Cure

Bodenheimer Neal Bodenheimer

Description

From the foremost figure on the New Orleans' drinking scene and the owner of renowned bar Cure, a cocktail book that celebrates the vibrant cityNew Orleans is known for its spirit(s)-driven festivities. Neal Bodenheimer and coauthor Emily Timberlake tell the city's story through 100 cocktails, each chosen to represent New Orleans' past, present, and future. A love letter to New Orleans and the cast of characters that have had a hand in making the city so singular, Cure: New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix 'Em features interviews with local figures such as Ian Neville, musician and New Orleans funk royalty, plus a few tips on how to survive your first Mardi Gras. Along the way, the reader is taken on a journey that highlights the rich history and complexity of the city and the drinks it inspired, as well as the techniques and practices that Cure has perfected in their mission to build forward rather than just looking back. Of course, this includes the classics every self-respecting drinker should know, especially if you're a New Orleanian: the Sazerac, Julep, Vieux Carre, Ramos Gin Fizz, Cocktail a la Louisiane, and French 75. Famous local chefs have contributed easy recipes for snacks with local flavor, perfect for pairing with these libations. Cure: New Orleans Drinks and How to Mix 'Em is a beautiful keepsake for anyone who has fallen under New Orleans's spell and a must-have souvenir for the millions of people who visit the city each year.

Sujets

• Luisiana
• Alcoholic beverage
• Louisiana

Informations

• Publié par: ABRAMS BOOKS
• Date de parution: 25 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781647008567
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 20 Mo

Extrait

Contents
Introduction
About This Book
Cure s House Style
CH . 1 BITTERED SLINGS
Sazeracs, Old-Fashioneds, and Other Strong, Stirred Drinks
Cocktail Telephone, or: How Cocktail Myths Are Made
A Mountain of Ice: Appreciating the Mint Julep
The Ojen Capital of the World
CH . 2 MANHATTANS
Stirred Drinks with Fortified Wine
The Wettest City in America: New Orleans During Prohibition
The New Orleans Cocktail Bucket List
CH . 3 MARTINIS
Clear, Boozy, and Stirred Drinks
IAN NEVILLE on the Best New Orleans Music Venues
Classic Dive Bars
CH . 4 SOURS
Bright, Refreshing Drinks with Citrus
The St. Charles: The Grand Hotel of New Orleans s Grand Past
ANNENE KAYE-BERRY and JEFF BERRY on New Orleans s Connection to Tropical Cocktails
Drive-Thru Daiquiris
CH . 5 NEGRONIS
Drinks with Amari and Other Bittersweet Liqueurs
My Mardi Gras Diary
CH . 6 FLIPS AND FIZZES
Rich Drinks with Eggs and Dairy
Dueling Ramoses
On Henry Ramos and Cocktails as a Force for Good
The Green Fairy in the Crescent City
L. KASIMU HARRIS on Preserving New Orleans s Historic Black Bars
CH . 7 COLLINSES AND 75s
Sparkling Drinks
KATY CASBARIAN on French 75s and Maintaining a Legacy
CH . 8 LOW-PROOF
Lighter Drinks with Fortified Wine, Amaro, or Liqueur
PABLEAUX JOHNSON on the Power of Red Beans
CH . 9 BAR SNACKS
Food for Cocktail Hour
Syrups and Other House-Made Ingredients
Cocktail Contributors
Resources
Acknowledgments
Index of Searchable Terms

INTRODUCTION
Have you noticed that whenever you mention New Orleans-it doesn t matter where in the world you are-people s faces light up? I ve traveled all over, and whether I m in Bali or Budapest, when I mention my hometown, even complete strangers get excited. New Orleans! Big Easy! Mardi Gras! And then they will raise an imaginary glass to their mouth and take a fake drink-the universal symbol for New Orleans.
Then comes the fun part of the conversation, where I get to say that I actually work behind bars and own a couple of cocktail spots in the city. Being a cocktail guy from the cocktail capital of the world is a great way to make new friends.
As a native son of New Orleans, I can tell you that a lot of what you ve heard about my city is true. Yes, we sometimes walk down the street sipping cocktails from plastic cups-they re called go-cups, and it s perfectly legal. Yes, a random parade might erupt in the middle of your commute home from work-it s probably a second line, so you can either sit there and wait in traffic or hop out of your car and join the party. We really do love jazz (the annual Jazz Fest draws 450,000 attendees), and we really do eat king cakes at Mardi Gras (but never at any other time of year).
We re known for being a fun-loving food town . . . with a bit of a drinking problem. And there s definitely some truth to that! But there is also life beyond the French Quarter and so much more to New Orleans than television shows and tourist guides will tell you.
Today, ours is mostly a tourist economy, sustained by the 18 million visitors who descend on the city each year to ride the streetcar down St. Charles Avenue and engage in questionable behavior on Bourbon Street. But what many people don t realize is that when my family, the Bodenheimers, settled in Louisiana in the 1850s, New Orleans was the fifth most populous city in the U.S. (In the 1840 census, it was the third, after New York and Baltimore.) That may seem crazy to modern readers, but it s true. New Orleans was a major, cosmopolitan city and an economic capital before it was a cultural capital. It was the gateway to the Mississippi and the American Midwest, and like all great port cities, it was home to immigrants from all over the world who exchanged goods, cultures, and traditions.
I mention all of this because I think it is important context for understanding the real New Orleans, not the Disney version. And it will help you better understand our crazy, fascinating, and unique drinking culture, which could only exist here. New Orleans was once a French and Spanish colony with special access to imported European goods like brandy and absinthe; a thriving port and depot center where barges of whiskey from Kentucky docked near ships filled with rum and sugar from the Caribbean; and a merchants town where people made decent money and were happy to spend it in the city s many coffeehouses and drinking establishments.
I m a bar guy, not a professional historian, but around here most bar guys know a lot about history. In part, this is ego-we consider New Orleans to be the cradle of cocktail civilization, and we want people to know it! (Without New Orleans, there would be no Sazerac, no Vieux Carr , no Ramos Gin Fizz-and none of the thousands of modern cocktails that those drinks inspired. You re welcome.) The cocktail may not have been invented here, but it wouldn t have flourished the way it did without us.
I love and am very proud of my city s history, but I don t want you to get the wrong idea about me. I am not one of those mixologists who wears suspenders and old-timey clothes, and I don t have a waxed mustache. My bars and restaurants-I co-own four of them in New Orleans-are definitely modern affairs. In fact, my first bar, Cure, which opened in 2009, was the city s first modern stand-alone craft cocktail destination. Since then, other craft cocktail bars have opened here, and many of them are great. But we were the first.
Our mission upon opening was the same as it is today: to walk the line between old and new, to run a bar that honors New Orleans s past while inventing new cocktails that are the classics of the future. We have worked to create a bar that represents what New Orleans is really about.
Yes, we revere the past. But we are also constantly rebuilding and reinventing ourselves-out of necessity, since we have suffered so many catastrophes, from the Great Flood of 1927 to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to the recent devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic and Hurricane Ida.
In New Orleans, we are defined by the relationship between preservation and progress, and the pendulum swings back and forth between the two. When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in August 2005, my world changed (although not nearly to the extent that so many others did). I was living in New York at the time, working as a bartender at The Modern by Danny Meyer. In a single moment, I suddenly knew I wasn t where I was supposed to be. I can t explain it, but if you were from New Orleans and didn t live there anymore, you knew the city you loved needed its sons and daughters to return.
In the years that followed, New Orleans struggled to rebuild what was lost. But we also talked a lot about the new New Orleans and what the city could be if we all started looking forward a little more. That is where I got the idea for Cure. I realized that a city that reveres the cocktail as much as New Orleans does deserved a modern craft cocktail bar-a place where old-timers could come in and order a perfect Sazerac, made with quality rye and a beautiful, hand-cut garnish. (In the early 2000s, these were hard to come by except in a few old-school bars.) But also a place that felt cool and modern rather than from another time, where young people who maybe didn t know much about cocktails would feel comfortable and excited to explore new drinks. I wanted to apply everything I had learned in New York-about proper technique, the importance of good ingredients, and the wider canon of classic cocktails-to create a bar that walked the line between preservation and progress.
There are many ways that we honor the past at Cure. For one thing, we always have an array of classic cocktails on the menu, and especially New Orleans classics like the Sazerac and Vieux Carr . We have dedicated years of our lives to mastering these recipes, studying the history, tasting every relevant modern product that comes to market, and field-testing techniques and specs until we find the recipe we think is perfect. Call me arrogant, but I think we make the best Sazerac on the planet.
In addition to the classics, we always have a rotating cast of modern seasonal cocktails on the menu, invented by our brilliant bar staff. But we ve set some parameters for ourselves: Each of these cocktails has to be a riff on a classic cocktail template. In this way, we strike a balance between old and new and ensure that our drinks are always firmly grounded in history. Our bar isn t pretending to be some nineteenth-century relic, but it doesn t do postmodern molecular mixology, either. Like New Orleans, it has one foot in the past and one foot in the present.
It s been years since Cure first opened its doors, and a lot has happened in the interim. In 2018, Cure won a James Beard Award for Best Bar Program. That year, I also became the co-chair of the Tales of the Cocktail Foundation, which organizes the largest and most influential cocktail festival in the world (see this page ). My business partners and I have opened more bars and restaurants in New Orleans. There s now a Cure outpost in the New Orleans airport, Cane Table in the French Quarter, an agave-focused bar and restaurant called Vals, and a bar called Peychaud s in the building that Antoine Am d e Peychaud ( this page ) once lived in. In 2021, we partnered on our first location outside of New Orleans, an ambitious restaurant called Dauphine s in Washington, D.C.
I m also the father of a bright and beautiful daughter, and I m lucky to count my wife, Kea, as my partner in life and business. Kea is a lawyer and founder of the Sherman Law Firm, a boutique shop where she advocates for people and small businesses in our community, as well as the founder of Sherman Strategic Affairs. She is, quite simply, one of the best people I know, and she has brought a new level of sophistication to Cure. I am well aware of how lucky I am.
Cure has been open for well over