For the adults who never outgrew the arcade, Punch Bowl Social combines gaming and entertainment with nightlife and dining. It’s massive, colorful and greater than the sum of its parts—which are many. Inside its sprawling 20,500-square-foot space, which takes up most of the bottom floor of the Wynwood Garage, you’ll find eight duckpin bowling lanes, a pool table, a karaoke room, two nooks for darts, a video arcade-game area, a ping pong table, foosball, shuffleboard and more. If there’s a ball involved and/or it’s competitive, you can probably do it at Punch Bowl.
Eating and drinking are the other big draws here. Craft cocktails, mocktails and a curated list of local craft beers round out the selection. The ones "made without," Punch Bowl’s cute euphemism for non-alcoholic drinks, are created with as much emphasis on fresh ingredients and house-made syrups as the boozy beverages. The idea is to give non-drinkers the same, elevated cocktail experience as everyone else, says CEO and founder, Robert Thompson. The food menu follows suit, featuring all scratch-made dishes (another one of PB’s made-up phrases) that skew New American with some Tex-Mex flair. At brunch, for instance, PB serves migas, an egg-and-tortilla scramble that’s huge in Austin, as well as chilaquiles.
Wynwood is Colorado-based Punch Bowl’s 20th location and, like the others, it follows a strict set of design concepts: It’s mid-century modern with a hint of mountain lodge, a touch of Victorian and an industrial edge. They’ve added a few graffiti elements to honor the neighborhood, as well as a space dubbed the acid lounge for its trippy walls. Although, we suppose its literal meaning also makes sense for Wynwood.