Oldest Cocktails? – NOLA: Part 3

In the morning after tea, coffee, and toast in our Air B&B rental apartment, we jumped on the 88 bus to get to city hall from Spain Street in time for a program and march that started at 9am. The grounds around the city hall were bustling with lots of young students who were involved with their school’s various dance, music, and cheerleading programs. Marching bands played their music, dance troupes danced their routines, and cheerleaders practiced their cheers.

Meanwhile, at the entrance to city hall sat onlookers who enjoyed a program that celebrated the life and teachings of Martin Luther King. Sadly, early on the program involved faith leaders from the area who led the congregation in prayer. One of the leaders advocated for spiritual warfare (he used those exact words) and hatred for evil (again, his words) and soldiers of Christ (yes, his words). I found these remarks terribly troublesome. While the Christian god of the old testament was a bigoted, hateful asshole with serious anger management issues, Jesus arrived (supposedly, but no facts substantiate that he ever existed) who essentially told everyone to love everyone. He would never advocate turning his teachings into a vehicle for spiritual warfare to become soldiers in his name to hate evil. Imagine if a shaikh stood before city hall and advocated for such things in Mohammed’s name, and quickly the hypocrisy screams forth.

However, the march afterwards was spectacular. We saw countless marching bands (the first one to perform in the lineup was Martin Luther King Junior Charter High School who played and marched to a Stevie Wonder tune), several dance troupes, a Black Lives Matter group, a Smoke Free NOLA group (which would be nice, a smoke free NOLA, as the smoke in the bars here is stinking up my clothes and making me ill), and a trolly that carried seniors from the Lower Ninth Ward who threw to onlookers fruit snacks. It was such a wonderful site, the whole celebration. and I was so grateful that so many of New Orleans’s youth have such opportunities to express themselves through art.

The rest of our day turned into a wonderful kind of self-guided food and drinks tour. We first made our way to Herbsaint on Saint Charles Avenue where we enjoyed a champaign cocktail, gumbo, and a Louisiana shrimp and fish ceviche. Everything was just absolutely wonderful, so vibrantly zesty, and the service was so very smart and welcoming, and the staff were genuinely interested in providing us with the best dining experience possible.

Our next stop brought us to Cafe Beignet on Royal Street. Here we ordered some tea and, obviously, an order of beignets. Like gumbo, po-boys, muffaletta, oysters, and jambalaya, beignets are another one of those things that you just simply must have while you visit New Orleans. Not doing so would be like going to London and not having fish and chips or bangers and mash.

Like the po-boys we had at Gene’s yesterday, beignets are also quite simple but obviously ultimately altogether different. They’re a kind of French doughnut, I suppose. They’re essentially a square-shaped confection of deep fried choux dough sprinkled generously with powdered sugar. At Cafe Beignet, the beignets come in orders of three and are prepared in the fryer as they’re ordered, so they’re hot out of the kitchen and haven’t been sitting on a shelf somewhere.

Our next stop on this quite fulfilling tour was Kingfish on Chartres Street. It was here where I enjoyed one of the best Pimm’s cups I’ve ever had. As an Anglophile, I naturally enjoy the drink. For the uninitiated, it gets its name and alcohol content from a British, gin-based liqueur called Pimm’s Cup No. 1. The drink itself is quite simple: add some lemonade or ginger ale to Pimm’s No. 1 and then garnish with some strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and a peeling of the skin of a cucumber. It’s a perfect summertime drink and best enjoyed while watching a cricket match, though no cricket is in site in NOLA. (Also, the bartender was quite handsome and well-groomed, hair combed back and parted Mad Men style, wearing black suspenders with a black tie, black slacks, and white shirt, and sporting a perfect mustache that was well-trimmed, not too long, not too short. He looked like he came out of some 1930s Hollywood film. Exquisite indeed!)

Amy got a drink called vieux carre, another New Orleans staple, supposedly created in the 1930s by a New Orleanian bartender called Walter Bergeron. (Fitting, then, that the drink was made by someone who seemed transplanted from the era.) The base of the drink was rye whiskey, to which he added cognac, vermouth, Bénédictine liqueur, and bitters. The 1930s did, indeed, call us today at Kingfish. All we would have needed was someone playing the piano that sat right next to us as we enjoyed such decadence at the bar.

Following Kingfish, we moved onwards to SoBou on Chartres. At SoBou we enjoyed a sazerac, New Orleans’s variation on a whiskey or cognac cocktail, and possibly the oldest cocktail in the world, invented by Antoine Amedie Peychaud before the American Civil War, who combined Peychaud’s Bitters and Sazerac French brandy. By the late 1800s, the drink was altered to use American rye whiskey rather than the French brandy, adding also a dash of absinthe. We enjoyed our sazeracs with shrimp and tasso pinchos, lightly deep fried shrimp and ham on a skewer, the skewers positioned vertically by piercing them into a cross section of grilled pineapple. Divine stuff indeed!

Following in quick succession was Lüke. Our palettes were missing the taste of oysters, so we ordered 18 of them, as it was Lüke’s happy hour and one oyster was 75 cents. We enjoyed these with mint juleps, and I’ve become rather fond of eating raw oysters completely plain, no horseradish, no lemon. It’s the best way to taste the subtle, salty flesh that slides off the shell. And do chew it, by the way, to release the flavors!

Time flies when you’re having fun, as by now the sun has set and it’s time for dinner, so next on our stop was Cochon. And oh my goodness! What a treat!

We began with, obviously, cocktails. I got a drink called Bertrand Road, made of rum, ginger, bitters, rosemary syrup, cucumber, and lemon, and Amy enjoyed a drink called the Rub, made of rye whiskey, apple cider vinegar, bitters, syrup.

Also to start we ordered fried alligator with chili garlic mayonnaise and paneed pork cheeks with creole cream cheese grits and dried figs. This was followed by rabbit and dumplings for me and braised ham hock with sweet potato purée, Brussels sprouts, and pomegranate for Amy, and this was followed by pineapple upsidedown cake for me and chocolate peanut butter pie for Amy.

If this combination of food didn’t just transport you to a world of decadent Southern cuisine, mouths watering and voices mmmmmmm-ing and eyes closing in deep imagination of being here yourself, then I can’t help you. The alligator had such zest, and the pork cheeks just melted in your mouth. The rabbit was so, so savory, the ham hock so, so tender, and the desserts left you wanting to write home (or at least write a blog).Everything about the food we’ve had so far while in New Orleans is far from understated in taste and aroma and appearance and quality and variety. It is just so, so good, and I highly recommend that you make your way to each and everyone of the restaurants we visited. Such wonderful, wonderful stuff to experience here indeed!

The night closed with a short street car ride and a short bus ride to a bar called Allways. (Yes, Allways. Two Ls.) We stumbled across a burlesque show that began with toilet plunger darts (you’ve gotta get a toilet plunger to stand straight up in a hoop on the floor by casually throwing it a distance of about five feet – it’s much harder than it sounds), followed by a man demonstrating how burlesque shows work (he’ll point to an item of clothing as he’s dancing to loud music and the crowd has to cheer to encourage him to take it off), which then led into a succession of female burlesque dancers (yes, men were underrepresented which annoyed me), and all the while we enjoyed some Abita beer (the stuff is growing on me since we first arrived).

Miraculously, after 7 drinks and 2 beers (of course, spread out over 12 hours and over 7 miles of walking), I don’t have a hangover, only memories of a perfectly enjoyable time. And to think we’ve signed up for a guided food tour tomorrow excites me to no end.