Cross-posted from NolaNotes. She opens the post, I follow with the recipe and method. Enjoy! Every time I go to Galatoire’s, I find it hard to resist their Turtle Soup. My last bowl of it got me thinking about making it at home. So after talking it over with Pontchartain Pete, we decided to...
While browsing Sunday’s Cocktail Bazaar at the Monteleone, Ann Tuennerman pointed out the table where the folks from the John E. Koerner Co. were displaying their goods. Koerner has been around over 100 years, with the third and fourth generations of the Koerner family now operating the business that was started in 1906. Ann...
Last word on bitters. I promise. I had talked in my previous posts on Tales of the Cocktail 2011 about Bitter Truth’s Creole Bitters, that they were touted as a modern (or retro-engineered, I’m not sure which) version of Peychaud’s Bitters, the long-standing New Orleans product without which the Sazerac cocktail cannot be made....
Bitters were the big buzz at Tales of the Cocktail 2008, the first one I attended. I was researching an article on absinthe (pdf); its reappearance and place in New Orleans drinking history. Bitters were back this year, although they probably never went away. “The Emperor’s New Bitters” was the Thursday afternoon seminar I...
I’ve written a couple of posts through the years about absinthe, that old French spirit that remains shrouded in mystery and misinformation despite it being on the open market in the U.S. since 2007, after being legally unavailable here since 1916. (For a pretty thorough telling of how absinthe came to be banned and...
As post-Carnival depression sets in I like to go over all the pictures (blurry from cell phone) from the season and try to recapture some of the spirit. On Friday, as always, Hermes and Le Krewe D’etat rolled Uptown. The weather was sketchy but the showers held off most of the evening. We caught...
The New Orleans Carnival is descended from ancient religious rites of the Greek and Latin World. Ovid described the Greek shepherds of Arcadia who, five thousand years ago, celebrated a spring festival in hopes of better pastures and the remission of sins. –Henri Schindler, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 1997. I was reading the...
This past weekend (27 degrees at dawn) I was invited to ride along with some commercial crabbers. Freezing hijinks ensued.
There’s some more Tut stuff I ran across after my previously posted article on E. John Bullard and NOMA’s coup of an exhibit back in 1977 of The Treasures of Tutankhamun. Just a couple of photos: my parent’s still have the exhibition catalog, which I snapped a pic of at Thanksgiving; and, this photo...
I was lucky enough to be invited to preview Furnishing Louisiana: Creole and Acadian Furniture, 1735-1835, the latest book from the Historic New Orleans Collection. It’s been in the works for over 30 years now, as furniture collectors (and scholars) Jack Holden and Pat Bacot, along with photographer Jim Zeitz, began documenting just about...
Louis Prima rose up out of New Orleans and tore through the entertainment world for nearly fifty years. Saturday, Dec. 4, saw Prima getting the attention he’s deserved from the city that he tirelessly promoted as he performed all over the world. New Orleans Musical Legends Park is a little nook of sorts at...
I remember in 1977 when The Treasures of Tutankhamun came to NOMA. It was a big expedition; it may not have been my first visit to NOMA, but it certainly was the first one that stuck. One evening Dad piled us into the old 1968 Ford Country Squire station wagon—with the big V8 engine...
What had to be one of the most well-documented NOLA weather phenomena since the great snowfall of December 11, 2008, occurred yesterday as a double rainbow stretched over New Orleans during rush hour. I would have not seen it had not a disaster brought me across the lake earlier in the afternoon. Without going...
So NOLAnotes issued a NOLA book challenge. Here are my favorites, an incomplete list limited to my top 5 non-fiction books, in no particular order. Old New Orleans by Stanley Clisby Arthur. A walking tour of the French Quarter written by the man who also wrote Famous New Orleans Drinks & How to Make...
I try to go to the cemetery (St. Louis No. 1) every year on All Saints day. Save Our Cemeteries is there every year, too, with a list and the map from the Dead Space project to help families locate tombs. They’ve been doing a good job over the years working with various groups...
Updated 07/23/2009. Tales of the Cocktail 2009 is now over. From the opening ceremony Wednesday, July 8 (celebrating the 75th anniversary of NOLA’s own Herbsaint), to the Wormwood Society’s grand soirée closing things out on Sunday night, it was a whirlwind of boozing, networking and learning. Tales of the Cocktail’s official cocktail, the Creole...
Updated, see below. So a while back, while researching the Roosevelt Hotel’s opening, I couldn’t help noticing all the references to the Ramos Gin Fizz, along with the Sazerac (at the Sazerac Bar) it’s the hotel’s signature drink. The Ramos Gin Fizz was the favorite drink of Governor Huey Long, famous rogue politician who,...
The Hotel Montleone, one of New Orleans’ historic hotels, and home to Tales of the Cocktail, is celebrating the 60th anniversary of its Carousel Bar. The Royal Street landmark is famous for its literary connections. Literary greats have haunted its halls for decades. Tennessee Williams was a frequent guest, Truman Capote often quipped that...
Tom Fitzmorris opined, back in 1977, that there were three restaurants he couldn’t live without: Antoine’s, Maylie’s and the Bud’s Broiler on City Park Avenue. Tom would have say whether all of that still stands today, since although Antoine’s is going strong, Maylie’s has been closed for years now (the also-defunct Smith & Wollensky...
It’s celebrated for its storied dining rooms named after and decorated with memorabilia from some of New Orleans’ most staid carnival krewes. Antoine’s is expanding on its traditions with a new venue, next door to the hallowed restaurant: the Hermes Bar. The bar’s grand opening was Friday, coinciding with the opening day of French...