Welcome to Tales of the Cocktail!
For those of you who were tuning in last year, it will come as no surprise that once again it is time for Tales of the Cocktail. For those of you new to the rodeo, every July thousands of cocktail enthusiasts from around the world come together in New Orleans for 5 days of thoughtful conversation and a meeting of the minds about the subject of cocktails. Or, as you may surmise, 5 days of heavy drinking in the birthplace of the cocktail and one helluva party town.
This is the largest Tales to date, with just about 20,000 revelers this year, it’s the biggest convention of its kind. Centered around the Hotel Monteleone, home of the famous Carousel Bar and landmark of the French Quarter, the convention this year started on July 20 and ends July 23. A cocktail geeks paradise, we are beyond excited to be a part of it this year, and hope to behave just enough to be a part of it for many years to come.
It’s hard to know where to start in a place like New Orleans. Stuffed with boozy landmarks and steeped in cocktail history, you almost just have to walk to the nearest bar, sit down, and get to it. Which is exactly how we started the trip. Partial to Irish bars and dying to get out of the sticky southern air, we stumbled into Pat O’Brians on St. Peter Street. Well, Pat O’Brien’s is not really an Irish bar. It’s named for Pat O’Brien, who bought it at the end of Prohibition (during which he ran a speakeasy, god bless him) and as luck would have it, home to the infamous Hurricane. If you ask, you can have your Hurricane in a hurricane glass, but if you neglect to do this you will get it in a carafe sized plastic cup. Only in New Orleans does history come with two straws for faster chugging.
This sweet concoction (which we keep forgetting you can take to go) kept us satiated until we got to Antoine’s. Antoine’s is one of the most famous eateries in New Orleans, but dressed as we were with our boozy proclivities, we opted for the more casual Hermes Bar. Sipping a Pimm’s Cup, we devoured an order of Oysters Rockefeller and Fried Catfish, savoring the genteel southern hospitality. The Pimm’s Cup was so delicious we had to have two, and if we weren’t trying to pace ourselves, there would have certainly been a third.
No trip to NOLA would be complete without a stop at the Sazerac Bar in The Roosevelt Hotel, and this is where we ended our first day of revelry. Originally built in 1893, it was called the The Grunewald, but was dubbed the Roosevelt in 1923 for President Teddy. The Fairmont dropped the “Roosevelt” from the name in 1965, and Hurricane Katrina nearly ended the life of the hotel in 2005. Re-opened as the Roosevelt in 2009, the historic property was acquired by the Hilton Waldorf-Astoria collection and is utterly gorgeous. It has earned its title of a luxury hotel fairly. The bar is no exception, and you can sip a Sazerac under the imposing figure of the Ascot Cup, knowing that the cocktail in your glass is rumored to be the best NOLA has to offer.
We’ll be here all week. More Tales of the Cocktail to come. Cheers!
