February 15, 2019 • 45 mins
This city invented (or, at least, popularized) a legion of cocktails. Anney and Lauren dip into the history that made New Orleans’ drinking culture possible, and explore the Sazerac, the Ramos gin fizz, and the French 75 in particular.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
The glass is half full, not half empty, and it's
half full of whiskey. Hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm
an erie and I'm Lauren vocal Bam. And today we're
talking about the cocktail culture in New Orleans. Yes, because
drinking is a major part of what New Orleans is.
Of that Joe Vivra we heard about while we were
in the city a couple of months back, and also
(00:28):
you listener might have heard in our first episode we
did on New Orleans. A lot of people talked about it,
and the culture around drinking is pretty unique to New Orleans,
at least here in the United States. That quote you
heard at the top is from Chef Isaac Troops of
Tups Metery, and it captures a lot of the attitude
we encountered around alcohol in the city and in general
(00:50):
having a good time. I mean, we're talking about a
city that lays claimed to I don't know, forty seven cocktails.
I made up that number, but it's a lot, is
so so many. And I gotta say as we record this,
the Super Bowl just took place in our city of Atlanta.
Promises is related. It is and one thing that we
(01:11):
Lauren super producer Dylan and I all commented on was
how New Orleans was such a big football town, bigger
than any of us thought it was, and everyone was
a Saints fan, everyone we talked to. And so right
now there are all these signs in downtown Atlanta that's
say the Saints were rubbed because you probably know, but
(01:32):
there's that whole thing, a bad call in a game,
and a lot of Saints fans and other people said
it costs the Saints the game and their chance at
the super Bowl. There's even legal action on top of that.
Our Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms got into some hot water,
not for her gumbo or for her mac and cheese,
but for saying she hoped the Saints weren't one of
the Super Bowl teams because she was worried about their
(01:56):
fan base, very passionate. UM, and this was she said,
this were the Saints lost and she had to release
an official apology. It's it's been interesting, um. And I
heard an interview with the Saints fan a couple of
weeks ago before the Super Bowl took place, and he
said that was all tied into this community aspect that
we Lauren, Dylan and I all observed while we were
(02:17):
there too, and it does relate back to the cocktail scene. Yeah,
and not only because football fandom often involves drinking. Okay,
to explain another anecdote, we were getting out of a
cemetery tour, the St. Louis Cemetery number one to be precise,
as these Saints started playing a game and the bar
we dropped by after this tour had the game on
(02:39):
and the patrons were having a potluck in the bar.
And y'all tell me if I'm just hanging out at
the wrong bars, but that is a sense of community
that I found equally unfamiliar and delightful. Alongside that community
and the pride in that community and its history, New
Orleans has a cultural sense of drinking out a hall,
(03:00):
one that is miles away from the tourist concept of
the city as a place to like get drank um.
Although the two are related, both come from these cities
historically non puritanical approach to alcohol and specifically it's open
container laws. More than once we had an easier time
finding absinthe absinthe as opposed to coffee. Side note, this
(03:26):
is actually a weird reversal or like maybe a continuation
of a historical thing in New Orleans where bars were
taxed heavily but coffee shops weren't and loophole you could
serve booze out of a coffee shop. So at one
point there were over three fifty registered coffee houses in
the city in like the early eighteen hundreds. It's more
direct now, yeah, just cut out that coffee middleman, straight
to the absinthe right, right. So we were like, I
(03:50):
guess we could have absent, which is as good a
segue as any I guess to say drink responsibly. Yes, yeah, us.
Liz Williams over at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum
in New Orleans put it this way. We are professional drinkers, really,
I mean, I mean that's seriously. We learn how to
(04:11):
drink from the time or children, and you watch people
drink and you learn what the rules are and all
that sort of thing, and and so the amateurs are
the ones who drink until they throw up all the
time and all that kind of things. While we were there,
we caught up with a particularly expert drinker, um Elizabeth Pierce,
(04:34):
the founder of Drink and Learn, which is both a
walking tour that looks into the history of beverages in
general and cocktail culture specifically. And it's a podcast. Visit
Drink and Learn dot com or find it on Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, um, but no, really,
it's great. You should have y'all should check it out.
And all right, if you're gonna be a drinks historian,
New Orleans is a pretty okay place to do it.
(04:56):
But as Elizabeth told us, she came to the profession
in a owned about way. So I helped to create
and opened the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. I was
the founding curator there, despite having no academic background in
museums or history. A strong liberal arts education prepares you
to do anything, which I bet both of you, all
of you who might agree with right, So um. I
(05:19):
worked with Lois Williams for four years, um, learning how
to make something out of nothing, and that mattered because
the museum opened in early two eight, and of course
that year ended with the Great Financial Apocalypse, funding dried up,
everybody got laid off. I went on unemployment, drank heavily,
and dated a musician, which is the holy trinity if
(05:41):
you just need to shift your professional path. So two
thousand nine was the last year. It was a year
there were no jobs. It was the year that I
learned that both unemployment and musicians run out after six months.
My favorite joke. Even though we're both still friends and
the museum stayed open through volunteers, but I needed a
paying gig. I love that the Holy Trinity of shifting careers.
(06:04):
We really could play the interview we did in its
entirety and there would still be more to talk about.
When it comes to New Orleans and cocktails, Elizabeth went
on to talk about the lure of drinking in New
Orleans to tourists and what outsiders get and don't get
about it. New Orleans and drinking is how many people
understand my city. Um. Some people come for the architecture,
(06:26):
and they totally should. We have beautiful architecture, we have
amazing food and music. But there are other cities that
also have these elements. But somehow or additionally, UM, people
come here and they expect to drink a lot, or
they expect to see a lot of people drinking even
(06:47):
if they're not drinking, and they will either look upon
in the amusement or judgment or horror. UM. But the
expectation is always there to be fair. This is a
thing that the locals absolutely market to tourists, right and
she she talked about that too when we were doing
this interview with her. One of my favorite things that
(07:11):
I looked on in amusement while we were in New Orleans. Um,
there was this excellent people watching spot that we did
of an establishment called the Bourbon Cowboy. And one great
drizzly day, we were drinking our morning absence and looking
into the Bourbon Cowboy across the street and a gentleman
in a Marty McFly Jr. Hat was shouting beer while
(07:33):
holding a sign that's said three buds as in Budweiser's
for the price of one Dilly Dilley. And he was
holding the sign horizontally when it was definitely supposed to
be held vertically. And this is also where we saw
a man with a goat, like walking a goat or
trying to the goat, stopped in front of this one
bar and didn't seem to want to leave. He was like,
(07:56):
this is my barn. Stop see whatever you want. But no, Um,
the tourist drinking culture is different from the local concept.
Here's Dicky Brennan whose family collectively owns it operates thirteen
restaurants in the city. It's so much a part of
how New Orleanians live life, uh, you know, and so
(08:17):
it's a daily part of our culture is connecting with people,
and the majority of that is connecting on a table
with food. And how can you not have a great
mail without spirits wine. Uh. And it's such a rich
tradition in this city, a tradition that goes back pretty
(08:38):
much to the city's founding. Keep in mind that Louisiana
was founded a little differently than most places and what
would become the United States. Here's Elizabeth again, we're kind
of by France. We were left alone by France because
they couldn't figure out a way to make money from
New Orleans. A lot of people that were sent here
(09:00):
were not people who could necessarily take care of themselves
in a swampy environment, like thieves and prostitutes and criminals
in general. Um. The illustrative quote about that is there
was a governor, our last French governor of Carolac. He
was sent over to clean up the town and he
told Louis whichever Louis was fourteen fifteen or something It's
(09:21):
like if I sent home all of the criminal elements
of New Orleans or Louisiana, there would be no one left.
So what that what that means is um. You had
people who were already skewed to not entirely respect the
law and then had nothing to support the thought that
(09:43):
they should. And you can contrast that with another colony
that is growing around the same time, and that would
be in New England. But the people who settled in
New England, we're not thieves, criminals. They were very earnest,
they were hard working. They believed in um, you know,
(10:04):
that that God had brought them to this new place.
And the way that the pilgrims drank was they drank
beer um because that was safe, you know, safe safe
drinking instead of water um. And being a drunk was
was viewed as something that could be very detrimental to
(10:26):
the colony. If you're drunk, then you can't plow, can't
build a cabin whatever. It wasn't only about the morality
of intoxication. It was about the logistics of the colony,
and that was not around here. That was not an issue.
It was a very independent streak um and also way
(10:52):
more men than families. The women come later. Um, and
so you have you have a lot of single men
in a pretty crappy situation with unreliable food. Maybe you
know hunting, maybe the Native Americans are going to give
(11:14):
you something. But like the one solid, the one through
line is rum doesn't spoil um or brandy if you
could get it. Rum, of course, was in great supply
due to New Orleans being a port of trade with
the Caribbean and its sugar plantations um and by the
first couple decades of the eight hundreds, sugarcane was the
(11:37):
foremost plantation crop in southern Louisiana too. Rum is an
excellent way to profit on waste produced during sugar refinement,
so it was in owners interest to also run distilleries,
and because of the slave labor used in sugar and rum,
rum was cheap and plentiful in the area. Meanwhile, grape
based brandy was the French go to liquor at the time,
(12:00):
what with all their wine vineyards, although that would have
been imported and more expensive also it was considered medicinal.
Of course, those two liquors would wind up being the
basis of lots of New Orleans cocktails. The third also
came to the party because the city was a port
on the Mississippi River. So the city flourishes in the
(12:20):
eighteen thirties. So now we've got families and stuff. However,
who is coming here to unload their raft from Kentucky?
These like wild drinking that they were called Kane Tuck's
just still lowered. We toss around it right now and then,
and you know, it's like a jug of whiskey chained
(12:42):
to the rudder you're pulling down the river. You arrive,
you sell whatever it is you're selling, and now you're
a single man in a port town with money in
your pocket, and you multiply that by these thousands. So
it is this. It isn't the only thing that's happening here,
(13:07):
but it is happening for a considerable amount of time.
That New Orleans is a party town. Um. But anyway,
so all of these like facets contribute to an identity,
and that one of the pillars of that identity is
about cutting loose, and drinking is an integral part of that.
(13:36):
Eventually that is like woven into how people understand New Orleans.
And so these elements, this like cocktail culture or drinking culture, actually,
let's call it drinking culture was defined early on, like
(13:56):
late nineteenth century, like these, these the satarak, the old
fashioned in Manhattan, like these things have just been part
of this three line, this thread, and so we just
kept doing the same dance over and over. Plus we
like them. They're delicious, Yes they are. I think we
had some of all of those cocktails while we were
(14:18):
in New Orleans. And some of those cocktails we enjoyed
in two go cups or also better known as go
cups in the city. Why is this a thing in
New Orleans but not really in most of the United States.
We'll get into that after a quick break forward from
our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you,
(14:46):
in case any of your listeners don't know. And most
of the United States, drinking in public as an outside
of a restaurant or a bar or something like that
is illegal. Not so in New Orleans. That's one of
its big draws as a tourist town. There are drive
through daquiri bars. I can't even fathom that a lot
(15:07):
of bars have to go windows where you can get
you can pick up a cocktail and then go about
your way. And it has to do with several things
we've already touched on, the French influence, the disregard, shall
we say, for the laws, the threat of Catholicism as
opposed to Puretonism. However, legally this divide is relatively new.
(15:27):
Here's Elizabeth. So drinking in America in public was illegal
until about the nineteen sixties. What was illegal was public drunkenness.
And that goes like the pilgrim thing that I told
you about. So in the nineteen fifties there was an
alderman in Chicago who had been hearing from the police
(15:49):
that they were struggling with this thing that was called
bottle gangs. So it's a group of singleman, indigent or
homeless or whatever, and they pull their money and they
buy one bottle of liquor, stand on a corner and
passing around. Eventually there'd be a fight, would be some
(16:09):
sort of trouble, and the cops said, we want to
stop this before it starts. How can we do this?
And so the city council said, okay, no more drinking
in public. Now you don't have to wait for somebody
to be drunk or to cause a fight or whatever.
We're gonna nip this problem in the button. Over time,
(16:34):
other cities began adopting this because vagrancy laws began to
be tossed out as um unconstitutional. You can't arrest some
money just because they're hanging around, and so this was
a way for cities to get in front of a
(16:54):
homeless problem, what I can call the hobo factor. And
of course there were some people who were targeted and
some people who weren't people of color, you're poor and um.
These laws are enacted piecemeal cities, counties across the country,
(17:15):
and then of course if one county does it, then
the county next to it will do because then people
are just moving right. So eventually it becomes pretty much
illegal to drink anywhere in public in the United States
by like the mid nineteen seventies. In the meantime, New Orleans,
(17:37):
UM had a vice district prior to World War One.
It closed actually because of World War One, because all
of these soldiers were getting STDs and the US government
was like, if you want to be a port of embarkation,
you have to um not have all the free love.
(17:58):
So uh. This vice district was also home of jazz
Storyville and like Lure and Strong played a Storyville King
all or all these great musicians. So that gets shut down.
And then it's Prohibition, which, like everybody totally drank during Prohibition.
But the clubs are you know, less um less accessible,
(18:24):
less uh less reliable because there were still raids and things.
And it's not until World War two when we become
a port of embarkation again and you have tens of
thousands of single young men with money in their pocket
coming through here looking for a good time. And Bourbon
(18:47):
Street was a commercial street. It was not an entertainment district,
but a lot of these clubs that had closed before
World War One kind of begin reopening. You create this
new district. We talked about how prohibition was essentially ignored
in New Orleans in our first episode. That was an
introduction to the city. So go check that out if
(19:07):
you missed it. But in the meantime, I bet you
can see where this is going. Elizabeth continued, it's not
until after World War two that you really begin to
see Bourbon Street showing up in like travel magazines or
tourism things. And again it's clubs where people go inside
to listen to music, to eat and it's it's like
(19:28):
going to Vegas and going to see a show, you know,
and locals went there. It's classy, where your gloves you had,
you know. So unfortunately, many of these places were owned
by the mob, and they were money laundering, and there
was prostitution and gambling happening in the back. And eventually
we get an earnest d a who's like, I'm gonna
(19:50):
shut all this down, conducting lots of raids, and it
becomes quotea seedier and seedier. Locals don't want to go. Um,
if you don't have vice money, then you can't keep
up the shine the inside and little live little these clubs, Um,
they either close or they're barely staying open, and nobody
(20:12):
wants to go in. And so one bright day an
unknown employee opened a window and sold a drink through
that window. You don't even have to come in my club,
just sell you a drink right here. And soon a
lot of people started doing it, particularly on Bourbon Street.
(20:34):
The city council tried to shut it down. Um, the
law was overturned as being like too vague, so I
think they wrote it hastily. By then, everybody's making a
lot of money and people really like it because you
can't do it anywhere else in the United States. Initially,
the plan was to just keep it in the French Quarter,
and they decided that would be too confusing for tourists,
(20:57):
which is actually what Savannah did. Savannah happened in a
historic district, but not the rest of the city. But
they've been pushing it. Everybody's pushing it because if you're
like one block over, why can't I do that? You know? So?
Uh so here we are. So that is why it
is legal to walk around with a drink here. But
(21:18):
I really I always encourage visitors to try to drink
in the open like we do, which is it's not
a desperate forced march where you have to arrive at
a destination of profound intoxication in a very short time.
(21:40):
But instead it's just like we pour a go cup,
as we call him go cup. My husband and I
pore a go cup and we walk our dog. It's
really lovely. You could get a go cup in the
airport in New Orleans. It's one of the things I
missed the most immediately when I got back. It's just
(22:02):
nice to sort of rhianna it, as they say, because
you know, she's always walking out of restaurants with those
glasses of wine. Um. To not feel rushed to leave
an establishment when you want, and to enjoy a leisurely stroll,
the attitude is just difference there. My mom and I
used to go to Savannah once a year and we
would get a cocktail and walk along the river in
(22:23):
the market district and just enjoy ourselves. I think that's
a part of it, to taking that time to relax,
and if you overdo it, well, the attitude around that
is different too. Here's Elizabeth again. We live in what
was in a country that is governed by a very
profound Protestant ethic. Um. You know how many listicals about
(22:48):
productivity can there possibly be? You think you're you think
you've seen them all. And that is not a h
It's not high in the list of values orlans. It
doesn't mean that we don't accomplish anything, but we value
you know, interaction and family and friends, you know all that.
(23:11):
And so because of that, if you have too much
to drink and you wake up hungover, as long as
you have not bothered anybody, then no one is shaking
their finger at you and saying, oh, you wasted, you
know the time. It's like this happens. Trying not to
make it happen too regularly, but like this is what
(23:35):
it is to be human. This mindset around drinking, along
with the creativity and rebellion inherent to the city that
gave us jazz and all. This combining of cultures made
New Orleans fertile ground for inventing or at least popularizing cocktails. Yes,
even before we went to New Orleans, I feel like
it comes up all the time somewhere or another in
(23:57):
our cocktail and alcohol episodes. That city does, and like
we were talking about in our Gumbo episode, a lot
of them tell the story of the city in a glass. Yeah, okay,
so you had that rum and brandy and whiskey all
coming in. Um, you had champagne from France and when
absent typic over there, New Orleans picked that up too.
Around the same time, in the early to mid eight hundreds,
(24:19):
pharmacists like one Antoine the show were concocting the herbal
tinctures sold at the time as medicine that we know
today as bitters. Show it's bitterers, a trade coming up
through the Caribbean and South America brought citrus and other
tropical fruit, and all of that is how we get
these classic New Orleans cocktails, the Sasarek, the view Carre,
(24:41):
the Grasshopper, the Hurricane, the Ramos Gin Fizz, the French
seventy five, the Pims Cup. I hear people shouting angrily.
Now I am one of them. Yes, those last two
are from Paris and London. Yeah, but New Orleans does
lay a certain amount of claim to them. And in
cases like those, I'd say that the confusion argument over
which place or which bartender made a drink first is
(25:04):
indicative of the economic and cultural trade happening at various
points in time, and that trade is the story of
New Orleans. Elisabah spoke to this on her podcast with
an episode about the Sazerac from July, which y'all should
check out, and the episode is called the Sazerac makes sense, Hey,
but here's the taste, Abigail and I tell the entire
(25:26):
history of New Orleans using only the ingredients and a
sazerat cocktail. So the Sazak is the official cocktail of
New Orleans. In two thousand eight, the Louisiana Legislature passed
a resolution making the sazerak the city's official drink. And
that sounds like a joke, but in fact that it is.
It is just rounded in the story of the city
and every component of it was either invented here, found
(25:50):
a home here is illustrative of people who came here,
whether it's French, Caribbean, American, all of these forces that
kind of combined nd to um to inform the evolution
of the city. Um. So that's I mean, that's kind
(26:11):
of it's it's a story I tell a lot because
I uh, because I get hired to do it. Um.
But but yeah, they and I think really more than
any cocktail I can think of. There's so much just
literally in the glass. What's in the glass, by the way,
(26:34):
sasarec what is it? Well, what's in the glass is
a rye whiskey, absinthe or another any flavored liqueur cube
of sugar, crushed bitters and lemon peel are chilled and
served straight up. It's complex, it's bitter and strong and
sweet and refreshing. Definitely a sazerack episode in our future,
(26:58):
with all due respect to drink and learn, yep. And
we made sure to drink some of those while we
were in New Orleans. Oh yeah, yeah, of those others
that we mentioned above, though, perhaps one of my favorites
is the Ramos Gin Fizz Ready for it always? What
is it? Well? This is a perhaps obviously gin based
(27:23):
drink with lemon and lime juice, orange flower water, but
of sugar and then dairy and egg white whipped into
a lovely, bright floral foam with a layer of silky
punch beneath it. It's often thought of as a breakfast
or brunch drink and eye opener, as folks like to
call them. One of the most famous places to order
it in New Orleans is Brossard's, a French quarter restaurant
(27:44):
that will be celebrating its hundredth anniversary next year. Been
around for just a second um, and its connection with
the Ramos Gin Fizz is due in no small part
to the drink program at its Empire Bar, which is
pioneered in by one Paul Gustings, who, if you have
and heard of he was called by the online publication
Neat Poor a legendary curmudgeon and bartender, and I think
(28:07):
that just about sums it up. Yeah, I think so.
We spoke to Rebecca Shapman, the general manager episodes about
this cocktail. It really is. So the ramos gin Fizz
is this incredible concoction um. The way that it's described,
we describe it to guess when they taste it, it's
like a key line pie, right, So it's a key
line pine and bass. And essentially what happens is when
(28:29):
you have heavy cream gin um orange flower water. But
if we really really light handed with the orange flower water,
you only want to do maximum three drops, but three
very small drops because it's an incredibly powerful ingredient um,
the heavy cream and then egg whites um. So what
you do is you build all of that into your
shaker and then your ice, and essentially you're almost making
(28:50):
when you start to do your shake, which should be
so it's rumored that you're supposed to do an eight
minute shake to get the perfect ramos en fiz. I
don't have those on the guns. And you'll start to
feel and hear the maringue building in the tent. So
the ice is acting as the blender technique, and as
you start to get that figure eight motion when you're building,
(29:12):
you will feel the air building in the maringue starting
to build. So then when you go to poor, you
still have liquid, and so then it's adding even more air,
making that maringue grow. And then the final step to
get that nice, beautiful frothiness is to add seltzer or
club soda, whichever your preference maybe, So then that continues
to grow and you get that beautiful marshmallowy meringue, gorgeous topping.
(29:35):
But it's tasty and it's refreshing. So I've I've gotten
myself in trouble a couple of times. Eight minutes eight minutes.
You know, you either the bartender that you go and
ask for a ring, which and fisophore is either going
to love you or hate you, like there's there's no
if and or other. It's either going to be a
delarted bartender ready to shake the hell out of something,
(29:57):
or it's going to be that aggravated grunt of Okay, alright,
it's already do it. But for them, I'll be honest.
It is fun. It's fun to see everyone's face when
you make it. Um, it is incredible. It is a
little labor intensive, so like all good things, you know,
they come to those who wait. Legend has it that
it was invented in by one Henry C. Ramos at
(30:19):
the Imperial Cabinet Saloon, where he retained rights to the
drink until his son sold it after Prohibition to the
Salzack Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel, which was frequented at
the time by posh people like Louisiana governor and Senator
Hue Long. You know, it was remembered that Hui Plong
stole a bartender from the Roosevelt Hotel um So those
Sazait bars located inside um So. In that bar, basically,
(30:43):
Hui Plong insisted that he hired that bartender and they
follow them around the country making the Ramos genas for
him because he made the best one. Oh wow, he
must have had awesome arms, right. And we also visited
(31:10):
Our Nose, which celebrated its hundred anniversary last year. Over
that century that it has existed, Our Nose basically took
over a whole city block with this like amalgam of
dining rooms and bars and kitchens and events spaces and
a Mardi Gras costume museum. One part of the complex
is a bar called French seventy five after the cocktail. Hey,
(31:36):
don't get cheeky, what the French seventy five is is
a matter of some debate. It's definitely a lemon juice,
a bit of sugar and a sparkling wine to top
it off. But the base liquor that can be a
couple of things. We spoke in the French seventy five
bar with Katie Casparian, who is our nose co owner
and operator. Um. You know, there's some speculation on whether
(31:56):
the French seventy five cocktail was originally created with gin
or with Kognak. We think it was with Kognak. We
think it tastes better with kogiac. Ours is made with Koonyak.
Um and so I think that we probably serve more
French seventi fives in any other place in the world. Um.
And it's just become our sort of signature cocktail, not
just in here but throughout the restaurant. Um. And it's delicious,
(32:20):
it's refreshing, and um we think that there was a
resurgence in the country because of it. I do love
a French five there exactly. Just refreshing is a lovely
way to put it. They will knock you on your butt.
They will They are suspicious in the way that they
do it because you don't know what's happening until all
of a sudden you're down. But it's but it's good.
(32:43):
It's good. It's a good fall. Another future cocktail hour
for sure. One cocktail we won't be doing a future
episode on, but can't help mentioning as a one that
Elizabeth told us about a friend of hers accidentally in
cocting my friends Steve Yamada who works at Latitude twenty
nine fantastic t bar, super talented bartender. Um kind of
(33:05):
made his way, worked his way up, did a lot
of catering gigs with the soda, rum and coke kind
of thing. Didn't know anything about cocktails, and so he
parleyed like this past catering experience and eventually gets a
job at Bubba Gumps. So somebody who orders an old
(33:26):
Fashioned and he doesn't know what that is, and so
we asked the bartender. It was a little guy. It's like,
how do I make that? What do I do? Because
there was no internet, So he says, grabbed the bottle
with the paper on it, meaning the bidders just make
it to put some put some whiskey and sugar, mush
up a cherry and then the bottle with the paper.
(33:49):
Steve made an old old fashioned with what's your shirt sauce?
And it was it was not sent back. He made
four him them that NiFe, presumably for the same person
who thought, what an interesting I mean like, at its essence,
it is a bitter product, you know, oh mommy not dry.
(34:13):
Speaking of ummmy and different takes on cocktails, let's take
a look at the modern cocktail scene in New Orleans.
But first let's take a quick break for words from
our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you.
(34:34):
So uh. The United States, as you may have noticed,
is in the midst of a vast craft cocktail renaissance
after the dark ages of the eighties. That it's prepackaged,
sweetened to heck, drink mixes look science. Just because you
can approximate sour mix with corn syrup and citric acid
doesn't mean you should anyway. It's a Jurassic Park of
(34:55):
cocktail arguent. It's interesting as New Orleans has the intergenerational
community aspect, so they never really rejected the old studgy
cut tails of their parents like most Americans did. Those
never went out of fashion, but the eighties still had
an impact. Think of those slushing machines and if that's
(35:17):
what you're looking for, you will find it. But the
large aircraft movement has opened up a lot of opportunities.
Uh take the aforementioned French seventy five bar. It was
only rebranded with that name in two thousand one, which
was during the early surge of that craft renaissance, and
even those slushes have gotten fancy treatments. Dicky Brennan talked
(35:37):
about his take on the old school milk punch, which
is one of those eye openers we talked about, made
with sweetened milk and your liquor of choice. I grew
up where we made a basic milk punch and the
years it was branding milk punch, then our families started
doing bourbon milk punch. Um. So I grew up with
(35:58):
a very simple bourbon punch recipe. And when we opened
up here on Bourbon Street Bourbon House, the this proliferation
of dacary shops up and down the street, you know,
and they're real sweet, I mean not knocking them. And
the fun thing about New Orleans you can walk up
and down the street with a cocktail. Um. So we
(36:21):
knew we wanted to do something to add two to enhanced,
to be a little different. Um, and so we created
a frozen bourbon milk punch. It's uh, I call it
an adult milkshake. It's basically, you know, it's not what
you would find in the in the Daciries, you know,
sweet and I mean this is it's a custard that
(36:43):
we freeze with bourbon and you know, um, and it's
it's really become one of our signature items. All right.
That was a good evolution. We got to try them.
They were delicious. Oh yeah, got nutmeg on top. It
was wonderful. We also got a chance to talk about
(37:05):
the current state of the cocktail scene with Bryson Downham,
beverage director for Tupes South and Tupes Metery. Interestingly, like Elizabeth,
he took a bit of an indirect route to the industry.
And I got really, really good fascinated by making drains
because at the time I went to really like the
taste of alcohol, and but I would have him try
(37:29):
a cocktail and be impressed and would think it was good.
So I wanted to do this thing where I would
take something that is literally poison uh, and like and
almost repulsive to the palette and crafted with my own
hands into something that is beautiful and tasty. Um. And
also so the my my degrees or neuroscience, so that
(37:52):
the social aspect was also important, because I didn't want
to be locked away in a lab with with a
bunch of very quiet people all day and being at
the bar, being in the restaurant. You tried into the opposite. Yeah, loose,
But now I get to manipulate people's prayin chemistry in
a much more hands on fashion. So I still think
(38:12):
that I am working within my field. No argument here.
We asked Bryson about some of the new drinks he's
working on and what he is excited about, and then
also the the incorporation of of different different ingredients that
aren't having traditionally to thoughtymous drink ingredients, like more like
savory things, and like thinking about a more as as
(38:35):
a dish, like a composed dish than just a one
note or even a nuanced cocktail that you you only
utilizees traditional things like we use a lot of salt
and black pepper and other seasons human and whatnot in
cocktails here, and that's it's a lot of fun. It
(38:56):
makes for a more unique experience with your drink. And
that's that's definitely uh going off throughout the country. You
see more and more like vegetable bases and things like
that in your drinks that I'm interested to see how
far it goes and what people come up with as
they begin to incorporate more and more nontraditional greens and
(39:19):
in drinks. And Dickie Brennan summed up the recent past
and future of cocktails in New Orleans this way, you know,
going way back in time with the creation of a cocktail,
I think it was it was just a part of
the daily routine. You know. They were called coffee houses,
(39:42):
and that's where you would take the break to go
in and have a drink um, you know, in the
middle of the day or in the morning. You know,
when I lived in France, if you go to the
market early in the morning, then you go into the
coffee shops, someone might be having an expresso, but someone
else is having a cocktail, you know, um, and then
(40:03):
you know an absent or whatever. So I think a
lot of that culture was here in the city um
drinking UM. But what I love about today is it's
like when in the eighties we started educating with color institutes.
We now have a generation and they've gotten educated. In
(40:27):
the spirit's world. What do we call mixologists? You know,
not quite sure yet where we're going with the name,
but the professionals and they really, uh can give a
customer an experience that you didn't experience when you walked
and say, give me an old fashioned you know. Now
it's what bourbon would you like with your old fashioned
you know? And then the young missologists saying, we'll tell
(40:49):
me kind of what what what do you like? You know,
what do you like sweet? Do you like hit? Or
you know? It picks the right wrong or picks the
right bourbon for you to have that great experience. Um so,
I mean it's I don't know which goes like in
ten years, but what's happened the last ten years has
been crazy, certainly in the spirits world. Let's end with
(41:12):
some advice from Amy Sins, founder of Lanois, for those
visiting New Orleans as a resident of the French Quarter.
I will say, when it comes to drinking in New Orleans,
if it is red, green, or purple and served in
a cup on Bourbon Street, do not drink more than one.
If I am off on a Friday night, there's nothing
more exciting than watching the security cameras outside my house
(41:35):
and watching what happens to people who drink more than one.
But also, it is a marathon, not a sprint. Paste
yourself and eat every three hours. If you're not eating
every three hours, you cannot fit it in. And remember
that three days is not enough. You really need to
be here for a week. And before you come, my
(41:59):
suggestion is that you eat as much as you can
for two weeks before you get here. Then you can
stretch your stomach and then you can eat more when
you get here. There are people who have this idea
that they're going to eat less and diet so they
can enjoy more of the calories here. Don't worry, we
keep the calories at the airport when you leave, so
(42:20):
it's okay. But definitely be prepared to eat and experience
as much as you can. And even if it's something
you think you don't like, try it. Always give something
three attempts. So if you say I don't like okra,
eat three different kinds of okra dishes and whatever it is.
If you really hate it, eat it. Fried and you'll
(42:41):
probably love it so very sound advice. This brings us
to the end of our third episode in our New
Orleans series of episodes. If you would like to write
to us, we would love to hear from you. Our
email is Hello at saber pod dot com. You can
also find us on social media. Yeah, we are on Facebook, Twitter,
(43:02):
and Instagram at savor Pod. We do hope to hear
from you. Thank you, as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard, and our executive producer Christopher Hasiotis,
and all of our interviewees and the good folks who
put us in touch with them. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way. We have to talk about what happened at
this bar because they, for one thing, it's like ninety
(43:26):
the tour starts at ten. They have it too for
one Hurricane special. Yeah, if you have a if you
have a ticket for the tour, then it's two for
one hurricanes for like eight dollars or twelve dollars or
something like that. Yes, and he the bartender at this
particular bar, was one of my favorites that we encountered
because okay, I didn't realize that New Orleans was a
(43:48):
big football town one and it was Davids Saints game
and he was just like already pre angry at everyone time.
And there was a guy in a kilt right who
was playing the ukulele. Oh yeah he yeah, he was
playing clearly. He had a monster dog. Yeah, monster in size.
(44:11):
He was very sweet, very sweet dog. Yeah, some kind
of Um I don't yeah, I think it was a
great Pyrenees. Yeah, bear Pyrenees, half Prenes. Who knew science
was capable of such a thing, but there he was.
It was the sweetest dog. And um, I could have
ridden him into battle. Yes, so yeah, that man would
(44:32):
have come along with you into battle. He would have,
he would have. Oh he was. He was very nice.
Um he was. He was like a D and D
character perside of the bar. Yes, he's playing Holy Diver
by Dio on ukulele. Yeah, I mean it was spectacular.
It was. It was spectacle. And the bartender was like,
(44:53):
I think he hit a sour note there, but hey,
won't you try together? Like he was just critiquing human
real time. The guy was like, oh, because I did,
and like and like when I played it back, it's great.
They have a very funny like that's a comedic duo.
If I've ever like that movie needs to be made.
Absolutely
The glass is half full, not half empty, and it's
half full of whiskey. Hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm
an erie and I'm Lauren vocal Bam. And today we're
talking about the cocktail culture in New Orleans. Yes, because
drinking is a major part of what New Orleans is.
Of that Joe Vivra we heard about while we were
in the city a couple of months back, and also
(00:28):
you listener might have heard in our first episode we
did on New Orleans. A lot of people talked about it,
and the culture around drinking is pretty unique to New Orleans,
at least here in the United States. That quote you
heard at the top is from Chef Isaac Troops of
Tups Metery, and it captures a lot of the attitude
we encountered around alcohol in the city and in general
(00:50):
having a good time. I mean, we're talking about a
city that lays claimed to I don't know, forty seven cocktails.
I made up that number, but it's a lot, is
so so many. And I gotta say as we record this,
the Super Bowl just took place in our city of Atlanta.
Promises is related. It is and one thing that we
(01:11):
Lauren super producer Dylan and I all commented on was
how New Orleans was such a big football town, bigger
than any of us thought it was, and everyone was
a Saints fan, everyone we talked to. And so right
now there are all these signs in downtown Atlanta that's
say the Saints were rubbed because you probably know, but
(01:32):
there's that whole thing, a bad call in a game,
and a lot of Saints fans and other people said
it costs the Saints the game and their chance at
the super Bowl. There's even legal action on top of that.
Our Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms got into some hot water,
not for her gumbo or for her mac and cheese,
but for saying she hoped the Saints weren't one of
the Super Bowl teams because she was worried about their
(01:56):
fan base, very passionate. UM, and this was she said,
this were the Saints lost and she had to release
an official apology. It's it's been interesting, um. And I
heard an interview with the Saints fan a couple of
weeks ago before the Super Bowl took place, and he
said that was all tied into this community aspect that
we Lauren, Dylan and I all observed while we were
(02:17):
there too, and it does relate back to the cocktail scene. Yeah,
and not only because football fandom often involves drinking. Okay,
to explain another anecdote, we were getting out of a
cemetery tour, the St. Louis Cemetery number one to be precise,
as these Saints started playing a game and the bar
we dropped by after this tour had the game on
(02:39):
and the patrons were having a potluck in the bar.
And y'all tell me if I'm just hanging out at
the wrong bars, but that is a sense of community
that I found equally unfamiliar and delightful. Alongside that community
and the pride in that community and its history, New
Orleans has a cultural sense of drinking out a hall,
(03:00):
one that is miles away from the tourist concept of
the city as a place to like get drank um.
Although the two are related, both come from these cities
historically non puritanical approach to alcohol and specifically it's open
container laws. More than once we had an easier time
finding absinthe absinthe as opposed to coffee. Side note, this
(03:26):
is actually a weird reversal or like maybe a continuation
of a historical thing in New Orleans where bars were
taxed heavily but coffee shops weren't and loophole you could
serve booze out of a coffee shop. So at one
point there were over three fifty registered coffee houses in
the city in like the early eighteen hundreds. It's more
direct now, yeah, just cut out that coffee middleman, straight
to the absinthe right, right. So we were like, I
(03:50):
guess we could have absent, which is as good a
segue as any I guess to say drink responsibly. Yes, yeah, us.
Liz Williams over at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum
in New Orleans put it this way. We are professional drinkers, really,
I mean, I mean that's seriously. We learn how to
(04:11):
drink from the time or children, and you watch people
drink and you learn what the rules are and all
that sort of thing, and and so the amateurs are
the ones who drink until they throw up all the
time and all that kind of things. While we were there,
we caught up with a particularly expert drinker, um Elizabeth Pierce,
(04:34):
the founder of Drink and Learn, which is both a
walking tour that looks into the history of beverages in
general and cocktail culture specifically. And it's a podcast. Visit
Drink and Learn dot com or find it on Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, um, but no, really,
it's great. You should have y'all should check it out.
And all right, if you're gonna be a drinks historian,
New Orleans is a pretty okay place to do it.
(04:56):
But as Elizabeth told us, she came to the profession
in a owned about way. So I helped to create
and opened the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. I was
the founding curator there, despite having no academic background in
museums or history. A strong liberal arts education prepares you
to do anything, which I bet both of you, all
of you who might agree with right, So um. I
(05:19):
worked with Lois Williams for four years, um, learning how
to make something out of nothing, and that mattered because
the museum opened in early two eight, and of course
that year ended with the Great Financial Apocalypse, funding dried up,
everybody got laid off. I went on unemployment, drank heavily,
and dated a musician, which is the holy trinity if
(05:41):
you just need to shift your professional path. So two
thousand nine was the last year. It was a year
there were no jobs. It was the year that I
learned that both unemployment and musicians run out after six months.
My favorite joke. Even though we're both still friends and
the museum stayed open through volunteers, but I needed a
paying gig. I love that the Holy Trinity of shifting careers.
(06:04):
We really could play the interview we did in its
entirety and there would still be more to talk about.
When it comes to New Orleans and cocktails, Elizabeth went
on to talk about the lure of drinking in New
Orleans to tourists and what outsiders get and don't get
about it. New Orleans and drinking is how many people
understand my city. Um. Some people come for the architecture,
(06:26):
and they totally should. We have beautiful architecture, we have
amazing food and music. But there are other cities that
also have these elements. But somehow or additionally, UM, people
come here and they expect to drink a lot, or
they expect to see a lot of people drinking even
(06:47):
if they're not drinking, and they will either look upon
in the amusement or judgment or horror. UM. But the
expectation is always there to be fair. This is a
thing that the locals absolutely market to tourists, right and
she she talked about that too when we were doing
this interview with her. One of my favorite things that
(07:11):
I looked on in amusement while we were in New Orleans. Um,
there was this excellent people watching spot that we did
of an establishment called the Bourbon Cowboy. And one great
drizzly day, we were drinking our morning absence and looking
into the Bourbon Cowboy across the street and a gentleman
in a Marty McFly Jr. Hat was shouting beer while
(07:33):
holding a sign that's said three buds as in Budweiser's
for the price of one Dilly Dilley. And he was
holding the sign horizontally when it was definitely supposed to
be held vertically. And this is also where we saw
a man with a goat, like walking a goat or
trying to the goat, stopped in front of this one
bar and didn't seem to want to leave. He was like,
(07:56):
this is my barn. Stop see whatever you want. But no, Um,
the tourist drinking culture is different from the local concept.
Here's Dicky Brennan whose family collectively owns it operates thirteen
restaurants in the city. It's so much a part of
how New Orleanians live life, uh, you know, and so
(08:17):
it's a daily part of our culture is connecting with people,
and the majority of that is connecting on a table
with food. And how can you not have a great
mail without spirits wine. Uh. And it's such a rich
tradition in this city, a tradition that goes back pretty
(08:38):
much to the city's founding. Keep in mind that Louisiana
was founded a little differently than most places and what
would become the United States. Here's Elizabeth again, we're kind
of by France. We were left alone by France because
they couldn't figure out a way to make money from
New Orleans. A lot of people that were sent here
(09:00):
were not people who could necessarily take care of themselves
in a swampy environment, like thieves and prostitutes and criminals
in general. Um. The illustrative quote about that is there
was a governor, our last French governor of Carolac. He
was sent over to clean up the town and he
told Louis whichever Louis was fourteen fifteen or something It's
(09:21):
like if I sent home all of the criminal elements
of New Orleans or Louisiana, there would be no one left.
So what that what that means is um. You had
people who were already skewed to not entirely respect the
law and then had nothing to support the thought that
(09:43):
they should. And you can contrast that with another colony
that is growing around the same time, and that would
be in New England. But the people who settled in
New England, we're not thieves, criminals. They were very earnest,
they were hard working. They believed in um, you know,
(10:04):
that that God had brought them to this new place.
And the way that the pilgrims drank was they drank
beer um because that was safe, you know, safe safe
drinking instead of water um. And being a drunk was
was viewed as something that could be very detrimental to
(10:26):
the colony. If you're drunk, then you can't plow, can't
build a cabin whatever. It wasn't only about the morality
of intoxication. It was about the logistics of the colony,
and that was not around here. That was not an issue.
It was a very independent streak um and also way
(10:52):
more men than families. The women come later. Um, and
so you have you have a lot of single men
in a pretty crappy situation with unreliable food. Maybe you
know hunting, maybe the Native Americans are going to give
(11:14):
you something. But like the one solid, the one through
line is rum doesn't spoil um or brandy if you
could get it. Rum, of course, was in great supply
due to New Orleans being a port of trade with
the Caribbean and its sugar plantations um and by the
first couple decades of the eight hundreds, sugarcane was the
(11:37):
foremost plantation crop in southern Louisiana too. Rum is an
excellent way to profit on waste produced during sugar refinement,
so it was in owners interest to also run distilleries,
and because of the slave labor used in sugar and rum,
rum was cheap and plentiful in the area. Meanwhile, grape
based brandy was the French go to liquor at the time,
(12:00):
what with all their wine vineyards, although that would have
been imported and more expensive also it was considered medicinal.
Of course, those two liquors would wind up being the
basis of lots of New Orleans cocktails. The third also
came to the party because the city was a port
on the Mississippi River. So the city flourishes in the
(12:20):
eighteen thirties. So now we've got families and stuff. However,
who is coming here to unload their raft from Kentucky?
These like wild drinking that they were called Kane Tuck's
just still lowered. We toss around it right now and then,
and you know, it's like a jug of whiskey chained
(12:42):
to the rudder you're pulling down the river. You arrive,
you sell whatever it is you're selling, and now you're
a single man in a port town with money in
your pocket, and you multiply that by these thousands. So
it is this. It isn't the only thing that's happening here,
(13:07):
but it is happening for a considerable amount of time.
That New Orleans is a party town. Um. But anyway,
so all of these like facets contribute to an identity,
and that one of the pillars of that identity is
about cutting loose, and drinking is an integral part of that.
(13:36):
Eventually that is like woven into how people understand New Orleans.
And so these elements, this like cocktail culture or drinking culture, actually,
let's call it drinking culture was defined early on, like
(13:56):
late nineteenth century, like these, these the satarak, the old
fashioned in Manhattan, like these things have just been part
of this three line, this thread, and so we just
kept doing the same dance over and over. Plus we
like them. They're delicious, Yes they are. I think we
had some of all of those cocktails while we were
(14:18):
in New Orleans. And some of those cocktails we enjoyed
in two go cups or also better known as go
cups in the city. Why is this a thing in
New Orleans but not really in most of the United States.
We'll get into that after a quick break forward from
our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you,
(14:46):
in case any of your listeners don't know. And most
of the United States, drinking in public as an outside
of a restaurant or a bar or something like that
is illegal. Not so in New Orleans. That's one of
its big draws as a tourist town. There are drive
through daquiri bars. I can't even fathom that a lot
(15:07):
of bars have to go windows where you can get
you can pick up a cocktail and then go about
your way. And it has to do with several things
we've already touched on, the French influence, the disregard, shall
we say, for the laws, the threat of Catholicism as
opposed to Puretonism. However, legally this divide is relatively new.
(15:27):
Here's Elizabeth. So drinking in America in public was illegal
until about the nineteen sixties. What was illegal was public drunkenness.
And that goes like the pilgrim thing that I told
you about. So in the nineteen fifties there was an
alderman in Chicago who had been hearing from the police
(15:49):
that they were struggling with this thing that was called
bottle gangs. So it's a group of singleman, indigent or
homeless or whatever, and they pull their money and they
buy one bottle of liquor, stand on a corner and
passing around. Eventually there'd be a fight, would be some
(16:09):
sort of trouble, and the cops said, we want to
stop this before it starts. How can we do this?
And so the city council said, okay, no more drinking
in public. Now you don't have to wait for somebody
to be drunk or to cause a fight or whatever.
We're gonna nip this problem in the button. Over time,
(16:34):
other cities began adopting this because vagrancy laws began to
be tossed out as um unconstitutional. You can't arrest some
money just because they're hanging around, and so this was
a way for cities to get in front of a
(16:54):
homeless problem, what I can call the hobo factor. And
of course there were some people who were targeted and
some people who weren't people of color, you're poor and um.
These laws are enacted piecemeal cities, counties across the country,
(17:15):
and then of course if one county does it, then
the county next to it will do because then people
are just moving right. So eventually it becomes pretty much
illegal to drink anywhere in public in the United States
by like the mid nineteen seventies. In the meantime, New Orleans,
(17:37):
UM had a vice district prior to World War One.
It closed actually because of World War One, because all
of these soldiers were getting STDs and the US government
was like, if you want to be a port of embarkation,
you have to um not have all the free love.
(17:58):
So uh. This vice district was also home of jazz
Storyville and like Lure and Strong played a Storyville King
all or all these great musicians. So that gets shut down.
And then it's Prohibition, which, like everybody totally drank during Prohibition.
But the clubs are you know, less um less accessible,
(18:24):
less uh less reliable because there were still raids and things.
And it's not until World War two when we become
a port of embarkation again and you have tens of
thousands of single young men with money in their pocket
coming through here looking for a good time. And Bourbon
(18:47):
Street was a commercial street. It was not an entertainment district,
but a lot of these clubs that had closed before
World War One kind of begin reopening. You create this
new district. We talked about how prohibition was essentially ignored
in New Orleans in our first episode. That was an
introduction to the city. So go check that out if
(19:07):
you missed it. But in the meantime, I bet you
can see where this is going. Elizabeth continued, it's not
until after World War two that you really begin to
see Bourbon Street showing up in like travel magazines or
tourism things. And again it's clubs where people go inside
to listen to music, to eat and it's it's like
(19:28):
going to Vegas and going to see a show, you know,
and locals went there. It's classy, where your gloves you had,
you know. So unfortunately, many of these places were owned
by the mob, and they were money laundering, and there
was prostitution and gambling happening in the back. And eventually
we get an earnest d a who's like, I'm gonna
(19:50):
shut all this down, conducting lots of raids, and it
becomes quotea seedier and seedier. Locals don't want to go. Um,
if you don't have vice money, then you can't keep
up the shine the inside and little live little these clubs, Um,
they either close or they're barely staying open, and nobody
(20:12):
wants to go in. And so one bright day an
unknown employee opened a window and sold a drink through
that window. You don't even have to come in my club,
just sell you a drink right here. And soon a
lot of people started doing it, particularly on Bourbon Street.
(20:34):
The city council tried to shut it down. Um, the
law was overturned as being like too vague, so I
think they wrote it hastily. By then, everybody's making a
lot of money and people really like it because you
can't do it anywhere else in the United States. Initially,
the plan was to just keep it in the French Quarter,
and they decided that would be too confusing for tourists,
(20:57):
which is actually what Savannah did. Savannah happened in a
historic district, but not the rest of the city. But
they've been pushing it. Everybody's pushing it because if you're
like one block over, why can't I do that? You know? So?
Uh so here we are. So that is why it
is legal to walk around with a drink here. But
(21:18):
I really I always encourage visitors to try to drink
in the open like we do, which is it's not
a desperate forced march where you have to arrive at
a destination of profound intoxication in a very short time.
(21:40):
But instead it's just like we pour a go cup,
as we call him go cup. My husband and I
pore a go cup and we walk our dog. It's
really lovely. You could get a go cup in the
airport in New Orleans. It's one of the things I
missed the most immediately when I got back. It's just
(22:02):
nice to sort of rhianna it, as they say, because
you know, she's always walking out of restaurants with those
glasses of wine. Um. To not feel rushed to leave
an establishment when you want, and to enjoy a leisurely stroll,
the attitude is just difference there. My mom and I
used to go to Savannah once a year and we
would get a cocktail and walk along the river in
(22:23):
the market district and just enjoy ourselves. I think that's
a part of it, to taking that time to relax,
and if you overdo it, well, the attitude around that
is different too. Here's Elizabeth again. We live in what
was in a country that is governed by a very
profound Protestant ethic. Um. You know how many listicals about
(22:48):
productivity can there possibly be? You think you're you think
you've seen them all. And that is not a h
It's not high in the list of values orlans. It
doesn't mean that we don't accomplish anything, but we value
you know, interaction and family and friends, you know all that.
(23:11):
And so because of that, if you have too much
to drink and you wake up hungover, as long as
you have not bothered anybody, then no one is shaking
their finger at you and saying, oh, you wasted, you
know the time. It's like this happens. Trying not to
make it happen too regularly, but like this is what
(23:35):
it is to be human. This mindset around drinking, along
with the creativity and rebellion inherent to the city that
gave us jazz and all. This combining of cultures made
New Orleans fertile ground for inventing or at least popularizing cocktails. Yes,
even before we went to New Orleans, I feel like
it comes up all the time somewhere or another in
(23:57):
our cocktail and alcohol episodes. That city does, and like
we were talking about in our Gumbo episode, a lot
of them tell the story of the city in a glass. Yeah, okay,
so you had that rum and brandy and whiskey all
coming in. Um, you had champagne from France and when
absent typic over there, New Orleans picked that up too.
Around the same time, in the early to mid eight hundreds,
(24:19):
pharmacists like one Antoine the show were concocting the herbal
tinctures sold at the time as medicine that we know
today as bitters. Show it's bitterers, a trade coming up
through the Caribbean and South America brought citrus and other
tropical fruit, and all of that is how we get
these classic New Orleans cocktails, the Sasarek, the view Carre,
(24:41):
the Grasshopper, the Hurricane, the Ramos Gin Fizz, the French
seventy five, the Pims Cup. I hear people shouting angrily.
Now I am one of them. Yes, those last two
are from Paris and London. Yeah, but New Orleans does
lay a certain amount of claim to them. And in
cases like those, I'd say that the confusion argument over
which place or which bartender made a drink first is
(25:04):
indicative of the economic and cultural trade happening at various
points in time, and that trade is the story of
New Orleans. Elisabah spoke to this on her podcast with
an episode about the Sazerac from July, which y'all should
check out, and the episode is called the Sazerac makes sense, Hey,
but here's the taste, Abigail and I tell the entire
(25:26):
history of New Orleans using only the ingredients and a
sazerat cocktail. So the Sazak is the official cocktail of
New Orleans. In two thousand eight, the Louisiana Legislature passed
a resolution making the sazerak the city's official drink. And
that sounds like a joke, but in fact that it is.
It is just rounded in the story of the city
and every component of it was either invented here, found
(25:50):
a home here is illustrative of people who came here,
whether it's French, Caribbean, American, all of these forces that
kind of combined nd to um to inform the evolution
of the city. Um. So that's I mean, that's kind
(26:11):
of it's it's a story I tell a lot because
I uh, because I get hired to do it. Um.
But but yeah, they and I think really more than
any cocktail I can think of. There's so much just
literally in the glass. What's in the glass, by the way,
(26:34):
sasarec what is it? Well, what's in the glass is
a rye whiskey, absinthe or another any flavored liqueur cube
of sugar, crushed bitters and lemon peel are chilled and
served straight up. It's complex, it's bitter and strong and
sweet and refreshing. Definitely a sazerack episode in our future,
(26:58):
with all due respect to drink and learn, yep. And
we made sure to drink some of those while we
were in New Orleans. Oh yeah, yeah, of those others
that we mentioned above, though, perhaps one of my favorites
is the Ramos Gin Fizz Ready for it always? What
is it? Well? This is a perhaps obviously gin based
(27:23):
drink with lemon and lime juice, orange flower water, but
of sugar and then dairy and egg white whipped into
a lovely, bright floral foam with a layer of silky
punch beneath it. It's often thought of as a breakfast
or brunch drink and eye opener, as folks like to
call them. One of the most famous places to order
it in New Orleans is Brossard's, a French quarter restaurant
(27:44):
that will be celebrating its hundredth anniversary next year. Been
around for just a second um, and its connection with
the Ramos Gin Fizz is due in no small part
to the drink program at its Empire Bar, which is
pioneered in by one Paul Gustings, who, if you have
and heard of he was called by the online publication
Neat Poor a legendary curmudgeon and bartender, and I think
(28:07):
that just about sums it up. Yeah, I think so.
We spoke to Rebecca Shapman, the general manager episodes about
this cocktail. It really is. So the ramos gin Fizz
is this incredible concoction um. The way that it's described,
we describe it to guess when they taste it, it's
like a key line pie, right, So it's a key
line pine and bass. And essentially what happens is when
(28:29):
you have heavy cream gin um orange flower water. But
if we really really light handed with the orange flower water,
you only want to do maximum three drops, but three
very small drops because it's an incredibly powerful ingredient um,
the heavy cream and then egg whites um. So what
you do is you build all of that into your
shaker and then your ice, and essentially you're almost making
(28:50):
when you start to do your shake, which should be
so it's rumored that you're supposed to do an eight
minute shake to get the perfect ramos en fiz. I
don't have those on the guns. And you'll start to
feel and hear the maringue building in the tent. So
the ice is acting as the blender technique, and as
you start to get that figure eight motion when you're building,
(29:12):
you will feel the air building in the maringue starting
to build. So then when you go to poor, you
still have liquid, and so then it's adding even more air,
making that maringue grow. And then the final step to
get that nice, beautiful frothiness is to add seltzer or
club soda, whichever your preference maybe, So then that continues
to grow and you get that beautiful marshmallowy meringue, gorgeous topping.
(29:35):
But it's tasty and it's refreshing. So I've I've gotten
myself in trouble a couple of times. Eight minutes eight minutes.
You know, you either the bartender that you go and
ask for a ring, which and fisophore is either going
to love you or hate you, like there's there's no
if and or other. It's either going to be a
delarted bartender ready to shake the hell out of something,
(29:57):
or it's going to be that aggravated grunt of Okay, alright,
it's already do it. But for them, I'll be honest.
It is fun. It's fun to see everyone's face when
you make it. Um, it is incredible. It is a
little labor intensive, so like all good things, you know,
they come to those who wait. Legend has it that
it was invented in by one Henry C. Ramos at
(30:19):
the Imperial Cabinet Saloon, where he retained rights to the
drink until his son sold it after Prohibition to the
Salzack Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel, which was frequented at
the time by posh people like Louisiana governor and Senator
Hue Long. You know, it was remembered that Hui Plong
stole a bartender from the Roosevelt Hotel um So those
Sazait bars located inside um So. In that bar, basically,
(30:43):
Hui Plong insisted that he hired that bartender and they
follow them around the country making the Ramos genas for
him because he made the best one. Oh wow, he
must have had awesome arms, right. And we also visited
(31:10):
Our Nose, which celebrated its hundred anniversary last year. Over
that century that it has existed, Our Nose basically took
over a whole city block with this like amalgam of
dining rooms and bars and kitchens and events spaces and
a Mardi Gras costume museum. One part of the complex
is a bar called French seventy five after the cocktail. Hey,
(31:36):
don't get cheeky, what the French seventy five is is
a matter of some debate. It's definitely a lemon juice,
a bit of sugar and a sparkling wine to top
it off. But the base liquor that can be a
couple of things. We spoke in the French seventy five
bar with Katie Casparian, who is our nose co owner
and operator. Um. You know, there's some speculation on whether
(31:56):
the French seventy five cocktail was originally created with gin
or with Kognak. We think it was with Kognak. We
think it tastes better with kogiac. Ours is made with Koonyak.
Um and so I think that we probably serve more
French seventi fives in any other place in the world. Um.
And it's just become our sort of signature cocktail, not
just in here but throughout the restaurant. Um. And it's delicious,
(32:20):
it's refreshing, and um we think that there was a
resurgence in the country because of it. I do love
a French five there exactly. Just refreshing is a lovely
way to put it. They will knock you on your butt.
They will They are suspicious in the way that they
do it because you don't know what's happening until all
of a sudden you're down. But it's but it's good.
(32:43):
It's good. It's a good fall. Another future cocktail hour
for sure. One cocktail we won't be doing a future
episode on, but can't help mentioning as a one that
Elizabeth told us about a friend of hers accidentally in
cocting my friends Steve Yamada who works at Latitude twenty
nine fantastic t bar, super talented bartender. Um kind of
(33:05):
made his way, worked his way up, did a lot
of catering gigs with the soda, rum and coke kind
of thing. Didn't know anything about cocktails, and so he
parleyed like this past catering experience and eventually gets a
job at Bubba Gumps. So somebody who orders an old
(33:26):
Fashioned and he doesn't know what that is, and so
we asked the bartender. It was a little guy. It's like,
how do I make that? What do I do? Because
there was no internet, So he says, grabbed the bottle
with the paper on it, meaning the bidders just make
it to put some put some whiskey and sugar, mush
up a cherry and then the bottle with the paper.
(33:49):
Steve made an old old fashioned with what's your shirt sauce?
And it was it was not sent back. He made
four him them that NiFe, presumably for the same person
who thought, what an interesting I mean like, at its essence,
it is a bitter product, you know, oh mommy not dry.
(34:13):
Speaking of ummmy and different takes on cocktails, let's take
a look at the modern cocktail scene in New Orleans.
But first let's take a quick break for words from
our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you.
(34:34):
So uh. The United States, as you may have noticed,
is in the midst of a vast craft cocktail renaissance
after the dark ages of the eighties. That it's prepackaged,
sweetened to heck, drink mixes look science. Just because you
can approximate sour mix with corn syrup and citric acid
doesn't mean you should anyway. It's a Jurassic Park of
(34:55):
cocktail arguent. It's interesting as New Orleans has the intergenerational
community aspect, so they never really rejected the old studgy
cut tails of their parents like most Americans did. Those
never went out of fashion, but the eighties still had
an impact. Think of those slushing machines and if that's
(35:17):
what you're looking for, you will find it. But the
large aircraft movement has opened up a lot of opportunities.
Uh take the aforementioned French seventy five bar. It was
only rebranded with that name in two thousand one, which
was during the early surge of that craft renaissance, and
even those slushes have gotten fancy treatments. Dicky Brennan talked
(35:37):
about his take on the old school milk punch, which
is one of those eye openers we talked about, made
with sweetened milk and your liquor of choice. I grew
up where we made a basic milk punch and the
years it was branding milk punch, then our families started
doing bourbon milk punch. Um. So I grew up with
(35:58):
a very simple bourbon punch recipe. And when we opened
up here on Bourbon Street Bourbon House, the this proliferation
of dacary shops up and down the street, you know,
and they're real sweet, I mean not knocking them. And
the fun thing about New Orleans you can walk up
and down the street with a cocktail. Um. So we
(36:21):
knew we wanted to do something to add two to enhanced,
to be a little different. Um, and so we created
a frozen bourbon milk punch. It's uh, I call it
an adult milkshake. It's basically, you know, it's not what
you would find in the in the Daciries, you know,
sweet and I mean this is it's a custard that
(36:43):
we freeze with bourbon and you know, um, and it's
it's really become one of our signature items. All right.
That was a good evolution. We got to try them.
They were delicious. Oh yeah, got nutmeg on top. It
was wonderful. We also got a chance to talk about
(37:05):
the current state of the cocktail scene with Bryson Downham,
beverage director for Tupes South and Tupes Metery. Interestingly, like Elizabeth,
he took a bit of an indirect route to the industry.
And I got really, really good fascinated by making drains
because at the time I went to really like the
taste of alcohol, and but I would have him try
(37:29):
a cocktail and be impressed and would think it was good.
So I wanted to do this thing where I would
take something that is literally poison uh, and like and
almost repulsive to the palette and crafted with my own
hands into something that is beautiful and tasty. Um. And
also so the my my degrees or neuroscience, so that
(37:52):
the social aspect was also important, because I didn't want
to be locked away in a lab with with a
bunch of very quiet people all day and being at
the bar, being in the restaurant. You tried into the opposite. Yeah, loose,
But now I get to manipulate people's prayin chemistry in
a much more hands on fashion. So I still think
(38:12):
that I am working within my field. No argument here.
We asked Bryson about some of the new drinks he's
working on and what he is excited about, and then
also the the incorporation of of different different ingredients that
aren't having traditionally to thoughtymous drink ingredients, like more like
savory things, and like thinking about a more as as
(38:35):
a dish, like a composed dish than just a one
note or even a nuanced cocktail that you you only
utilizees traditional things like we use a lot of salt
and black pepper and other seasons human and whatnot in
cocktails here, and that's it's a lot of fun. It
(38:56):
makes for a more unique experience with your drink. And
that's that's definitely uh going off throughout the country. You
see more and more like vegetable bases and things like
that in your drinks that I'm interested to see how
far it goes and what people come up with as
they begin to incorporate more and more nontraditional greens and
(39:19):
in drinks. And Dickie Brennan summed up the recent past
and future of cocktails in New Orleans this way, you know,
going way back in time with the creation of a cocktail,
I think it was it was just a part of
the daily routine. You know. They were called coffee houses,
(39:42):
and that's where you would take the break to go
in and have a drink um, you know, in the
middle of the day or in the morning. You know,
when I lived in France, if you go to the
market early in the morning, then you go into the
coffee shops, someone might be having an expresso, but someone
else is having a cocktail, you know, um, and then
(40:03):
you know an absent or whatever. So I think a
lot of that culture was here in the city um
drinking UM. But what I love about today is it's
like when in the eighties we started educating with color institutes.
We now have a generation and they've gotten educated. In
(40:27):
the spirit's world. What do we call mixologists? You know,
not quite sure yet where we're going with the name,
but the professionals and they really, uh can give a
customer an experience that you didn't experience when you walked
and say, give me an old fashioned you know. Now
it's what bourbon would you like with your old fashioned
you know? And then the young missologists saying, we'll tell
(40:49):
me kind of what what what do you like? You know,
what do you like sweet? Do you like hit? Or
you know? It picks the right wrong or picks the
right bourbon for you to have that great experience. Um so,
I mean it's I don't know which goes like in
ten years, but what's happened the last ten years has
been crazy, certainly in the spirits world. Let's end with
(41:12):
some advice from Amy Sins, founder of Lanois, for those
visiting New Orleans as a resident of the French Quarter.
I will say, when it comes to drinking in New Orleans,
if it is red, green, or purple and served in
a cup on Bourbon Street, do not drink more than one.
If I am off on a Friday night, there's nothing
more exciting than watching the security cameras outside my house
(41:35):
and watching what happens to people who drink more than one.
But also, it is a marathon, not a sprint. Paste
yourself and eat every three hours. If you're not eating
every three hours, you cannot fit it in. And remember
that three days is not enough. You really need to
be here for a week. And before you come, my
(41:59):
suggestion is that you eat as much as you can
for two weeks before you get here. Then you can
stretch your stomach and then you can eat more when
you get here. There are people who have this idea
that they're going to eat less and diet so they
can enjoy more of the calories here. Don't worry, we
keep the calories at the airport when you leave, so
(42:20):
it's okay. But definitely be prepared to eat and experience
as much as you can. And even if it's something
you think you don't like, try it. Always give something
three attempts. So if you say I don't like okra,
eat three different kinds of okra dishes and whatever it is.
If you really hate it, eat it. Fried and you'll
(42:41):
probably love it so very sound advice. This brings us
to the end of our third episode in our New
Orleans series of episodes. If you would like to write
to us, we would love to hear from you. Our
email is Hello at saber pod dot com. You can
also find us on social media. Yeah, we are on Facebook, Twitter,
(43:02):
and Instagram at savor Pod. We do hope to hear
from you. Thank you, as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard, and our executive producer Christopher Hasiotis,
and all of our interviewees and the good folks who
put us in touch with them. Thanks to you for listening,
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way. We have to talk about what happened at
this bar because they, for one thing, it's like ninety
(43:26):
the tour starts at ten. They have it too for
one Hurricane special. Yeah, if you have a if you
have a ticket for the tour, then it's two for
one hurricanes for like eight dollars or twelve dollars or
something like that. Yes, and he the bartender at this
particular bar, was one of my favorites that we encountered
because okay, I didn't realize that New Orleans was a
(43:48):
big football town one and it was Davids Saints game
and he was just like already pre angry at everyone time.
And there was a guy in a kilt right who
was playing the ukulele. Oh yeah he yeah, he was
playing clearly. He had a monster dog. Yeah, monster in size.
(44:11):
He was very sweet, very sweet dog. Yeah, some kind
of Um I don't yeah, I think it was a
great Pyrenees. Yeah, bear Pyrenees, half Prenes. Who knew science
was capable of such a thing, but there he was.
It was the sweetest dog. And um, I could have
ridden him into battle. Yes, so yeah, that man would
(44:32):
have come along with you into battle. He would have,
he would have. Oh he was. He was very nice.
Um he was. He was like a D and D
character perside of the bar. Yes, he's playing Holy Diver
by Dio on ukulele. Yeah, I mean it was spectacular.
It was. It was spectacle. And the bartender was like,
(44:53):
I think he hit a sour note there, but hey,
won't you try together? Like he was just critiquing human
real time. The guy was like, oh, because I did,
and like and like when I played it back, it's great.
They have a very funny like that's a comedic duo.
If I've ever like that movie needs to be made.
Absolutely
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.