In the Land of Cocktails

Tales Recap II

Posted by on August 26th, 2010

Let’s Keep This Party Rollin…

Pick­ing up where we left off… Thurs­day after­noon we spent some time hang­ing at the Octavia Book­store in the Mon­teleone lobby brows­ing books and pick­ing up a few to add to our col­lec­tion.  Then we caught up with Chef Chris Lusk cook­ing up some food and fun in the Carousel Bar on the Chef and The Fat Man radio show.  More pic­tures and Tales…

Thurs­day night was the evening ded­i­cated to the Spir­ited Din­ners.  Great restau­rants around the city host din­ners with spe­cial menus and cock­tail pair­ings.  We were at Café Ade­laide (nat­u­rally) hosted by the Cock­tail Chicks Ti Mar­tin and Lally Bren­nan.

We were enter­tained with great jazz by The Joe Simon trio.

We enjoyed great food cre­ated by Chef Chris Lusk and had a super­fecta of celebrity cock­tail mixol­o­gists – Audrey Saun­ders, Lu Brow, Robert Hess and Kenta Goto.  Click HERE to see the menu from that night.  The pair­ings were amazing!

Also, in the gos­sip depart­ment, Audrey Saun­ders and Robert Hess came clean about their rela­tion­ship.  Adorable!  And that their romance finally sparked one night long-ish ago at the Swiz­zle Stick Bar. Turns our Lu Brow is not only a tal­ented mixol­o­gist but a tal­ented match­maker, as well.

Our friends from Cal­i­for­nia, Kerry, Lance, Sue and Alex were also a part of this great evening.

We also met some new friends from our old stomp­ing grounds, as well.   Seated at our table were Joe and Anna Keeper pro­pri­etors of Bar Keeper in the Sil­ver­lake area of Los Angeles.

We knew their store from friends who had pur­chased a beau­ti­ful absinthe foun­tain from them.   Yet another exam­ple of 6 degrees of the cock­tail com­mu­nity.  The evening ended in tra­di­tional New Orleans style, with the a sec­ond line through the kitchen and out the back door into the Piazza.  Cham­pagne flowed and we all took off our shoes and waded into the foun­tain to keep it all cool.  Another per­fect night In The Land of Cocktails…

Fri­day: sem­i­nars and tast­ings. But the high­light of the day for Nan­cylee was the Cognac and Blues Spir­ited lun­cheon at Arnaud’s.   Styled like the spir­ited din­ners, food with cock­tail pair­ings, with cognac as the main spirit.  Each cock­tail was crafted by an amaz­ing mixol­o­gist: Brian Van Flan­dern, Dale DeGroff, Todd Appel, Ryan Mar­garin and Francesco Lafranconi.

They intro­duced their cock­tail, talked about their inspi­ra­tion, some actu­ally pre­pared them for us.  All the while, a fan­tas­tic band played, Ernie Vin­cent Blues & Funk band.  Check them out HERE.  Nan­cylee talked to the host of the event Tony Abou-Ganim and got him to sign his book “The Mod­ern Mixologist.”

It was also Tony’s birth­day and there was a lot of jok­ing and cel­e­brat­ing through­out the event.  She got to see Chris McMil­lian and wife Laura and talk about the drinks poured that day and the orig­i­nal Side­car.  She caught up with some of the peo­ple she had met dur­ing Tales, Wendy Miller of LUPEC Seattle.

…con­nected with some of her Twit­ter pals…

Aaron Tell AKA @SavoryHunter.  And made some new friends at her table…

Gary Crun­k­le­ton (cen­ter) of The Crun­k­le­ton in Chapel Hill, NC.

But the crown­ing moment of the event was Nancylee’s moment with Dale DeGroff, who’s table she was seated at.  “I brought our copy of Dale’s ‘Essen­tial Cock­tail’ book to the lun­cheon.  Now this is a book we use in our bar.  Really use it.  Paige has tagged pages and recipes with color coded tabs, there are cock­tail nap­kins stuffed inside, etc.  When I took the book to Dale to sign, he smiled and started thumb­ing through the book, see­ing what we were mak­ing.  After he signed our book, I asked him for a photo.  While we were pos­ing for our photo, the band kicked into a great song that we couldn’t resist.  We started sway­ing to the music and then danc­ing.  Yep, for a brief moment I was danc­ing with King Cock­tail.  It reminded me of another great man, class act, a crooner and a dancer… my father.  Hard to top that.”

After the lun­cheon, Nan­cylee and Aaron ended up at Swiz­zle where Lu poured them a Whoa Nel­lie.  The talk was about home town Los Ange­les, dream jobs, and how the inter­net has influ­enced what we do and drink…

Sat­ur­day we were back at the Mon­teleone for friend and “Mad Men” Bryan Batt’s book signing.

“She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Mother” Bryan is always a class act, and he and his fam­ily have a long his­tory in the cock­tail cul­ture in New Orleans.  Here’s Bryan’s seg­ment and also brother Jay’s.   PS, we still love “Mad Men” but it’s just not as inter­est­ing with­out Sal­va­tore Romano.

Then upstairs for the Heaven Hill tast­ing.  We met Robert Hutchins, their Amer­i­can Whiskey Brand Ambas­sador, at the Swiz­zle a few days before – tast­ing the Dubon­net cock­tails (one of the labels he rep­re­sents) being served at the Spir­ited Dinner.

He invited us to his whiskey and bour­bon tast­ing – and we are so glad we went.  What a class event they hosted.

Each table was set up with a bread pair­ing — the grain of the bread com­ing from the grain from which the spirit was made, i.e the Corn liquor had a bowl of corn­bread nearby.  This was so you could actu­ally taste the par­tic­u­lar grain that went into the spirit. Aside from the bread tables they were pour­ing Eli­jah Craig 12 YEAR, Eli­jah Craig 18 YEAR Sin­gle Bar­rel, Rit­ten­house 25 YEAR Sin­gle Barrel

Mr. Parker Beam him­self was pour­ing Parker’s 27 YEAR Bourbon.

Now we are whiskey and bour­bon drinkers.  Some­day, the Bour­bon Trail in Ken­tucky – dur­ing rac­ing sea­son at Churchill or Keen­land would be perfect!

So we loved and appre­ci­ated what we tasted.  And meet­ing their mas­ter dis­tiller, and descen­dant of the Jim Beam fam­ily, Parker Beam.  We got a laugh out of Parker when Nan­cylee said that she was “raised” on Jim Beam.  Her dad’s favorite spirit.  And when she told him that she named the first horse she bought Jim Beam, we got poured a taste of his 27 year.

They had awe­some swag, too!  See, it’s a flask AND a cigar holder.  So we left in a warm bour­bon glow, swag in tow, look­ing for­ward to more events and cock­tails with the Heaven Hill group.

Happy Hour cock­tails at Cure with our CA friends.  We all tried some­thing dif­fer­ent from their diverse cock­tail menu — no time for eats — and passed each cock­tail around the table.  Kind of an infor­mal cock­tail tast­ing of our own.

We talked about their great day in NOLA, some Tales tast­ings and sem­i­nars, hat shop­ping at     Meyer the Hat­ter “The South’s Largest Hat Store” 

the boys got bar­ber­shop shaves, the girls shopped.  We parted com­pany as they left for din­ner at Upper­line (which they reported later that they loved) and we came home to regroup (and walk the dogs…)

Sun­day we met our friends from CA who were brunch­ing at Commander’s Palace…

Which if you haven’t been, will set the stan­dard for Sun­day brunch.  We took a break from Tales and the French Quar­ter and walked the Gar­den Dis­trict – BTW there’s a cou­ple of really great iPhone apps for walk­ing tours of the Gar­den Dis­trict, French Quar­ter and para­nor­mal New Orleans.  They will cost you, but buy­ing all three is still less than one ticket for a tra­di­tional walk­ing tour.  Worth it and you become the expert.

But in July and August we sug­gest the air-conditioned tour from the com­fort of your car.

Swel­ter­ing in the heat we actu­ally walked to Simon’s Store and Gallery (at Mag­a­zine and Jack­son) which is a feast for the eyes.

We caught the artist in his shop/studio and had a great time meet­ing him and talk­ing about his work. And also buy­ing a cou­ple of things…

He looks a lit­tle gruff in this picture,but he’s actu­ally quite nice.

We ended up at Parasol’s Bar (dan­ger­ously close to our house) for beers and hang­ing with the locals.

Sunday’s is a great day for Parasol’s.  But when­ever you get there, save room for their famous Roast Beef Po’boy.  We like them “dressed” with  a side of gravy for dip­ping your french fries.  Here’s the recipe from Nola Cuisine.com. Go-cups in hand (because we can) and cash­ing out of the video poker machines (gam­bling in the bars… awe­some) we wrapped up our after­noon walk­ing back to our place look­ing at the beau­ti­ful archi­tec­ture and imag­in­ing get­ting houses all near each other, a place to run to In The Land of Cocktails…

- Nan­cylee Myatt & Paige Bernhardt