I never plan on going to Latitude 29 first thing upon landing in the French Quarter, but somehow I always do. I’m not complaining. Great bar. Always happy to be there. But I never seem to go when I think I will.
New Orleans is like that. Wonderfully unpredictable. You can map out your days down to the minute if that makes you happy. But the city probably has other plans for you. Heat will drive you inside a restaurant or bar that’s not on your agenda; or a sudden downpour will keep you inside a place longer than you expected. You are buffeted about by fate, a leaf in a storm. In the end, you give in, because New Orleans’ plans for you are going to be better than whatever it was you had in mind.
Usually it’s another person’s plans that cause me to suddenly detour to Latitude 29. In this case it was Bea Bradsell. Bea is the daughter of Dick Bradsell, a bartender who had as much to do with kicking off the cocktail renaissance in London as anyone. Since Dick’s death in 2016, Bea has picked up the cocktail torch and carried on the family’s good name.
“Hello there,” said a plumby English voice in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton. I turned and slowly registered the face of Bea, whom I had only met once before, briefly, eight years ago. She was there to take part in a seminar about her father, the posthumous author of a notebook/collage-like memoir called, cheekily enough, Dick-tales. The Ritz was the home this year of the Tales of the Cocktail cocktail convention, the same event that had brought me to town. It was the first time the convention had been held non-virtually since 2019. And everyone, bartender and bar reporter alike, had descended upon the city, hungry for the interaction of the Beforetimes.
Bradsell said she was headed to Latitude 29 to say hi to its owner, tiki guru Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, whom she had never met in person. I was welcome to join her. Figuring opportunities to chat with Bradsell didn’t come along every day for me, I dropped everything and headed toward the bar.
Latitude 29 is one of those bars that might as well be called The Office. Never have I gone there that I haven’t run into a cocktail colleague or two. On this occasion, I encountered one of my editors and two journalistic colleagues within seconds. We gave each other a casual nod, so unsurprised were we at the chance encounter. I then sat at the bar and waited for Bea. I ordered an Outcast of the Islands, an improbable gin tiki drink that is my favorite Latitude libation. The man seated next to me showed me a picture of his garden shed, which he had converted into a tiki bar. It seated four, had a retro turquoise fridge and bamboo walls, and was beautiful.
I stepped out of the bar into a downpour, which scotched my plans to walk over to the newly opened Chandelier Bar inside the Four Seasons hotel. Umbrella-less, I surrendered to the elements and took a Lyft to Le Petit Grocery. My chatty driver wasn’t familiar with Grocery, but gave me several other food recommendations, including the Bearcat Cafe, which apparently had a killer breakfast-lunch program. I remember something about a soft-shell crab breakfast sandwich. Sold.
I arrived one hour early for a dinner date. I bided my time at the bar playing one of my favorite New Orleans games: Order the Sazerac. Every bar and restaurant in the city can make this classic cocktail and no two places make it the same way. Some are sweeter, some drier; some use absinthe, some local favorite Herbsaint; most are made with rye, a few adhere to the misguided notion that the drink was originally made with Cognac; some express a lemon twist over the drink and discard it, a few (horror) drop the twist in.
Mostly, I’ve found that Sazeracs vary in their application of Peychaud’s bitters, another local product. I could tell by the color of mine—somewhere between Twizzlers and Luden’s cough drops—that my bartender had gone big on the bitters. I asked him how many dashes he had used. 15, he told me. Those were Paul Gustings levels. Gustings is a renowned New Orleans bartender who has a heavy hand when it comes to the Peychaud’s. Paul usually does 10-13 dashes. This Sazerac went to 15, Spinal-Tap-speaking. Had to respect that.
As I was lifting the Sazerac to my lips, a party of four led by Julie Reiner entered the dining room. Reiner co-owns Clover Club and Leyenda, two of the best cocktail bars in Brooklyn. The next night she would receive Lifetime Achievement honors at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards ceremony. Tales works like that. You travel halfway across the nation to run into people who work a few blocks from you.
The head of my dinner party arrived to let me know that our party of eight was now a party of four. Covid. Cocktail conventions may be back, but Covid doesn’t care.
I had booked a room above Peychaud’s Bar. My impetus was to be near a new bar I had heard a lot about and where I expected to spend a good amount of time. But my plan was sundered by poor reconnaisance. For Peychaud’s is a mere half block from Bourbon Street. Peychaud’s closes at 10 pm; Bourbon Street never closes. My room was great if you were a vampire.
Moreover, the Hotel Maison de Ville I thought I had booked was not a hotel at all, but a Sonder property. Sonder is a global corporation that buys up buildings and runs them as remote, elevated Airbnbs. You gain entry by punching in a series of key codes. They have hotel prices, but no hotel workers or services. And, yes, that is just as bad as it sounds. If something goes wrong—and something always goes wrong—you are on your own.
But before I fled my uninhabitable ghost lodging for a different Sonder property (equally bad, but in completely different ways), I managed to get in a couple visits in at Peychaud’s. As the bar’s name hints at, Peychaud’s is a liquid homage to New Orleans’ rich drinking history. Almost all the cocktails on the menu are longstanding city classics, including the Vieux Carre, Ojen Frappe and Ramos Gin Fizz.
This is a growing trend in the city. After spending the early years of the cocktail renaissance trying to compete with the rest of the nation in terms of originality, some New Orleans cocktail bars are now focusing on the drinks that made the city a cocktail colossus in the first place. The Chandelier Bar—which I did eventually get to—is selling a Roffignac, Hurricane, Brandy Crusta and French 75 (not a New Orleans cocktail, but one the city has embraced the last decade or so). And Jewel of the South, a bar named in honor of Joseph Santini, the creator of the Brandy Crusta, has a French 75, Sazerac and (of course) Brandy Crusta on the menu, and they can make you any other NOLA classic that isn’t listed. Chris Hannah, an owner of the bar and its chief bartender, has dedicated his much of his adult life to bringing back many a lost New Orleans cocktail.
Peychaud’s program is run by Nick Jarrett, a career bartender whose credits include Dram, Clover Club and Cure, New Orleans’ leading cocktail bar. Sadly, I learned his last shift there was July 30. Jarrett is moving on to the Bearcat Café, that same place my Lyft driver had recommended.
Chandelier Bar, which does have a chandelier, and a mighty big one at that, is one of the few bars in this rye-brandy-and-rum guzzling town to take the Martini seriously. Its Chandelier Martini is a no-holds-barred production worthy of the swankiest Manhattan boite. It comes on a silver tray with an iced garnish sidecar of lemon twist and olives, a spray of “herbal mist” (house secret) and a $24 price tag. As a visiting New Yorker, it felt compelled to order it. It was “elegant, stylist and confident,” as the menu itself boasts. (The drinks list is by Hadi Ktiri [Arnaud’s French 75 Bar, Latitude 29]).
My wife Mary Kate had a Roffignac, her first ever. The drink, composed of brandy and raspberry shrub, is named after a long-ago mayor of New Orleans, and is one of the city’s cocktail reclamations of recent years. Whether it needed rescuing, I’m still not convinced. It tasted overwhelmingly of raspberry, as Roffignacs tend to.
Saba’s Lounge, in the Uptown neighborhood, owes nothing to New Orleans history. It’s the new drinking arm to Saba, the restaurant run by justly praised chef Israeli-American Alon Shaya, who does wonders with hummus and cauliflower and has been responsible for some of my best eating experiences in the city. The short, but winning, cocktail list, by Saba GM Kerri Creedon, is replete with unusual, but friendly concoctions. The Watermelon Queen of 1947 (watermelon-infused gin, mastiha, lemon, aquafaba, watermelon-basil syrup) is one of the few watermelon cocktails I’ve encountered that doesn’t pander. And Love Languages is a surprisingly compelling vodka drink made of Capelletti aperitivo, Giffard Rhubarbe, Lillet Blanc, lemon and the inevitable Peychaud’s bitters.
As Bearcat seemed to be dogging our steps the entire trip, we did try to check it out for Sunday brunch. But an hour-long wait had us pivoting back to the old standbys, in this case Arnaud’s, where we were seated immediately in what remains one of the most beautiful dining spaces in the country. Duded up in our Bearcat best, we were the most underdressed people in the room. New Orleans, God bless it, is the last American city where adults routinely dress for dinner.
Our stately waiter, who must have been six-foot-five and had the deadpan of a Buckingham Palace guard, blinked slightly when we ordered two Arnaud’s Special Cocktails. It’s not a morning drink, I know. It’s Rob Roy stiff. A milk punch or Pimm’s Cup would have been more appropriate. But it’s what we wanted.
And we didn’t stop there. Mary Kate countered my order of Bananas Foster with Café Brulot Diabolique, yet another local liquor specialty. Everything was to be on fire! A second server made both concoctions from the same rolling cooking station. Flames leaped up, delighting previously bored children at neighboring tables. The restaurant’s jazz trio approached our table around the same time. I feared for the bass fiddle.
At the airport, we stopped by Cure before boarding. We hadn’t had time to visit the original location, which helped kick off the cocktail revival in New Orleans back in the aughts, so the branch at Louis Armstrong International Airport would have to do. There was a Sazerac and Vieux Carre on the menu, but I ordered a Bloody Mary. It was time to reacclimate myself to the drinking ways of less poetical cities.
Odds and Ends…
The best restaurant deal in New Orleans is the prix fixe lunch at Antoine’s. $22 for three courses… Abigail Gullo, formerly a major presence in the New Orleans bar scene, but based in Seattle in recent years, is back at work in the city. She is the new creative director of the beverage program at loa, the bar within the International House Hotel at 221 Camp St… Chris Hannah of Jewel of the South was the Best Bartender of the Year award at this years Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards. Jewel also won as Best American Restaurant Bar… Central Grocery in the French Quarter is moving along with the extensive repairs required from the damages caused by Hurricane Ida. Meanwhile, they have resumed making their famous Muffulettas and have them available for purchase at Zuppardo's Family Market, located at 5010 Veterans Memorial Blvd. in Metairie, LA… The Brave Ukraine Tour, in which Kyiv bar owner Dmytro Shovkoplias is touring U.S. bars to raise money and awareness for the Ukrainian cause, will stop at Sweet Liberty in Miami this Tuesday 4-8 pm.
Many of my co-workers were there! Including my Lullaby brethren
My short trip this year was made even shorter by airline delays and cancellations. Ugh. My Monday evening arrival turned into Tuesday afternoon, and my Wednesday evening departure became Wednesday afternoon. I know I wasn’t alone in the horror show our airlines have become. I heard stories everywhere. That said, I did make it to the Latitude “Office”. Next year I’ll drive.