New Orleans Already Bountiful Bar Scene Expands Further

Bartenders from around the U.S. have been making an annual summer journey to New Orleans for ten years now—ever since the liquor convention Tales of the Cocktail began in 2003. So it's only natural that some of them would get stuck on the place. With it's rich history of creating classic cocktails and plethora of beautiful old bars—not to mention the general joie de vivre of the place, New Orleans is made for the mixologist's temperament. The past years have seen the emigration of several notable mixers and shakers to the Crescent City—from New York, Minneapolis, Asheville and elsewhere. The direct and/or indirect result of this influx is a batch of new and worthy cocktail bars. In 2012, choosing where to drink in NOLA just got that much harder.

I wrote a roundup of a few (but not all) of the new places for The New York Times, visiting them all during the course of this years TOTC. I recommend them all. Here's the article:

Local Nectar

I've been wanting to write about the quintessentially New Orleans soda flavor called Nectar for about two years now. Imbibe finally gave me license. Here's the article:

Sweet Nectar 

If Susan Dunham’s grandmother and the Lyons family hadn’t happened to attend the same church, one of the signature flavors of New Orleans’ liquid cuisine might have been lost forever. 

That flavor is something called Nectar, and you’ll only find it in the Crescent City. It was created by I.L. Lyons, a Civil War officer and pharmacist who, after hanging up his saber, moved from South Carolina to New Orleans, where he founded I.L. Lyons Pharmaceutical Products in 1866. Some time after, he invented a beguiling, bright red syrup that tasted of vanilla and almonds. He sold it to a local chain of soda fountains called Katz and Besthoff pharmacies (known colloquially at K&B), where is was served three ways: as a soda (add selzter), a cream soda (add cream and seltzer) and an ice cream soda. The local population couldn’t get enough. In the final decades of the 20th century, however, soda fountains went the way of the drive-in theater, the Lyons family had sold the company and K&B was absorbed by Rite Aid. Nectar became a dim memory. 

It would have stayed that way, but for Dunham. “My grandmother grew up on Octavia Street and knew a lot of people from her church on St. Charles Avenue,” says Dunham, president of the Nectar Soda Company. Those worthies included some descendants of I.L. Lyons. Dunham’s grandma and the Lyons ran in the same wholesome circles. They shared a poker group and made fruitcakes together. So Dunham knew where to go when she hatched the idea of bringing Nectar back to life. 

It wasn’t her first try. As the local supplier of ICEE—the makers of the ubiquitous, neon-colored frozen carbonated beverages—she had tried to convince the company to sell a Nectar flavor in New Orleans. But ICEE didn’t bite. The market was too provincial. So Dunham turned to plan B and coaxed the Lyon family into sharing the secret formula. “We had to modify it to get a standard beverage density,” she says. “It had sugar then. The plant I work with only uses high fructose syrup.” (Dunham is currently working on an all-natural version of Nectar that will use cane sugar and natural dyes.) 

At first, she made a bottled Nectar soda, but it was made in Chicago and became too cumbersome to produce. So Dunham focused on quart bottles of Nectar syrup, which run about $9.

Jeffrey Gulotta, who creates many of the cocktails and drinks for chef Josh Besh’s string of New Orleans restaurants, also recalls Nectar. “My grandmother would talk to me about when she would go to K&B to get a nectar snowball,” he says. (Snowball is New Orleans lingo for sno-cone.) “I remember a girl I dated in high school. We would go to this little place in the Lakeview neighborhood called Russell’s Marina Grille, and she would always get a nectar ice cream soda.” 

Gulotta decided to sell a Nectar ice cream soda at the Soda Shop, an old-fashioned fountain inside the National World War II Museum, which Besh opened in 2011. Gulotta wasn’t aware of Dunham’s product, so he configured his own method of resurrecting the lost potion by enlisting the sense memories of a nonagenarian war veteran. “He said he could remember it perfectly,” Gulotta says. After a few trial mixings of almond and vanilla syrups, the soldier nodded his approval. 

Gulotta compares the renewed interest in Nectar to the recent revival of absinthe. “You’re seeing a renaissance of the artisan thing in New Orleans,” he says. “There’s this exploration of local flavors. They’re coming back to the front.” 

Despite its new lease on life, Nectar seems destined to remain a Big Easy phenomenon. The syrup is only sold in Louisiana, and Dunham says she’s had little incentive to expand its base. “Ask any kid in New Orleans to describe Nectar, and they will tell you it’s bright pink and tastes like almonds and vanilla,” she said. “Put the same question to anyone from out of town, and you’ll get a blank stare.” 

—By Robert Simonson

A Visit to Sazerac Bar

For me, the main source of excitement at this year's Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans was that I would finally get to see the famed Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel. The celebrated lodging place and its more celebrated watering hole had been shuttered since Hurricane Katrina, and, since I had never set foot in New Orleans until 2006, I never laid eyes on what was once the most famous place in the world to order that most wonderful and New Orleanian of drinks, the Sazerac.

Therefore, I was dumbfounded when, asking various folks at the convention if they had seen the Sazerac Bar yet, I was routinely greeting by non-computing expressions and answers like "No. Why?" Few seemed to understand what a fantastic and historical bar has been resurrected.


The historic downtown New Orleans property is now part of the Waldorf=Astoria. It opened in 1893 as the Grunewald. In 1923, it was rebranded The Roosevelt in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt. It kept that name until 1965 when it was bought and rechristened with the infinitely duller name of The Fairmont. Thank God someone came to their senses and brought back the old label. (Grunewald just doesn't have the same majestic ring, does it?)

From the 1930s to the 1960s, the hotel's Blue Room and Sazerac Bar were the places to go in New Orleans to find and converse with the powerful, the elite and the everyman. The bar was nearly as famous for its Ramos Gin Fizzes as it was for its Sazeracs. The former was the favorite of one of the bar's most steady patrons, demagogue Huey P. Long.


The bar is one of the most beautiful Art Deco spaces I have ever seen, from the tile floors to the long, American walnut L-shaped bar, from the illuminated, etched glass panel situated at the center of the mirrored back bar to the Paul Ninas murals that punctuate the walls. The combined effect of the decor and the atmosphere of gay sophistication elevates civilization just that little bit more. Drinking at that bar, you feel like a swell, a mensch, a man a culture, a hail fellow well met, a member of the Family of Man, someone who's doing the best he can and deserves a drink.


Having not seen the bar before the renovation, I had no idea how faithful the revamp had been. But Jeff Berry, who had paid a call on the bar just days before Katrina, assured me: the only thing that was changee was that the television had been removed.



I've never seen so many Sazeracs made as I did during my two visits to the bar. There is never a time when a barman is not making that drink. The house version uses Sazerac Rye and Herbsaint, in addition to the requisite Peychaud's bitters and sugar. I'd prefer a different rye and a brand of absinthe, but to each his own. I did have to caution the bartender not to make the drink too sweet, however. All in all, a good Sazerac, but I've had better.

More care seems to be taken with the Ramos Gin Fizz. I watched my man prepare mine, and he couldn't have been more careful if he had been a jeweler in Antwerp. The result was beautiful. Quite simply the best Ramos Gin Fizz I have ever had.

The drink menu is quite simple. I was told that the bar reached out all the way to New York to put it together, bringing in Julie Reiner (Flatiron Lounge, Clover Club) as a consultant. She wisely focused on the classics, with a couple originals tossed in.

The menu was a damn sight more complicated in the past, as the picture below illustrates. This is just one page of what was a lengthy drink menu.

A Visit to Cure

Cure has been open for only six months, and is in an out-of-the-way New Orleans neighborhood called Freret. I didn't have high hopes upon visiting on a recent Friday. Three hours and four cocktails later, however, I was ready to call Cure the best cocktail bar in the city, and one of the best in the country.

I met the co-owner and head bartender, Neal Bodenheimer, briefly. He's a native New Orleanian who lived in New York for several years and came home after Hurricane Katrina. Cure lives inside an old firehouse and is as slick and swank as any night spot in Manhattan, though the lonely intersection it anchors gives it the feel of a frontier outpost.

The website says, "Inspired by the historical period when cocktails grew out of medicine and home remedies, our idea at Cure is to reintroduce our guests to another time where the experience of having a cocktail and a bite to eat was both healthful and enjoyable."

This view in born out in the cocktail list, which is one of the more unusual and inventive I have seen. Cure is serious about bitters and Italian amari and believes they should play starring, not supporting, roles in drinks. One drink uses Peychaud's bitters as its base, another is built on Angostura. I tried the former. It was brisk, biting and delicious, not to mention a gorgeous color. Similarly, you'll find many drinks utilizing Averna, Cynar, Aperol and similar products.

I first tried a special called The Art of Choke, which featured Cynar, Flor de Cana 4 rum, lime juice, green Chartreuse, mint and demerara sugar, serves on the rocks. This is one of the best uses I've seen Cynar put to, simultaneously herbal and sweet, with the rum offering a nice earthiness in which to plant those greens. From there I went to a kind of amari-based Sazerac called the Black & Bluegrass. In it, Sazerac rye, was joined by Averna, Aperol, Peychaud’s bitters, Angostura bitters and a grapefruit twist. Couldn't have been better. Looking at the ingredients of some of these drinks, it's hard to believe they work. But Cure's bartenders somehow find the right agents to count the astringent characteristics of the amari.

A Praha Punch came next: Evan Williams single barrel bourbon, Tiffon VSOP, fresh lemon juice, raw apple cider vinegar, soda, St. Elizabeth's allspice dram. Deceptively simple and absolutely refreshing. The only misstep of the evening was the Defend Arrack, which tried to sell an Arrack base through the drafting of Marie Brizzard Apry, lime juice and allspice dram. The effect was interesting, but ultimately acrid and offputting.

Others at my table, meanwhile, were raving about the Start & Finish, a combo of Averna, Lillet, Obsello absinthe, Noilly Prat dry vermouth and orange bitters serves on the rocks. A took a sip. It was dry and deep and dark. A fascinating drink you could get lost in.

I wish I had had time to visit again and make my way through some additional selections. Cure is making a name for itself by exploring the lower, darker end of the cocktail keyboard. There are some surprising bright chords down there.

A Visit to Tujague's

So, when recently in New Orleans, I went to Tujague's, one of the oldest continually operating bars in the United States. It's been on its corner of Decatur Street facing the French Market since 1856. I always meant to pay a visit, but somehow, during past visits, the chance always escaped me. So I made a point of it this time around.

The neon signage is peerless. The ceilings are high. The mirror behind the old bar is as big as an elephant, and was 100 years old already when it was shipped from France in the mid-1900s. It's a rare bar that has a brass rail, but no stools at all. So you stand there, one foot on the rail, like those suited, mustachioed ruffians seen in old photos of yesteryear.

In various glass cabinets are numerous mini-bottle of every liquor and liqueur you can name, some old, some new. They are a reminder of how Tujague's got through Prohibition; bartenders kept dozens of such little receptacles in their aprons, ready to dispense liquid illegality into waiting cups.


The bar area is not huge. 30 people would fill it up. But there were only a handful of locals when I visited. I ordered a Sazerac, my usual drink when testing the waters at a New Orleans bar. Big Easy taverns tend to reach automatically for the Herbsaint when this drink is mentioned, even though original ingredient absinthe is now available. I guess old habits, and local brand loyalty, die hard.

I was a pain, and asked for absinthe. I also said "not too sweet," because everyone lays on the simple syrup these days. I didn't think I needed to give specific instructions on the Peychaud's Bitters. Maybe I should have. Because I was handed the reddest Sazerac I've ever seen. It was fine. Nothing special. And still too sweet. I wish people took more care when making this drink. It's not like the bartender was busy.

Someone next to me order a Grasshopper. Somewhere down the line, the idea became established that this is a signature drink at Tujague's. But the locals at the other end of the bar, upon spying the mint green mixture, said "What's that?" So that sort of put the lie to that bit of conventional wisdom.

I wandered around the dining rooms with my drink and found more cabinets full of small bottles. I also found a few interesting frames artifacts. Among the more amazing: a signed photograph of Julian Eltinge, now unknown, but during the early 20th century the most famous female impersonator in American, and a Broadway star; and a sheet from an old register proving that young Cole Porter and his family from Peru, Indiana, were frequent guests during a visit in 1902.

The Appletini is Dead!

Whatever anybody did at this year's "Tales of the Cocktail," it's hard to believe it was more fun than marching with the New Orleans Funeral Band that perambulated from Harrah's casino to Cafe Giovanni on Saturday night at midnight.

The "funeral" was for bad cocktails, and you would know that the libation chosen for dusty death would be a vodka concoction. The Appletini—every young urban woman's friend, every cocktailian's bete noire—was delivered the death sentence, and its sweet and simple-minded body was carried aloft in a plain, pine coffin and all about danced and strutted for joy. (Don't be surprised if you go home and find the corpse very much alive in your local bars.)

A good couple hundred people were in the parade. Having just come from a quick visit to Jean Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, blogger Gabriel Szaszko (Cocktailnerd.com) and his wife lovely wife Joana and I arrived on the scene at the exact moment the band struck up. I assumed a position up front near the players and high-stepped it down Canal Street. Most others walked. Funny: the cocktail crowd aren't dancers, by and large. The band was in uniform and in fine fettle. Many cameras were aloft taking films. All waved handkerchiefs emblazoned with the Plymouth Gin logo. (How could anything go down this week without some sort of bold product endorsement?)

The parade ended at Cafe Giovanni, where there was to be the final event of the night, a "Bartender's Breakfast" hosted by Pegu Club's Audrey Saunders, Willy Shine, Aisha Sharp and Plymouth's man, Simon Ford. Guest bartenders throughout the night were to include Dave Wondrich, Gary Regan, Francesco Lafranconi, Allen Katz, Jacques Bezuidenhout, Kenta Goto, John Deragon, Don Lee, Chris Patino, Matt Gee, Leo DeGroff and more. There were some pretty girls in colorful, skimpy costumes, and long tail-like trains, whose job, it seemed, was to saunter about with low-burn seductiveness and sway their hips to the music. They were as much a part of the decorations as any balloon. Where is such talent found? And what purpose does it serve? New Orleans is a curious town.

There was a band inside, too. But the atmosphere wasn't as joyous as it had been on the street. Tired as I was, I had no intention of staying to the bitter end in the wee hours as many, I'm sure, did.

Wine for a Change

Back on Thursday, I took a break from the world of sours, fizzes, punches and such and journeyed to Antoine's restaurant to meet the owner and take a tour of the old, family-owned eatery's famous wine cellar.

Of course, the 24,000-bottle collection was completely decimated during Hurricane Katrina—not flooded, but cooked, because of the lack of air-conditioning. By the time the Antoine's people got to the cellar, it was a lost cause. The insurance company paid out, then came and collected the contents, carting them off to parts unknown. (If you see a water-stained bottle of old Bordeaux for a too-good-to-be-true price on eBay, beware.)

The owners have smartly not tried to duplicate the lost riches by going to wine auctions and such, but have started from Square One, buying wines only from recent vintages. They will then begin to age them (when they're not sold); in 30 years, they'll have a great collection again. For certain regulars, however, they've made concessions, finding and buying the Burgundy they crave and are used to.

The cellar itself is quite a site, long as a bowling alley, stretching 16 feet through the center of the city block (much of which Antoine's owns). It ends at a window on Royal Street and passersby can actually peer in from the street.

Why New Orleans Is a Great Cocktail Town

$7 Sazeracs.
$5 Pimm's Cups.

Add those prices together and I still wouldn't have enough for a Sazerac in New York.