s loudest garbage truck arrived to empty out the bin in the alley below my window. The bin was apparently filled with the entire city’s supply of empty glass bottles, which is probably why the truck returned twice more before the sun even rose.

Beds from a war-era P.O.W. camp. I’ve slept on terrible beds before. Some of them lacked cushion, some smelled like the dust of a million bed bugs, some rattled and creaked with the slightest movement, and some were comically tiny. But until I stayed at Firehouse, I’d never before encountered a bed which boasted ALL of these traits at the same time. I would only have been mildly surprised if the CIA had burst in after dark and interrogated me. It must have taken a huge amount of effort to find a bed this ridiculously terrible.

I was originally booked to stay four nights. I stayed two and then fled for my life. Firehouse was so bad, I canceled the remainder of my stay and left before I’d even come close to finding another hotel. Want to know why? Because I would rather have slept in my car then stayed another night in that hell-spawned pit of failure.

If you’re planning a trip to Austin and wish to preserve both your sanity and your faith in humankind, do yourself a favor and stay anywhere other than...

I've just recently had a very poor experience with Firehouse Lounge. Over six months ago, I made an agreement with the manager Richard to have a reservation for 30 people, on the eve of my wedding, as a way to welcome our out of town guests. This agreement was made in September, via email, with Richard confirming that the space would be reserved for us, and that because we were under 30 people, there would be no additional charge for doing so. Fast forward to this month, it's less than three weeks before my wedding, and I email Richard to check in and make sure that everything is still good to go. At this point, he clearly has no recollection of ever speaking to me, and tells me that to reserve the space it will cost $1,000. This was directly contrary to what I had in writing from him previously, so I pressed him as to what caused the change. Except at this point, he stopped responding. Over a week went by, and another email and phone call from me unanswered, before Richard finally gets back to me to tell me that they've instead decided to host a pop-up restaurant at the bar that weekend, and that they can't accomodate my group at all. When I pointed out that I had both already expended money myself on sending out invitations, and that I had everything in writing--forming a basis for legal action, he said he could possibly reserve a couple tables at the pop up restaurant for me, but would still require the $1,000 minimum. Um, no. This guy is a shady business man who doesn't appreciate his customers, and clearly just was so unprofessional he couldn't even write down that he already had a large group reservation for that date. I'm sure glad I double checked a couple weeks in advance, or we would have been totally screwed. I will never again support the Firehouse Lounge. There are too many good, honest bar owners in Austin to waste my time and money...

Update: Since I last wrote this review I've been back a couple of times and I'm so happy to say they changed it back the way it used to be with you going into the bar without being escorted!! I've updated my 3 stars to 5... love this place!

Since the bar was featured on a TV show, they have changed completely. This place used to be authentic! I first went here three years ago and fell in love. Here's what it was like: You walk in and are ignored by the woman at a desk working. You know theres a bar inside somewhere and theres a bookcase in front of you but your unsure how to get to the bar. I actually walked up the stairs the first time I arrived. You arent helped and you find and open the door on your own! It was amazing I love love loved this place. Maybe they changed owners, I dont know. Its still a nice bar and the drinks are still awesome but they are going in the completely wrong direction. They now have a bouncer that checks your id and opens the door for you. They completely ruin the speakeasy style by doing this. The uniforms worn by the bartenders are awful and the baseball hats that say "make america great again" are tasteless. Seriously the staff inside should be wearing something laid back but still classy. I don't care what your political views are but I'm here to drink not have politics thrown in my face. I'm just disappointed by these changes. I want to bring my friends here so they can experience the authentic speakeasy style not be escorted inside. I'll be looking for other speakeasy bars to try now but will be back to firehouse every now then to see what...