Jeff “Beachbum” Berry & Dickie Brennan LIVE in NOLA!

Episode Transcript
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the-restaurant-guys_3_07-31 (00:00):
Hey folks.
As always, thanks for listening.
You will be hearing a podcasttoday that we recorded in front
of a live audience with JeffBerry and Dickie Brennan,
restaurant Royalty from NewOrleans down at Latitude 29,
which is the best tiki bar inAmerica.
We hope you enjoy it.
we had a lot of fun and so willyou.

the-restaurant-guys_1_07- (00:28):
Hello everybody, and welcome.
You are here with the restaurantguys.
I'm Mark Pascal, he's FrancisShop.
Together we own stage left inCatherine Lombardi restaurants
in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
We're here to bring you theinside track on food, wine,
cocktails, and the finer thingsin life.
Live here at Latitude 29.
Hey there, Marky.

(00:48):
Hey Francis.
Um, welcome everybody in PodcastLand.
You are listening to a show thatwe are currently recording at
Latitude 29.
Jeff Beachbum Barry and AninKay's Place here in, new Orleans
during Tales, the cocktail infront of a live audience.
uh, we are super jazzed to behere and we thank all of you for
coming and, uh, we love that youcame here because you like us.

(01:09):
We did have to bribe you withcocktails.
We're okay with that, but, um,we give out free booze at our
live events sometimes because,well, we are better when you're
drinking.
So it's, uh, it's how thatworks.
today we have as a guest and,for you and who can't see us,
those who can, we, uh, have someNew Orleans royalty here with
us.
We have a couple of differentguests we're gonna be talking
to.
We have Jeff Beach, bum Berry.

(01:30):
This is his place.
And normally we'd like towelcome you to our show, but
welcome to your own frickingbar.
Thank you.
I guess it's about time I put itin appearance here, isn't it?
Just a guy.
Yeah.
Uh, so we'll talk about Jeff ina moment.
We also have sitting at thetable with this, we have Dickie
Brennan because we are therestaurant guys in every city of
the world except for NewOrleans.

(01:51):
In New Orleans.
Dickie Brennan is the restaurantguys.
So on one of the show, stopthat.
Um, so we're, we're gonna startoff talking, uh, Tiki with Jeff
Berry because there's no betterperson to talk Tiki with.
Uh, just a little background,for those of you who don't know,
of course I'm in a room full ofbartenders with drinks in their
hand in New Orleans.
People who know these guysalready.
But for you all on podcast land,um.

(02:13):
Journalist author, one of themby magazine's, 25 Most
Influential CocktailPersonalities of the Century,
drinks International's, 100 mostinfluential figures of all time.
Esquire calls him one of theinstigators of the cocktail
revolution and the New YorkTimes cites him as get this, the
Indiana Jones of tea drinks.

(02:33):
Jeff, when we say this century,do they mean 20th or 21st?
Which, which century are we wetalking about?
I feel like we're talking aboutthe 18th right now.
Right now.
no podcast in, so we have to doit now.
And I also have to, uh, thank anaudience member for that lovely
Esquire quote, which I've beenabusing ever since it's been, I
love it.
That's why we included it.
So, David One Rich is in theaudience who wrote that for

(02:55):
Esquire, the Long Times DrinksWriter for Esquire Magazine,
other cocktail celebrities.
In the, in the audience we haveTim McCurdy from the Cocktail
College podcast, you know, whichyou'll hear us on I know a lot
about cocktails.
Mark knows a lot aboutcocktails.
I learn something every time Ilisten to that show.
Pretty amazing.
I learn something every time Igot drinking with David wdr, but
I usually forget it, so I justmay be learning the same thing

(03:16):
over and over.
That's it.
Um, so I think what I wannatalk, we wanna talk about, uh,
Tiki specifically with you,Jeff, and then, and then Dickie.
We wanna talk about New Orleansin general and the restaurant
revolution here and yourspecific tiki history.
But, um, why don't we start offwith, why don't you tell us
about your house?
We're in your house.

(03:37):
Yeah.
I, I sometimes refer to this asthe largest home bar in the
southeast, because most of thedecor came from.
Uh, my, my house or an in myhouse, was either in our office
or our, uh, storage area or,well, it's awesome that you have
one of those restaurant guypodcast, uh, banner posters in
the back.
Yeah.
In, in your house.
I know that.
Well, that's, you know, that'samazing.

(03:58):
People talk about a signaturepiece in a restaurant.
Um, sometimes it's a chandelier,sometimes it's a painting.
In this case it's the restaurantguys.
Yeah.
Podcast poster.
Um, don't expect to be leavingwith that.
So, no, a lot of the, a lot ofthe, uh, carvings, the lamps,
the, uh, wall art is, it allcomes from our house.

(04:19):
And, When I give little tours,it's like, it even surprises me
how much of this stuff reallywe're gonna be taking with us
when they kick us out, you know?
So, so why don't you talk to usabout your life now.
Latitude 29 is amazing.
It's kind of tiki central of theworld, right?
This is, I'm not gonna arguewith you.
It's ground.
This is literally, this isground zero of tiki of an
entire, of the current wor stateof tiki.

(04:41):
This is it.
you basically saved tiki fromobscurity.
if you had not come along foranother 20 years, we would've
lost the recipes.
We would've lost the culture.
Would've lost the storiesbecause it was an oral history
until you came along.
Yeah.
It would've been a, it would'vebeen a start over instead of a,
Hey, we have this great, thisrich history already.
Can you talk to us about how theone man saved the tiki universe?

(05:03):
Well, basically nobody elsewanted the job, you know, so it
was like, uh, um, no, no.
Uh.
It started by accident.
I mean, I never expected for anyof this to happen.
I never expected for all of usto be.
Thank you all for coming, by theway.
It's lovely to have you.
Woohoo.
Um, and, uh, putting up with allthis nonsense, the situation

(05:25):
when I came of drinking age,back when, uh, snakes had legs
and dinosaurs rule the earth,this was 1980.
Snakes have legs again, Jeff.
Oh, what goes around comesaround, you know?
Um, anyway, that was the darkedges of the cocktail, which,
uh, Dave Winterish has alsowritten about, and I'm sure many
of you also have is cocktailswere Dead Gone.

(05:46):
They were what your parents andgrandparents drank.
Um, if you went to a bar in theeighties, either a singles bar
or a fern bar as, or arestaurant bar, uh, you were
going to drink either aHeineken, you know, an imported
beer or a white wine spritz.
Not much else.
Maybe a pina colada.
The industrial.
Food complex had pretty muchdestroyed craft cocktails.

(06:08):
Everything came out of a can or,um, a gun or a bottle.
Or a gun.
Soda, guns.
Yeah.
the only places that I would goin the eighties when I was
drinking that made decent drinkswere tiki bars.
And it was because they weredoing what they always did.
Um, back in the day, back in thethirties and forties when the,
you know, the, the whole goldenage, they never changed.

(06:29):
Um, they, maybe it was just outof habit or, or you know, don't,
if it, if it ain't broke, don'tfix it, you know.
But, um, well, can we dive intothat?
I just wanna stop you rightthere because that's very
interesting.
'cause I think Tiki, especiallythe dawn of the pre-prohibition
renaissance of pre three, threeingredient pre-prohibition
drinks.
I think I, I was one of thoseyoung bartenders, I looked down

(06:52):
my nose at tiki drinks'cause I'dnever had a good one.
Right.
And I didn't know there wasactual technique behind it, but
that was actually the onlyextent surviving quality.
Genre left.
And is that because it startedlater?
Is that because old guys held onlonger?
Is it'cause it was sweet.
Why was that still here?
Why were there still remnants ofthat alive?

(07:13):
Well, that's a good question,but let me back up a little bit
because what you said aboutthinking that tiki drinks were
part of the problem, in theearly.
Cocktail Renaissance is, isexactly what I encountered.
I think we're getting ahead ofourselves now, but why not?
Let's jump around in time.
Let's, let's be Elaine Reneeinstead of Marvel movie makers.
Um, the, uh, the situation is, Iencountered it when I first

(07:35):
started, um, finding and, andwriting about and, um, and, and
touting all of these classicTiggy drinks that had never been
written down is that no craftcocktail bartender would touch
'em with a 10 foot tiggy pole.
Mm-hmm.
Now, they were not interested.
They thought it was part of theproblem, and that is because the
younger bartenders.
Kraft cocktail bartender.
We're talking about the latenineties early aughts.

(07:56):
Now the beginning of theRenaissance, which was like, uh,
London, Chicago, New York, um,and New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Thank you very much.
Let us not forget New Brunswick,um, a hotspot, if ever there was
one, but for cocktails itcertainly was.
Yes.
They all, what they knew abouttiki drinks was just the, the
devolution of them.
They knew about the devolvedversions.

(08:16):
Right.
I mean, in 1987, you were aslikely to, you were more likely
to have Kool-Aid in yourplanter's punch than actual
juice.
Oh, it, it was, it was worsethan that.
If you ordered a planter's punchback then or a daiquiri, both
drinks would come in a giant.
Hurricane glass, they'd befrozen, like, uh, seven 11
Slurpees.
There'd be whipped cream on top,and then there would be like

(08:37):
grenadine pour on the whippedcream, and then there'd be a
chariot add insult to all thoseinjuries.
Uh, so I'm serious that's whatyou would get.
And that for a long time, Ithought that's what a daiquiri
was.
The first time somebody gave mea daiquiri and a coop, it was
like, what, what the fuck isthis?
You know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, um, to get back to the,the craft cocktail scene, uh, at
the turn of the century.
Um, so that's what they knew.

(08:58):
They, they, they thought thesewere syrupy, slushy cruise ship
drinks.
Sure.
And they did not wanna beserving them in the bar.
The whole ethos of the craftcocktail scene, especially the
first wave, was we want to getback to the roots.
We wanna get back to cocktailsas a craft, right.
Um, with, uh, fresh ingredients,you know, with, uh, premium
spirits, made the way they'resupposed to be made, not just
used in a blender.
I remember, I don't wannatarnish Toby Millennium, but one

(09:20):
of the, um, one of thebartenders at the, uh, violet
hour.
I remember this quote because itsort of struck me right through
the heart.
this was in the early, late,early two thousands.
Um, he said, if anybody evertried to bring a blender in my
bar, I'd throw it in them downthe stairs.
Oh, yeah.
I, I'm share with you personalhistory, Okay.

(09:41):
Statue of Limitation has runout.
Uh, frog the peach people wouldmake blender drinks, and they
weren't asking me to make reallygreat blender drinks, but they'd
want me to make pina coladas.
Sorry.
Blender's broken.
And then that's one way to dealwith it.
I, I was like, ah, blender'sbroken.
Why is it broken?
Because I pulled the plug out.
somebody put a spoon in it?
I don't know what happened.

(10:01):
It's making sudden it's notworking.
So good.
It's true, but it's true.
We, we didn't fricking knowYeah.
Until toss.
Well, the, you were, you weresmart about the Pina'cause.
It is a crap drink.
I mean, I, I'm not going todefend that particular drink.
I mean, it's, it's never beengood.
It wasn't good in 1954 when itwas invented, uh, in, San Juan.
It's not good now.

(10:22):
Mm-hmm.
It's an unbalanced drink.
It has no sour element.
It's just sweet.
And then, uh, lactic.
Cream.
And it's like, I mean, you can'targue with success.
It is probably the most famousdrink ever created.
And, uh, as Jared and Anastasia,the two cocktail, yes, thank
you.
Um, as, as he once wrote in theJournal of the American
cocktail, it's the mostsuccessful drink of all time.

(10:43):
You can't argue people likepineapple, coconut ice cream.
So they like a pina colada.
But to me it's a bad, if I, if Igot a nickel every time somebody
made one, I would, I'd be a bigfan, but I, but I don't.
So anyway, so you walk into aworld where the only, the, the
only sort extent, you know,still quality drinks being made
are in the tiki realm.
Yeah.
And it gets, it gets no respect.
like comedians of your, becausethere were some real tiki

(11:05):
drinks, but still, most of thetiki drinks that most of us were
drinking at Lee's Hawaiian andLyndhurst were, I was thinking
of the shipwreck in SeasidePark.
Okay.
So, but whatever.
Uh, and terrible drinks.
But, so what did you see?
What did you change?
Well, to flash back again, uh,to the 1980s, um, I was very
happily drinking these drinksand, and it was, it was just my

(11:29):
preferred cocktail.
And I liked being in, uh, tikibars and restaurants.
There were a lot of really nice,very high end white tablecloth,
Polynesian themed restaurantsstill left, uh, particularly
Trader V's in Beverly Hills.
Mm-hmm.
these were fine dining placesback in the day.
Uh, and I never gave it anotherthought.
I mean, I, I'm enjoying thesedrinks.
I like them.
Um, gradually the places startedto go out of business and part

(11:53):
of the reason, especially withhigh end places like Vix and on
the Beach, Beachcombers andLuelle and all that were that,
um, their overhead was just toohigh and the people had moved
on.
The fad was over, um, after 40years, by the way.
I mean, this was the longestlived cocktail trend.
I think in American history islike unquestionably, I mean from
the, from uh, the depression todisco basically.

(12:14):
Well, I think one of the thingsthat people, the younger
generation doesn't realize iswhen I bartended.
You could put out, you know,four Manhattans, three gin and
tonics.
Six rum and Cokes in threeminutes.
Right.
You could put those drinks outlike lightning.
So all of a sudden you had toinvest in time and in people and

(12:38):
in, you know, your cocktail'sgonna be two minutes.
My goodness.
When we opened in 1992, when wetold people their cocktail was
gonna take five minutes, theywere like, why would a cocktail
take five minutes?
Yeah.
What, like, how could, how couldthat be?
You're distilling the gin,whatcha doing?
Yeah.
Well, mark, that's a greatpoint.
And that's one of the reasonswhy these drinks went away, um,
is because places like, I mean,I talked to, um, Bob Espino, an

(13:00):
old, uh, bar manager from theContiki chain, uh, that was in
all the Sheraton hotels, justlike Trader Vick's was in the,
uh, Hilton chain.
And he told me that they, hewould have eight bartenders on
the line at one time, and it waslike a Ford assembly line.
Somebody would be making the iceshell, somebody else would be
building the drink.
Somebody else would be shakingthem.
Somebody else would be pouringthem, and you would get.

(13:20):
A very complicated eightingredient drink in two minutes.
Um, but that's a lot of people.
That's a lot of money.
you, you can't keep that up ifthe fed's over, you know?
Well, and I remember when, whenwe, when we started bartending,
so I started in 86.
people would order a tiki drinkand we would have some, Mr.
Boston died, which was, hadformerly been a great guide and
then wasn't, and then was again,and now is kind of in the

(13:40):
middle.
but you would make the hurricaneor the Singapore sling or
whatever, and it was just crap,right?
It was a lot of different kindsof crap.
It was one of those, it um, Iremember when we were young
bartenders, we'd make the LongIsland iced teas and the
Singapore things.
You would have all the bottlesfor the Long Island iced tea
right next to each other.
So you could grab three bottlesin each hand and go like this.

(14:01):
And, and who, how much went in,I don't fucking know about the
same amount of each thing.
Right.
and that about the same amountof each, and that's what this,
the, the bottle that was lowergot a little more than the
bottle that was higher.
Right.
So, So that's why it got norespect.
But at the same time, we werethese old guys with the old
recipes making, you know, thecocktail renaissance of the
pre-prohibition cocktails.
And that sort of ilk was, theywere three ingredients.

(14:25):
They were three or fouringredients, and this is six or
seven multiple kinds of basespirit, different blends of rum,
but I think that the interestingthing that I kind of want to get
to is that shit wasn't writtendown anywhere.
No, you're absolutely right.
And I discovered this, um, whenthese places started closing up.
And, uh, it occurred to me thatif I wanted to keep drinking my

(14:46):
favorite kind of drink, I'd justhave to learn how to make them
at home.
Uh, and I went looking forrecipes and, uh, at this time
there was no internet.
There were used bookstores andthere were libraries.
Uh, and that's where I went.
And I found very littledrinkable recipes.
I mean, there were recipes forthe zombie, there were recipes
for the Navy garage.
There were recipes for all thesedrinks.

(15:07):
And I would make them at homeand they all sucked.
And it's like, why did thistrend keep going for 40 years?
And why am I drinking goodversions of these in the bars?
There's a disconnect here.
Mm-hmm.
And, looking at old magazines,the Periodical Index, uh, you
know, taking Forever Microfichewas another, all these ancient,
ancient things that probablyhalf the people here, luckily
for them, will never encounter.

(15:29):
Um, they revealed very little.
That was good.
I find there was one usedbookstore in Glendale,
California, which is not farfrom where I lived in Hollywood,
that had, um.
I used cocktail book section andI'd never, you rarely ran into
that.
It was always cookbook sectionsand there would be the three or
four old cocktail books in this.

(15:50):
So this was an entire cocktail,and I, I basically rated it.
And at that time, you could getthings like the 1928 Jerry
Thomas, uh, reissue, um, by, uh,Asbury five bucks.
Yeah.
You know, and, uh, and the samething with, um, Charles Baker
and all these classic books.
Uh, um, uh, Ted Sassier, I was,I bought all these things for

(16:11):
nothing, you know, and, uh, and,and I would comb them looking
for decent tiggy recipes andeven the Esquire.
Uh, drink book, which was, had alot of great recipes in it.
And Ted Sasser's book, which hadreal recipes from real
restaurants, very little.
Then I found the 1972 Trader VicBar Guide Uhhuh, a long outer
print.
But at that point, Vic was amultimillionaire.

(16:34):
He was kind of the Gordon Ramseyof his day.
He was, um, you know, a sort ofa superstar chef restaurateur.
And, and at that point he feltconfident enough to I'm just
gonna reveal the recipes.
People are gonna still come tomy restaurant, you know?
Right, right.
And that was, uh, that was aneyeopener because I could take
that book to Trader v's.
Uh, and uh, have it under thetable.
And I, and I, I could order adrink from the menu and then

(16:56):
look it up.
Oh, alright.
That's what I'm drinking, and I,I can train my palate and learn
the ABCs of these things thatway.
The other way was to go to thebars that were still around and
watch them make the drinks.
And you learn very little thatway because.
Um, my local watering hole, TET,uh, which was started in 1961 by

(17:16):
Ray Bowen, who was one of Donthe beef crumb's, original
bartenders, and basicallypoached all of Don's secret
recipes.
And he made them in his own bar.
Um, they were stellar drinks,but you could never tell what
was in them from watching themmake them because the bottles
didn't have labels.
Well, that was like, was a bigtrademark of Don Beach.
And Trader Vic was, the recipeswere all secret and not written

(17:38):
down.
Even the bartenders didn't knowwhat they were making.
What I could learn from the tikit uh, was how these drinks were
made.
And almost all of them were madeusing a flash blending process,
a top down Hamilton Beach mixer,uh, not the bottom up, uh,
wearing.
And they would blend for justthree seconds with a very
carefully measured amount ofcrushed ice, the same way that

(18:00):
they measured the otheringredients.
And the idea was consistency.
That way.
The drink tastes the same everytime.
Instant dilution, instant chill,instant aeration to give it a
mouth feel that you can't get byshaking or by doing a and you
don't get a slushy drink becauseyou don't have that much ice in
there, right?
I'm talking about four, youknow, half a cup, four ounces of
ice, right?
Maybe or two jiggers of ice, youknow?

(18:21):
I could learn the technique thatway.
But I still didn't have therecipes to try out that
technique.
Don, I, I found Vick's recipe.
Sure.
But, you know, Vick's Navy Groggrecipe in the book, because he
was still selling shit, was uh,three ounces of Trader Vic Navy
Grogg Rum.
Yeah.
And three ounces of Trader VicNavy Grogg mix.
Right, right.
Uh, you know, so that wasn'tvery helpful.
You know, the, the Esquire barguide had a DA partial, the

(18:43):
Beach Cummer recipe.
He wouldn't reveal the wholething.
Theirs was, um, three quarter,uh, lime, three quarter
grapefruit, three quarter simplesyrup.
And then, uh, he listed threedifferent rums.
So I knew what those rums were.
but I made the drink and it waslike, nah, that doesn't taste
any down.
Still not the real drink.
How did you hunt down the realrecipes?

(19:03):
Well, it was shoe leather.
I was fortunately in the rightplace at the right time.
I was in Los Angeles in the1990s, and by the way, this is
just a hobby.
I wasn't, I didn't wanna be abartender, I didn't wanna open a
restaurant.
I wanted to be drink the drinksI liked.
Mm-hmm.
This was just a hobby for me,strictly amateur.
but I went further and furtherdown this rabbit hole.
And every so often in LosAngeles, you would randomly

(19:27):
encounter.
Um, somebody who had worked atDon the Beach come, or had
worked at the luau, had workedat, I mean, a telephone repair
guy came in one day, our phonewas out at home, came in and he
saw all the tiki crap in, in myroom, and he said, um, oh yeah,
I used to work at a place calledThe Luau in Beverly Hills.
I was like, really?
Did you have any drink recipes?
You know, he just like, it was,it was that random.

(19:49):
Forget the phone.
Yeah, just the phone.
No, but my brother, my brothermight went down.
It took an hour to fix.
Yeah, right.
Um, but I was in advertising atthat point, a copywriter and uh,
a client of mine wanted to meet.
A and I and his wife and I at aChinese restaurant called Madam
W in Santa Monica.
And it's like, ugh, really?
Cantonese food.
I mean, the big deal then wasChelon Nan.

(20:11):
Right, right.
You know, and Madam w was likeold school Chinese.
but we went, we were a, and Iwere early.
We went to the bar, which wasempty.
Uh, and there was a Filipino guybehind the bar who turned out
later.
I learned his name was TonyRamos.
And that he was Frank Sinatra'sbartender at Don the Beach and
would make Frank his Navy grosin his private room.
Uh, and uh, I, the only reason Ifound that out was because he

(20:33):
gave me a drink menu.
And in, at this point in theearly nineties, a cocktail menu
was a very weird thing to get.
Yeah, you didn't see that.
Yeah.
You didn't get them, you know,you got the mat bars'cause they
had 30 different drinks, but younever got them in a restaurant
bar.
Um, and he handed me a cocktailmenu and I looked at it and I
knew enough from my collectionof old menus, and old articles
about Don Beast, that these werehis drinks.

(20:55):
Um, there was a rum barrel,there was a new nui, there was
like all this stuff.
Right.
And so I ordered as much as Icould before the, the boss got
there and, uh, uh, and startedtalking to him.
And eventually he became kind ofa, I never asked him for a
recipe.
I was just not that.
Um.
Nervy Uhhuh.
Uh, also should have spent moretime in Jersey.

(21:16):
Yeah.
Really?
Well, uh, so, but I became aregular there.
We drive in from, you know,across town and I told all my,
what few Tiki friends I had,'cause again, you know, it's
totally random.
If he met somebody who was intothis stuff.
We went there and he became kindof like our, our guru, you know.
We would order these drinks.
And so how did you come up with,how did the recipes get into
your, your grubby little hands?
There was a guy who you mayknow, uh, Dr.

(21:39):
Cocktail.
Ted Ha.
Ted ha Sure.
He was the, um, alpha guy that Iwas not.
Um, I was a strictly betacustomer.
Uh, I would order the drinks, bevery grateful.
I would tip well and talk and fitry to find out, I would
actually write this stuff downon a matchbook cover.
Um, I would ask him questions,but it'd be totally off the
cuff.
It was not a, a set timeinterview.

(21:59):
there would be a lull duringservice, But Ted, I took Ted
there.
And, uh, Ted, if, if, if you'veever heard him talk, he sounds
like a Jimmy Stewart.
Um, only a Jimmy Stewart as acharming visitor from the 18th
century.
so I took him there and he wasvery outgoing guy and he, and,
uh, he dressed at that time, um,like a 1920s f Scott

(22:20):
Fitzgerald's happened.
He drove an old 1930s Packard.
Um, he was sort of living thatvintage life and his interest
was craft cocktails,pre-prohibition.
Craft cocktails.
Right.
But I took him there.
Um, and, um, he, he had someTony's drinks.
He was going.
Hey, Tony, what's in this one?
You know, it was a Montego Bay.
What's, what's in this MontegoBay?
And, and, and Bar?

(22:40):
He wrote it down and gave it tohim.
Oh, that's awesome.
And, and there were, I got threeDonna Beachcomber recipes.
The first ones I ever gotbecause of Ted at Tony Rounds.
And this, it was a process thatrepeated itself with different
people at different bars.
You know, you never knew whoyou're gonna run into.
How do we get to your firstbook?
Because that's when the worldthen said everyone who, who has
a, a father or an uncle or abrother who.

(23:01):
You know, passes away orretires, and they find their
notebook, they send them, theysend it to you.
Well, that eventually, thateventually happened.
And that's all thanks to theinternet.
Um, you know, when, when itbecame easier to get in touch
with people or for them to getin touch with me who had this
knowledge.
Anyway, um, long story short, toanswer your first question, um,
uh, we're celebrating the 30thanniversary of the First Beach

(23:22):
Marbury booklet, uh, which wasdone as a sort of a cut and
paste zine.
This was before I had a computeranyway.
I mean, I, before Photoshop, atany rate.
put it out in 1995.
And the only reason I did itagain, strictly amateur, I, I
didn't.
Considered myself to be acocktail writer at all.
I was in trying to get into themovie business.
Um, I should have been workingon that instead of this.

(23:42):
But, um, this is kind of thehobby that took over my life.
Basically.
The siren song of Tiki.
Yes.
Yes.
Well, lemme just before I losemy, because I, I can't have a, I
don't have a train of thoughtanymore.
I have maybe a caboose and acoal car.
That's about it.
so gradually, one by one, youwould randomly meet people who
were into the same stuff youwere.

(24:03):
And I, and I think by the earlynineties I knew like five guys,
and one of them was, uh, well,his name was Kurt Brown.
Uh, he worked as a art artdirector for the Santa Monica
Outlook and he was into tikistuff and he was a surfer and he
had a place in Venice Beach, uh,and a backyard.
And he would invite his, uh,surfer friends over, uh, for Lu
House.
And he found out I wasinterested in the drink stuff

(24:26):
and he had me make the punchesat the Lu house.
Um, so I would, and then, um,uh, people would come up to me
and say, Hey, what's in this?
This is really good.
Now, when I asked that questionto of Ray Bowen, or when I asked
that question of any of thebartenders at, uh, trader V's.
Or many of the other places Iwent and I said, what's, this is
great drink?
What's in it?
The answer would always be Romanfruit juice.

(24:48):
You know, it is like, this islike, how dare you?
You know, these are, these aretrade secrets, you know?
I was like, um, but I thought,I'm not gonna be that guy.
You know, what's, why would I bethat guy?
So I, I did a little cut andpasting.
Here, here's everything I know,and one of those found its way
up to a comic book publisher inSan Jose.
Uh, it was a underground comic,alternative comic, actually.

(25:09):
Slave Labor Graphics was thename of the company.
And the, uh, owner, Dan Vado hadtwo main interests, um, monkeys
and Tiki, um, kind of gotogether.
And, but, um, and he got intouch with me through, um, Kurt,
who had his tiki, his Nam Tikiwas OT Von Stroheim, Kurt Brown.
And, uh, I complimented him onceon his, um, uh, his knowledge of

(25:31):
early silent cinema, uh, OT vonStroheim, the famous film
director, me widow and greed andall that.
And, and I said, yeah, so younamed yourself after, uh, the
film director.
He goes, who?
So he had no idea.
He just, he just saw thatrandomly somewhere and said,
that sounds cool, you know?
But anyway, I digress.
Um.

(25:51):
So Dan Vato put out the firstgrog three years later, as in a
spiral bound book form.
And then there was a second onespiral bound form.
As I got more and more, morerecipes and I could correct
inferior versions of otherrecipes or get earlier versions.
Finally, after years and yearsand years and, um, literally
about a decade of wondering whatwas in all these Don the beach

(26:12):
come drinks.
Um, and as I found out from a1948 Saturday evening post
article that I dug up out of a,I think it was e by that time
there was eBay something, the,uh, reporter said, uh, well,
Don's recipes are top secretbecause everybody's stealing
them and opening up rivalrestaurants, and he's tired of,

(26:32):
uh, losing market share.
So he put his recipes in code,um, and that's why, and there,
there's either nothing on thelabel of the bottle.
It was either an old bartenderwho knew what was in it, or he
would have things like numberDon spices number two or, or
dashes number four, or whatever.
That would be the label.
So if I hire, um, if I hiredDickie to 10 bar down the Beach

(26:56):
Comer, uh, but I don't know him,I don't know if he is gonna be
tempted away by somebodyoffering him more money, he's
probably gonna bring'em all backto his restaurants, just so you
know.
Well, this would obviously bebefore he became the Dickie
Brandon.
But, uh, And Dickie would lookat the recipes.
He go, okay, so Annunu is, uh,two ounces St.
Croix, uh, quarter ounce numbertwo, quarter ounce number four.
Orange fine.
Good.
So he'd turn around to the backbar and there would be number

(27:18):
two and number four on thelabel.
Now, um, Francis, if you hireDicky away because you wanna
cash in on this huge trend, hedidn't know it was in those
drinks.
Well, he would go to your backbar and he'd make the be happy
to make the drink for you.
But where's your number two?
Where's your number four?
So were you able to crack thecode if what was in those days?
It took about 10 years.
That's amazing.
But here, but the first I had toget the recipes and finally, um,

(27:39):
a lady named Jennifer Santiagowas a, a hairdresser for the
movies, lived in, uh, Virginia,Uhhuh.
She got in touch with me throughauto and um.
She said, well, my father, DickSantiago was a maitre d at Don's
in 1937 through the war.
And, uh, he had this littleblack book of recipes, like a
little telephone book they usedto keep in his, um, shirt

(28:00):
pocket.
And would you be interested?
Wow.
I said, yeah.
Yeah.
So she was kind enough to xeroxthem and I got them.
And some of them wereinterpretable because I had,
they didn't tell you how to makethe drink.
They didn't say shake, blend oranything like that.
Right.
But I knew from the TET and alsofrom the balance, if, if
somebody, if something had threeounces of ruminate and one and a

(28:20):
half ounces of, of modifiers,right.
syrup, fruit juice, whatever,you knew that it had to be
blended because you needed thedeletion from the, from the,
from the ice.
So I, I, I knew how to do thatthanks to the Tgt.
Alright, so all the bartendersout there, what you need to do
if you wanna be really good isquit your job and just do
nothing but research andresearch and research for 10

(28:43):
years.
And then you can, you can makesome really cool cocktails.
I was doing other stuff.
But being where we are in thecity of New Orleans, I wanna, I
Dickie thank you for yourpatience.
for those of you who, who don'tknow about New Orleans, the
Brennan family is restaurantroyalty here since the 1940s at
the very least.
like I said, we're, we're therestaurant guys everywhere else.

(29:03):
Dicky Brennan's a restaurant guyhere, Lolly Brennan and, and his
cousin c Martin Own Commander'sPalace.
Right now, the Brennan familyhas been involved in, in
restaurants here forever.
Dickie has a bunch ofrestaurants on his own,
including, Dickie, BrendanSteakhouse, which is amazing.
but what a lot of people don'tknow is that, uh, you also had
a, an early start in Tiki backin, uh, in Mexico City you

(29:24):
worked at, at a tiki restaurant.
So for, but before we get intoyou and Tiki, uh, you are
royalty here in this town.
Um, so I, I, I, I asked Jeffabout his house.
I'm gonna ask you about yourcity.
Talk to us about, he tells thecocktail New Orleans cocktails
here and are too many bartendersfor you this time of year over
year.
You know what's going on?

(29:44):
Thank you, This, this royalstuff.
I don't, we don't know how todeal with that.
So you got, everything is namedRoyal down here.
We're really happy to have youhere let me say this.
Jeff and I knew who they werebefore they came and did
Latitude 29.
And these guys could go anywherein the world they wanted to from
Latitude 29.

(30:06):
And when they decided to do ithere in New Orleans, what a gift
for New Orleans.
And fortunately for mepersonally, we've become really
good friends.
So, uh, I get to hang out withthese living legends and, uh,
you know, just hearing what he'ssaying today and what I've
heard, you know, for the yearswe've gotten to be friends.

(30:27):
Does anybody else agree this isa movie?
Oh yeah, it's definitely amovie.
Why wouldn't we make a movieabout, you know, the passion and
your path, but, um, I think it'dbe one hell of a move in.
Be great for everybody.
Well make, making a movie willdrive you to drink, but we're
already there, so why we canskip that step.
So Dickie, you have obviouslyrich roots in this town and a

(30:50):
lot of family and my goodness, Imean, I mean people with the
name Brennan or cousins there,there must be 75 New Orleans
restaurants Somehow, somehow ourtribute to you or people who
work for you or people with yourname.
But I just wanted you to know, Isaw your cousin t yesterday and

(31:10):
she said that, the fish shecaught on your fishing trip this
weekend was way bigger.
Yeah.
She said, tell Dickie my fish isbigger.
Just like, just letting you knowit's out there.
She's broadcasting it that sheis a better picture to.
So can you give us, I'll showyou a picture later.
So can you give us now Dickie,I, I have to say, so this is a
real restaurant town with themost important restaurant towns
in America.

(31:31):
When you talk about palace.
Emeril Lag started CommandersPalace.
One of the first celebrity chefsin America was Paul Prude, who
when you were a kid, was a chefat Commanders Palace and you
knew him back then.
Can you give us just a littlebit of the family tree of the
Brennans and what's gone onsince, Owen started, you know,
in 1946 or whenever it was, hestarted, I, I'd love to'cause

(31:52):
it's, it's a crazy story.
Uh, you know, back in theforties, my dad's oldest
brother, uh, there was six kidsand there was five years between
each kid.
So, um, isn't that interesting?
But, so the oldest brother Owen,uh, was kind of an entrepreneur.
He was selling liquor and somemen said, look, we want to help

(32:15):
you buy this place on BourbonStreet.
And it was the old absent house,so.
Um, and our family came herefrom Ireland, so made a lot of
sense that the Brennan's had theold Abson house, which was a
hell of a saloon.
It was a piano bar on BourbonStreet, and we were bartenders
and, um, having a good old time.

(32:36):
sweet Emma Fatz, peon, you know,these incredible piano players.
But all next to us were thesewonderful French restaurants,
all run by classically trainedFrenchmen.
So the late forties across thestreet from the old absent house
was the Bure restaurant, and itbecame available and our family
was like, well, let's you know,all our patrons want food.

(32:56):
Let's, let's open a restaurant.
And my dad's oldest sisterAdelaide, you know, they grew up
in the our channel and she wasthe family member that wanted,
she took care of every herlittle brothers and sisters and
wanted'em to get educated.
I mean, she wanted the family togo from being.
Working class poor to, you know,being educated.
And so she said, if we're doinga restaurant, it's gonna be

(33:18):
nice.
Well, nice.
In the late forties in NewOrleans was French.
So the original sign on theoriginal Brendan's restaurant on
Bourbon Street was Brennan'sFrench restaurant.
Yeah.
The famous Bruno's, half a blockaway is Gala Uhhuh, a hundred
year old classical, uh, Frenchrestaurant.
Across the street was Arno's,another classic French

(33:42):
restaurant.
And then around the corner wasAntoine's, which is the oldest
French restaurant in America,all run by classical trained
Frenchmen.
And here the Brendan's, thebartenders from the Irish
channel, like let's do a Frenchrestaurant.
That was some big green balls iswhat that was.
It makes no sense.
I don't, so, so they, so theyhad a lease, you know, they were

(34:04):
doing good.
It's a five year lease.
It ran out and the landlordsaid, I want a piece of the
business and I'm raising therent.
So we ended the lease.
We found a location on RoyalStreet, which was back then,
there was three or four blockson Bourbon Street at nighttime.
That was it.
Royal Street was totally retail,dead at nighttime, whatever.

(34:25):
And I like the way my familyrolls.
'cause the last day of thelease, all the customers came.
We had lunch, and then whenlunch was over, everybody
grabbed chairs, pots, pans, allthe kitchen.
And we had a band.
And we second lined over toBrendan's on Royal Street.
Love it.
Went in the building and haddinner and threw a party.

(34:47):
And that was the next chapter.
You know, kept going.
we had a bar in New Brunswick dothings kind of similar.
They moved from, from onelocation to the other.
I'll say the name of the bar'cause I wanna give the full
details.
Alright, well why don't you goahead and give the full details
because, because I'm afraid tosay we're in New Jersey,
allegedly there was this bar andthey were gonna move from one

(35:08):
street to another and they hadthe oldest bar in New Brunswick
inside the bar, like physicalbar.
And it was on this hill thatwent kind of down to another
street and had to go across thisway and then down and around.
And the guy, uh, who was ownerof the bar was a real
interesting character, he didn'treally play by the rules.
So he got his own employees.
They got a permit to close thestreet for one day and they're

(35:29):
gonna move this 160 year old bardown over and around like 40
foot bar, and so they got abunch of rollers, which you
basically took telephone polesand cut them up.
So they were like, you know,four foot length.
And they rolled it like, style.
Like they were building apyramid.
Yes.
Like they were moving the rocksfor the pyramid.
And so they roll it down It wasterribly dangerous.
And he was, this was theeighties and he was like,

(35:52):
alright, I got free cocaine foreverybody.
Let's move this fucking bar.
And literally moved, put linesof cocaine on the bar.
Isha boy took their turn, gether done, and then volunteered
right up.
So it's like a less wholesomeversion of the Brennan story
from the 1940s.
Sounds like a normal day in NewOrleans.

(36:13):
Yeah, that's a New Jersey secondline, right?
Well, so, so I gotta ask youguys, so you guys bond over
Tiki, um, but there's a wholething, and I wanna ask you both
because you know, you, I mean,you've created a whole bunch of
different concepts here.
You do.
Your family proud.
Here, hold on one second.
Cheers.
Oh, here, here, here, here.
To our lovely audience.
Make yourself a drink.

(36:33):
If you're listening to this,unless you're driving, It's
delicious.
Thank you.
So, so I wanna stick with theBrennan family for a while.
'cause Dickey you have now, you,you two generations.
Hes, and, um, so the, the Irishfamily opens up a French
restaurant in a city that isbasically the most French city
in America.
So that is a big finger up inthe air.
And you made that work.

(36:54):
So then Dickie comes along andhe al he, most of your, the
predecessors of you stuck to oneor two concepts and sort of
stayed in Atlantic except forthat.
But you opened up a across allkinds of the, restaurants one
expects to find in New Orleans,but you also in, in your
steakhouse.
people were really surprised bythat because like an Irish

(37:14):
family running a Frenchrestaurant, you opened a
steakhouse in the biggestseafood town in America.
This was not a steak town, butyour steakhouse is the, is the
anchor steakhouse for the city.
You know, my dad, was nevercomfortable being an Irishman
saying he was running a Frenchrestaurant.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, we lived in the, uh, soyou had the Irish channel and

(37:35):
next to it is the GardenDistrict.
So all the Brendans that grew upin the Irish channel is a, the,
the dream in life was to have ahouse in the garden district.
So when I grew up as a kid.
We all live within a block ofeach other.
You know, me and all my cousinsand the, the neighborhood
restaurant was Commander'sPalace and we all moved in the
neighborhood in the sixties,well, like 67, Mr.

(37:56):
Moran passes away.
So my dad walks over to payrespects Ms.
Moran and she's 80 and she'slike, I don't wanna run a
restaurant.
Kids aren't in.
And he's like, well, you know,we run restaurants in the French
court.
We, we live in the neighborhood.
Let me know if you areinterested.
And everybody said, don't buyit.
You know, our bankers terms.
And my dad's like, you gotta becrazy.

(38:18):
This, you know, and it was veryrun down back in the, and so we
bought Commanders The, theoldest brother who got us into
the business.
Had a heart attack and died at45.
So he didn't see the move atthe, the new Brennan's, he did
the original restaurant thatpassed away.
We had the three sons as theygot older, you know, and the

(38:41):
brothers and sisters had builtthe business and they were
coming into the business.
It was just a differentphilosophy.
So we ended up, my dad'sgeneration split the business,
so my dad and his brother andsisters left the original
Brennan's and moved intoCommanders and started over.
And at that point, my dad andPaul PDO had worked at the

(39:02):
Brennan's downtown as a bus boy.
So they knew Paul, but then whenPaul left Brennan's, he started
cooking.
'cause he grew up, you know, ina family that cooked.
He said, Hey Paul, why don't youtry this cooking thing?
It might work, it might workout.
It might work out, might workout for you, might work.
So they, I mean, my dad's like,I, I don't want a French chef.
I want an American chef.
You know, someone that knows thefarms, a fisherman.

(39:23):
You know, I mean, back then thesixties, we weren't doing farm
to table.
Everything was processed andcoming in from overseas.
And so my dad knew that.
Paul said, let's give it a try.
I, I literally have an, a coffeecookbook that my dad has pencil
marks in.
'cause he'd give it to Paul andsay, here, make a stock.
'cause Paul back then was usingbeef base or chicken base.

(39:44):
Mm-hmm.
You know, everybody was, Paulhad no base's, just the way it
was done.
Right.
But he had no formal education.
But, so in anything, the man,nobody was more sincere or
wanted to know more so, I mean,it was the right time for Paul.
But our family and everything wedid at Commanders was trying to
be American.
Instead of being a Frenchrestaurant.

(40:06):
And when Commanders turned ahundred years old, we did a
dinner and it was like the, whatwas the old, um, it was a, a, a
fine dining restaurant awardthat was in all the restaurants
around America.
And they did an annual banquetduring the restaurant show in
Chicago in May.
And our family said, can we hostthat banquet in New Orleans, get

(40:27):
all these other fond diningrestaurateur to help us
celebrate being a hundred yearold American restaurant?
Which they said Absolutely.
Was that holiday?
The holiday?
It was the holiday awards.
Holiday awards, yes.
Holiday awards.
And then saw all theserestaurateur.
And back then, I mean, the finedining restaurants were in
downtowns and there were French,German, Italian.
The menu was written in French,German, Italian, maybe some

(40:48):
English.
They were old, formal, you know,old world restaurants.
So they all come to New Orleans.
We, uh, we do this amazingdinner and on our menu it, it's
saw shell crab.
And we said, who, who brought itto us?
Some quail that we had a, afarmer in Mississippi that was
raising these, uh, pharaohquail, not bob white quail,

(41:11):
beautiful quail, all this stuffthat was coming in fresh and we
were saying who it was,everything was in, and every
wine we did was an Americanwine.
Yeah.

Francis (41:21):
This party, this party is legendary.
You can actually read about it,but it was kind of foundational
to the whole idea of like therebeing an American cuisine, an
unapologetic American cuisine.
there was a famous author.
Calvin Trillin And there's awonderful interview with him
where he says he would, he, hewould invariably get off an
airplane at some local airport.
And then somebody in like DesMoines or a suburb of Des Moines

(41:42):
would be like, oh, Mr.
Fillon, we're really glad you'rehere and, and you know, we have
an excellent little Frenchrestaurant.
We'd love for you to try.
And he said it was every, tookeverything in his body to not
respond.
What he thought was, he alwayswanted to say, no, you don't,
because, because of course you,if you need a little country
French restaurant, you need tobe in a little French
countryside.
Right.

(42:02):
And, and your family kind ofpioneered the idea, which was.
Unheard of back then was I canbe fancy without being French.
I'm gonna find some cool stufflocally, which of course
encourages more people to makemore cool stuff locally'cause
they have a restaurant they cansell it to.
But I heard that party was areal shit kicker man.
I mean if you read about thisparty, it was awesome.
It was shit kicker means good,but okay, but let me say this,

(42:25):
the majority of the people therewere old French, German, Italian
restaurateurs.
They weren't young Americanchefs or whatever.
But there were two peopleattended the dinner and the next
year they started the AmericanSymposium of Regional American
cuisine.
So I mean, that dinner kind ofinstigated going foundational

(42:46):
instead of having to say you'rea French restaurant.
And that was my dad going, I'mnot French, I'm an American.
And the one thing in Americagoing back over the years was if
French said we do this betterthan Amer.
The one thing we had wasAmerican beef.
Yeah.
And so that's what instigatedthe steakhouse was hands down

(43:07):
our prime beef, you know, andnowadays you've got Kobe, all
this other stuff.
But, so he wanted to open arestaurant that he never got to
do.
He wanted to do a steakhouse.
'cause it was so American.
Everything he wanted to do wasAmerican.
And um, so I got to do that.
That's pretty amazing.
And I have a, I have acollection of Irish whiskey.

(43:28):
Just to honor him or whatever.
So if anybody likes Irishwhiskey, I got a shitload of
Irish whiskey whiskey.
Is there anybody in the room wholikes Irish whiskey?
I'm just curious.
Any one of any of our listeners,one who like Irish whiskey, one
of the restaurant guys might bean an Irish that's, uh, yeah,
the, the, that steakhouse is,and by the way, the bar is a
great place to eat in thesteakhouse too.
Thank you.
Um, the, the Irish whiskeyprogram there is, is amazing.

(43:50):
You know, it's like, I love it.
There's nothing like it in thecity.
I love you.
What are we doing after thepodcast?
Mark?
Feels like we're going to havesome Thank you.
Brendan Steak whiskey.
Irish whiskey steak.
So listen, I just wanna, Iwanna, we, we we're, we're
coming to the, the end of ourallotted time, but we have a
little, we have a little bit oftime left.
I just wanna ask, I wanna askyou a, a, a question, throw it
back at either one of yougentlemen, because I think

(44:11):
that's how, and or maybe both ofyou gentlemen can answer second,
can you guys harmonize?
Can you do that?
Yeah, exactly.
No is the answer to thatquestion.
So.
So world's worst, doo, sohere's, we need more drinks,
sound better to us.
It doesn't make it, that'srecorded.
It doesn't sound better toanybody else.
So, so here was the interestingthing about like, okay,

(44:34):
cocktails we're in, we're kindof just about, we're gone.
And then, and then thepre-prohibition cocktail era
comes back, helped by our friendDavid over there and, and OGs,
um, you know, bring in thepre-prohibition era, cocktail
back, you know, the threeingredient, four ingredient
drinks.
And then, um, we spend, we knowobviously in the most important

(44:54):
person of that is Dale Degra.
You can't, right?
So we spend seven to 10 yearsrecreating classics because
again, this is before theinternet.
So we're, you know, using oldbooks and finding old books and
those recipes are wrong and theingredients have changed and
we're share, we're meeting eachother and saying, here's how you
fix that.
And we spent a long time, andthe cocktail list would have all

(45:14):
the histories of, this is fromthe thirties, this is from the
twenties.
And then, and only then did westart to increase the cannon.
Did we try, try to start tobring, bring more forward.
Now, Tiki is behind, right?
But at the same, but the sametoken.
Tiki does the same thing.
Tiki comes and we are recreatingthese old drinks.
But now we're also, you, youhave authored a lot of drinks.

(45:38):
I mean, you, you, you, if youlook at most of the historic
tiki drinks, you can bring themback to Trader V or Don Don
Beach, right?
But now people are creating newtiki drinks.
My question to both of you iswhat makes a tiki drink tiki?
So if we invent bar, is itfruit, juice and rum is, does
that enough?
Are there other things that canyou make a tiki drink that's not

(46:00):
fruit, juice and rum?
Now I'm a bartender.
I'm opening a bar.
I want to have a tiki section.
Don't necessarily want to pickone of the classics.
Do I need a swizzle stick?
What, what makes my tiki drink?
Well, that's, um, that's a veryinteresting question, and my
usual answer is, there's no suchthing as a tiki drink.
Um, it's a misnomer.
That, and the, and we can thank21st century craft cocktail

(46:24):
commentators, writers, bloggers,um, for coming up with that term
because they needed something todescribe this category.
They called them Tiggy drinks.
That's a 21st century term.
Back in the day, they, nobodywho made these things called
them Tiggy drinks.
They were called tropical drinksor exotic cocktails.
And, um, the de the definitionof a tropical drink goes back
to, I think the Caribbean madethat.

(46:48):
Their foundational kind ofcocktail.
It's basically sweet, sour,strong and weak.
The Planter's Punch formula,it's, uh, rum, lime, and sugar.
Mm-hmm.
And then, uh, the weak would beeither ice or water.
Um, that's the foundation,that's the, the building blocks
of all tropical drinks or whatwe now call Tiggy drinks.
The look, you can't stuff thecat back in the bag.

(47:08):
I, I call them tiggy drinks nowtoo, because that's the only
thing that it's, it's a shortcutto understanding the category.
Um, but basically, um, it usedto be that, let's just, let's
use the term Tiggy drinks, justfor sake of, um, brevity.
It used to be that in order to,uh, qualify as something like

(47:29):
that, it would have to be, uh,citrus spirit, usually rum, um,
sweeteners.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, and lots and lots ofmodifiers.
Basically a, a tiki drink is atropical drink, cubed or square.
What Don Beach did was everysingle part of that formula,

(47:49):
sweet, sour, strong, and weak.
He would complicate each elementinstead of just one citrus,
instead of just lime, he wouldadd lime and grapefruit, maybe
lime and grapefruit and orange,uh, and, and for the strong,
instead of just one rum, hewould, he would blend through
rems together, create a basespirit that no one expression
could give you.
Same thing with the sweet.

(48:10):
Instead of just, uh, sugar orsimple, he would infuse his
syrups with a cinnamon orvanilla or all.
So it has to be kind of baroque.
It doesn't have to be, is athing or on, on fire.
That that's the general, thegeneral.
The, the general, um, thing isthat, yes, uh, Baroque is a good
way to put it.
I've used that term myself.

(48:30):
Um, it's a, it's a complicated,A tea drink is a Caribbean
drink.
It's a planter's punch cubed orspoiler, basically on it.
But that no longer self appliesin the, in the 21st century,
especially in this decadebecause what you have is a new
generation of bartenders who nolonger have, have a prejudice
against these kind of drinks.
They're embracing it and they'removing it forward.

(48:50):
And one of the most gratifyingthings for me to see is, um,
these people coming up with, uh,stirred no citrus, but still
very baroque.
Um, uh, you know, cocktails likethe one that Dicky just drank
and, uh, using ingredients thatwere simply not available to the
old masters.
Yeah.
Um, yuzu has come into play alot of Southeast Asian

(49:13):
ingredients.
I saw pandan Pandan word.
That's big by the way.
Maybe my new favorite flavor.
Uh, crazy ingredients.
I wanna, I wanna throw a last, Ihave, I have a question, but,
but Dickie's got a, I'm sure yougotta take, I wanna throw the
same question to Dickie though,if you wanna have, have a run at
that or we'll give you a newquestion if you feel that's been
already dealt.
So I believe me, have no way toanswer and I'm hearing what

(49:35):
you're saying, but, you know,I'm, I grew up, have bartending
experience, but I'm a cook andmy whole life, if you take the
four old rest French restaurantsin New Orleans, which commanders
was one, the menus and three of'em are still the same menus
that were there over a hundredyears ago.
When we took over one of these ahundred year old restaurants, my

(49:58):
dad's philosophy and Ella waslet's evolve Creole cooking.
So when I hear you say you hatea pina colada, I want to
challenge you because it's aclassic.
And so I've spent a life oftaking old classic recipes, food
and trying to update'em and make'em, you know, um, we always had

(50:23):
brandy milk punches.
Well then we started doingbourbon milk punch because it
was American, you know?
So, I mean, I think there's alot of ways to evolve a classic
and even make it better than itwas, but it's a classic'cause it
was good.
Mm-hmm.
So, I mean, the bones, I loveyour version, I love your
version of a, of what a pinacolada could be.

(50:43):
Oh, we call it a ke colada.
Uh, and it's, um, we, we addsome sour.
We had some, we had a littlelime juice.
And uh, you know, that'sbasically all it takes to make
the drink balanced.
There you go.
So for me, what's exciting andcertainly, you know, tales of
the cocktail, I can't believewhoever had the vision do this.
I don't care where I go in theworld.
If I'm sitting there and I'm ina bar, hotel restaurant and I

(51:05):
say, I'm from New Orleans, I'dsay at least 70% of the time the
person taking care of me goes,oh, new Orleans Tales of the
cocktail.
Yeah.
And they either go, I've beenthere or I want to go.
And when I see what that part,'cause when I was a kid before
the Color Institute of Americaand to where Americans could

(51:25):
actually go learn a formaleducation of cooking, you know,
we didn't, it was Europeans cameinto, now it's Americans that
are great chefs.
The same thing's happening inthe spirit worlds.
So I mean, the men and womenbehind the bars making these
great drinks and all this stuff.
It's, it's, it's been a greatevolution and well, mark, I

(51:49):
think Tiki can be better andmore what than ever just with
what's going on and because ofthe pioneers like you.
A hundred percent.
Mark, I know you have aquestion.
I, I just wanna say one thingbefore your, your question is
what's really interesting if youlook at New Orleans and, uh, I
came to my first sales acocktail probably 20 years ago,
and s with you probably David,at the, at the 20 years at the,

(52:11):
the carousel bar, the ViewCarre, where you couldn't get a
good view Carre.
I said, this is cool, this bar'smoving exactly this or my is it
really?
But, but what was in interestingwas that New Orleans for a
while, it, it had lost thecocktail like the rest of
America.
Right.
But New Orleans had beeninstrumental in giving the

(52:33):
cocktail birth and giving thecocktail to America.
Uh, and then sort of, I thinkNew York got it back first.
Then sort London and Chicagocame on.
Actually it was London, thefirst, that's, that's my take
anyway.
I mean, other people mightdisagree, but I'm sorry it was
New Brunswick first and then see93, everybody I learned ball.
I learned something today.

(52:53):
I have say so.
But we're, that's what we teach.
But when Tales, the cocktailcame back to New Orleans, the
cocktail was not still alivehere.
It wasn't still in good shapehere.
Mm-hmm.
And so what, what I think iskind of beautiful is New Orleans
helped to give the cocktails tothe world and then it got
dormant.
And tales of the cocktail helpedgive the cocktail back to New
Orleans.
And it's taken its place.

(53:14):
Well Said's.
Beautiful.
Well said.

(53:35):
Alright, here we are.
It's 2025.
This mostly directed at Jeff,but either one of you please
answer.
So can you say that you have acon in this 2025.
Can you say you have acomprehensive cocktail menu
without having a nod to thiscategory?
Comprehensive.

(53:55):
No, because, and, and Imentioned London and, and let's
let, let me just say veryquickly.
To people in England.
And I was very surprised.
I was asked, nobody wanted me totalk about Tiggy drinks when the
craft cocktail thing started andthen there was cocktail
festivals.
It was, they weren't interested.
London was interested.
And the reason is to them, itwas just another category.

(54:17):
They were, they were discoveringclassic cocktails.
And to them that was a categoryof classic cocktail.
Those cocktail zombies inventedin the thirties, my invented in
the forties.
They, they had never had thisshit.
They didn't, they didn't have,yeah, they had never had a, the,
the shit versions.
So to them it was like, it'sjust a category.
And that's where we are today inthe us.
Um, you, the might the firstdrink that jumped the ship from

(54:40):
tiki bars to.
All bars, restaurant bars, um,craft cocktail bars said it was
the Ma Tide.
Yeah.
Uh, and, uh, you know,everybody's got their speck in
all these places and, andgradually you find, uh, the
Jungle Bird was another one.
And the reason for that isbecause it has Campari in it.
So the, you know, like, likemoth to flame, Kraft cocktail
bartenders, ah, bitter.
You know, so they, so they, thatone was the next one.

(55:02):
And by the way, that wasn'tjust, uh, the classic recipe
that was, that was served.
It was, um, craft cocktailversion of it, uh, by, um, uh,
Richie Baccato at, uh, PKNY inNew York, who, who changed it
quite a bit and made it a modernday classic.
Uh, but the bones were there.
I mean, we're, we're talkingabout basically his bones.
I mean, uh, the, the skeleton,the, the, the red thread, the

(55:22):
spine of, of all these drinks.
That doesn't change What changesis the flesh that you hang on it
and the, and, and how you dressit, you know?
Um, and, uh.
I do have to say we can't leavetoday without Dickie telling us
a little bit about the mono loain Mexico City Mo um, you know,
where, where monkeys wouldactually come down from the
ceiling on a, on a, on a ropeand deliver a drink.

(55:43):
Right.
Oh, you got this happened andthere were live flamingos inside
the restaurant and the, and the,yeah, so you gotta talk about
that a little bit.
Water features and punts.
No, I was my, I just finished mysenior year of high school and
before I went to college, and soI, my dad and I, I mean, I loved
being in the restaurant andgoing to college, but I was

(56:05):
gonna, he wanted me to geteducated, not working at our
restaurants, worked for otherpeople, so I was old enough.
And so I go down to Mexico Cityto work for Nick Noy that had,
uh, Delmonico's, but at the sametime down there for two months.
But he had this secondrestaurant.
This guy, Mr.
Noy was such a vision.

(56:26):
I mean, he was, but he wouldimplement and.
So I wanted to go, he wanted meto work it'cause it was a walk
in the kitchen.
You know, I've never worked on awalk, but the Monolo was so far
be, I mean it was trade of Vix,but in Mexico City that was just
off the charts.
And I'd say I, I, uh, I wouldlove to have gone to a bar with

(56:50):
the train monkeys deliver me adrink if you, if if you good
with it.
And honestly, I'm sure they do abetter job than some of the
servers that I've had.
I was just about to say, youbring me one is about as close
as I've ever had.
That's, that's, that was lowhanging fruit Man.
That was like the old dumbwaiter joke.
Like, I got a dumb waiter.
You wanna get another drink,Francis?
You Yeah, I do actually, becauseI wanted another drink.
I think we need to bring this toa close and I wanna say thank

(57:10):
you so much for welcoming us inNew Orleans, the restaurant
guys, in your city.
It has truly beenn.
Jeff, thanks so much.
Thanks.
we will be broadcasting thislive so everybody else can hear
it.
Thank heaven.
I'm Francis Shot.
I'm Mark Pascal.
We are the restaurant guys, andyou can always find out more at
restaurant guys Podcast do com.

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