Cocktails in New Orleans
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated since its original publication date. (2024)
We know you’ve tasted every alarming ingredient from baked beans to grasshoppers in your latest craft cocktails. But you’ve probably never sipped from the soul of a marvelous city.
Alan Walter, the bartender at Loa in downtown New Orleans, has just released a new menu of fascinating, playful cocktails full of luscious, local botanicals. They’re modern New Orleans classics, liquid expressions of the peoples who have shaped this city. New Orleans’ architecture. It’s food and music. It’s theatrics and rituals. It’s exuberant, irreverent culture. From Sicily to Senegal. From Venice to Vietnam. From Marseilles to Madrid. Don’t forget Haiti and Havana. All and more are here in the mix, suffusing this swampy little corner of the U.S. with their spirits, their colors, their memories, and the very contours of their thoughts. Each one comes with its own story at Loa.
With its Afro-Caribbean soul and its European roots, New Orleans has always been a city given to style but resistant to fashion. Here at Loa, owned and operated by longtime locals, they’ve been stirring up the best craft cocktails for nearly 20 years. They do it quietly and stylishly, in this enclave of ruined finery and flickering candlelight – it’s a bar where the vibe is as rare and romantic as what’s in your glass. Alan Walter is a philosophical sort of eccentric, and a most creative mixologist. He gets things other people don’t and makes things others can’t, such as his own syrups, tinctures and teas created from local produce.
Here are just a few drinks on Loa’s cocktail list:
Spiritually speaking, New Orleans is not so much a deep south American city as it is the northernmost tip of the Caribbean. Just so, Loa has updated the classic 19th century Sazerac to make it even more sensitive to the city’s tropical condition. But they’ve kept the floral bitters created by an astute Haitian pharmacist circa 1830. Even innovation has its limits. Matusalem Gran Reserva 18 Rum, sugar cane, banana liqueur, Peychaud’s bitters.
Chien et Loup
There’s a moment before the sun goes down, according to the French expression, when a dog and wolf at a certain distance are indistinguishable. Likewise, Loa’s twilight aperitif cocktail with sultry rye stepping in for gin lends it a shadier profile. Rye, local organic grapefruit, Campari, Cointreau, Regan’s orange bitters.
Bona Dea
The Roman goddess of fruitfulness and ecstasy whose secret ceremony involved much dancing and wine – a Ladies Only romp transpiring at Caesar’s wife’s house. One frosty night, a prominent male politician crashes the festivities in drag. He gets indicted. In ancient Rome – as in New Orleans – it’s understood at City Hall that you don’t mess with the Vestal Virgins. St. George Terroir gin, Absentroux herbal wine, Suze, thyme liqueur, fresh dill.
Park & Fly
One sip and you are transported to a crowded “suburban gothic” living room just across the Mississippi, where laughter and agave abound, and a velveteen conquistador glares westward from an ornate, gilded frame, in frozen, outraged silence, toward Oaxaca. With your choice of mezcal or anejo tequila, Loa syrup of local blood orange and galangal, sparkling rose.
The Twice-Worn Kilt
Imagine your best friend’s uncle – a larger-than-life Scotsman – finishing third in the local 5K, holding court for six hours at the Erin Rose, then dropped off by a raucous carload of Tulane sophomores to spend the night on your sofa because your address is the only one he can remember – but in a good way. Evan Williams Single Barrel bourbon, saffron, grapefruit, sage, tobacco bitters, smoky Scotch.
Johnny & June
True matrimony, disparate spirits lashed together by alchemy and a citrus “ring of fire.” Here’s to those two, and to all you drifters and wildcats strolling through the City of New Orleans on your latest adventure, bound each to each till the end time by a pair of golden bands – may firelight catch you stumblin’ in. Beefeater gin, Johnny Walker Double Black scotch, Loa’s plum-cardamom syrup, flamed tangerine.
The English Turn
In spitting distance of Isabelle Cossart’s beautiful citrus orchard in Lower Coast Algiers is the spot where, 300 years ago, a brave young Bienville bluffed the British into making an about-face and heading back downriver. Rye, aged Old Tom Gin, local organic grapefruit and Meyer lemon, dry cherry & Crème de Noisette liqueurs.
Check out Loa’s website at http://www.ihhotel.com/loa/idea/. The next time you’re in New Orleans, look them up and try out one of Walter’s cocktails.
