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.