Featured Bartender; July

CONOR O’REILLY
Beverage Director/Bartender
Here Nor There
Austin, TX

Conor O’Reilly is our featured bartender for our July E-Newsletter, sign up HERE to see more each month.  

Conor is bringing Europe to Austin in a glass, as he has been tasked with leading Austin, TX hotspot, Here Nor There’s business’s consumer cultural immersion program, one that is at the core of the organization’s positioning. The task? Bring European service and mixology to the city of Austin, in the form of original, elevated food and cocktails.

Here Nor There, located on East 7^th and Brazos Street in Austin, just celebrated it’s 5^th anniversary on Sunday, June 18^th. The Speakeasy, hidden under their sister venue, In Plain Sight, is often a challenge to get into and reservations are always needed, in no small part due to the atmosphere, friendly staff and most importantly, the innovative menu created by Conor O’Reilly.

It all started back in April 2018, when Conor, an already established bartender in Dublin, moved to Austin to support the opening of Here Nor There. It is here that he created the bar’s first conceptual menu titled ‘Colors’ – a menu that emphasized colors as a universal language that sparks feeling without voice. “We used color to heighten the experience of each drink, showcasing how we feel about each color emotionally and our interpretation of how a color could taste”, says O’Reilly.

Since then, Conor has participated in a number of global cocktail competitions, including reaching the final 15 in the US for Diageo World Class in 2022 – one of the most renowned cocktail competitions. His craft doesn’t stop there. In Plain Sight has been nominated for Tastemaker Culture Map Best Bar Award and Tales of the Cocktail’s “Best New Bar in the US” ‘23 nominee thanks to Conor’s contributions and vision.

Conor is currently embarking on his next creative journey for Here Nor There by co-creating a new conceptual menu that will be released in late July 2023.