This year's Cocktail Legends The conference in New Orleans was a delicious wonderland and felt like a world-class food festival.
At Absolut Tabasco's The Château Turkey and Wolf, Tim Flores and Genie Kwon Kasama showed its distinctly Chicago-Filipino perspective by serving Italian beef lumpia and sweet chili giardiniera. Kasama (which became the world's first Michelin-starred Filipino restaurant in 2022) was part of a fun indoor-outdoor bash that also featured Stockholm's. Tjoget pouring cocktails like Spicy Peaches, with Absolut Tabasco washed down with olive oil, sherry, peach liqueur, apple and lime juice, last Monday. A few days later, Mei Lin was still there The Château Turkey and the Wolf trailer, wearing Chain/Arby's 13 Hr Drip Fit as they create tom yum fried soft shell crab baos. Turkey and Wolf Mason Hereford chef-owner has made sure there are enough of his famous fried bologna sandwiches and chicken pot pie empanadas for this three-day event.
The Château Turkey and Wolf, which also has drinks from New York Bar Snack (named Best Bar in the US at Thursday's Spirit Awards) and food from New York's Dame and chef Nini Nguyen, it was one of many New Orleans gatherings that fueled the idea of dining last week.
With changing consumer habits and health awareness impacting decline in alcohol salesmany breweries hope to grow their business by working closely with prominent chefs and restaurants. And New Orleans, which hosted the announcement of the 50 Best Restaurants in North America in May and the Bocuse d'Or culinary competition last Sunday, is the perfect place for this collaboration.
So last Wednesday at two-Michelin-star This is Emeril's placechef EJ Lagasse cooked on the side Pujol chef Enrique Olvera and California chef Val Cantú at the Tales of the Cocktail dinner featuring José Cuervo Reserva de la Familia cocktail pairings from Shaking hands Speakeasy. Last month, Californios in San Francisco became the world's first three-star Mexican restaurant. And Olvera's two-Michelin-starred Pujol in Mexico City has long been known as a standard bearer of modern Mexican cuisine.
Other Mexican hospitality heavyweights were also in the mix for Tales of the Cocktail. Earlier on Wednesday, Michelin-starred chef Francisco “Paco” Ruano of Guadalajara. The Alcalde teamed up with chef Sue Zemanick at the Michelin-starred restaurant Strategy for lunch with Reserva de la Familia (the official tequila partner of the Michelin guide in the United States and Mexico).
“We're very excited to work with chef Paco and drink a lot of tequila before I go to work tonight,” Zemanick told the crowd.
Delicious dishes from Zasu's kitchen, such as tuna crudo with leche de tigre and grilled octopus with salsa matcha, pair well with top-shelf tequila. Ruano brought out the smoke, sweetness, earthiness and goodness of the meat in a bowl of licorice mole with green plantain atole and tongue, beef tendon and heart pastrami that was accompanied by a glass of the new Reserva de la Familia. Private Cask Collection Collection No. 2: The Mole Cask. This is the first ever tequila finished in mole barrels.
The Mexican-themed fun continued Wednesday night in LA Tacos 1986 served carne asada, pollo asado and hongos on handmade corn tortillas and handmade flour tortillas while Bar Mauro again The Mixteca poured a Don Julio cocktail at Diageo's House of Agave. It was part of a whirlwind summer for Tacos 1986 Jorge “Joy” Alvarez-Tostado and Victor Delgado, who had just flown back to the US after the pop-up. Taqueria Super Macho in Hong Kong.
During Tales of the Cocktail week, New Orleans chef Ana Castro was enjoying herself up a storm. Castro hosts 1800's Tequila dinner at modern Mexican darling Acamaya (which, and Emeril and Dakar, reinstating New Orleans on this year's list of the 50 best restaurants in North America) and adding another day of lunch service at his new location. Casimiro.
Acamaya, where we and other attendees attended Tales of the Cocktail (including a group he heard sharing stories about getting lost after drinking too much last year) before the game. Ode to the Bowl kickoff party, a great example of how cultures come together in New Orleans.
At Acamaya, Castro takes on New Orleans cuisine with soul-warming dishes like Veracruz-style black drumsticks topped with tomato, olive and pepperoncini spices. Castro serves tiny blue crab claws (also known as crab fingers) with a spicy green salsa instead of the usual Thousand Island dressing. He rounds out his menu with crowd-pleasers like shrimp costra (with a layer of hot cheese) and the smoked hamachi al pastor tostada so popular he knows he probably won't be able to take it off the menu.
One of the memorable meals we had last week underscored the point that New Orleans is a city where simultaneously being aware of your surroundings and your heritage can create a unique experience. Take chef Arvinder Vilkhu Bloom ita modern Indian restaurant that serves curried seafood gumbo and roasted Gulf oysters with curry leaves alongside traditional curries that don't loosen up like pork vindaloo.
Saffron was recommended to us by everyone from Kerry Seaton-Stewart of the New Orleans Fried Chicken Institute Willie Mae in Ode to the Bowl with collaborator Marc Rose. Seaton-Stewart, who makes delicious gumbo at Willie Mae's (who hosted a Bacardi event featuring Bombay Sapphire during Tales of the Cocktail), told the Observer that she appreciates Saffron because the restaurant is true to itself but also true to New Orleans.
“They are independent,” Seaton-Stewart told the Observer. “Gumbo is based on curry. When you go to Saffron, you're like, 'Okay, I can get a little gumbo on this.' But I also understand their traditions, and I love them.”
It takes moxie to make Indian-influenced gumbo in a city where gumbo and local seafood are everywhere, including in highly regarded restaurants. Two of our best meals in New Orleans, for example, were gumbo and barbecue shrimp Wine Bar at Emeril's (where we drank a delicious Viet-Cajun margarita and a refreshing royal sencha and rooibos iced tea) and gumbo, blue crabs and pan-roasted redfish from chef J.Austin Devillier's La Petite Grocery. But one thing we noticed after dining in the city during Tales of the Cocktail is that New Orleans chefs cook with confidence, friendliness and fearlessness.
Seaton-Stewart and the Observer discussed the New Orleans restaurant scene while sipping Mujen shochu cakes at Byron Puck's Beyond the Vine event last Tuesday. Beyond the Vine is a new culinary and cocktail series that brings the popular bars to collaborations Wolfgang Puck places to eat. Angel's Assignment at Spago Beverly Hills on August 14 to follow Employees Only at Cut New York and Paradise at Cut Las Vegas.
“The world of mixology has grown so much, and it's a blessing to be here during Tales of the Cocktail and show what we're trying to do by bringing food and cocktails together,” Byron Puck told the Observer as he and a team that included culinary director Tetsu Yehagi put the finishing touches on prime filet sandos and crawfish balls. “I think Tales always deserved to have its portion dedicated to the food, to the chefs. And I feel like it's the hospitality community's job to put cocktails in a good place.”
Earlier that day, we checked into the Maison Perrier lounge (where the bars are as intense as LA's. Vandell they were invited to attend) the conference. That's when Nestlé Waters and Premium Beverages director of consumer marketing Jayne Portnoy told the Observer that she's been coming to Tales of the Cocktail for more than a decade, and it feels really different now.
“It's really exciting to see that the culinary side of Tales of the Cocktail is on the same level as the food and wine festivals,” said Portnoy.
On Monday, cocktails from CureCo.'s Neal Bodenheimer (a New Orleans native who chairs the board of directors for Tales of the Cocktail) and Kirk Estopinal paired with chef Andrew Zimmerman's crispy clam toast and tortilla Española during the preview. Mildred's at the new Warbler Store Hotel. (Zimmerman previously ran Chicago's Michelin-starred Sepia for 16 years.) Tuesdays, Baileys Irish Cream and po-boy shop. Two sisters offered fried shrimp and relief from the hot weather with frozen drinks, like a boozy take on the Shamrock Shake from LA's Real Charmer.
The presence of many hospitality players at Tales of the Cocktail is why kindly, which has sponsored more than 8,000 restaurants, including Willie Mae and Tacos 1986, decided to sponsor Ode to the Bowl for the first time this year. Meanwhile, Tacos 1986, which now has taquerias in New York and Las Vegas in addition to its Los Angeles portfolio, is already thinking about future expansion at Tales of the Cocktail.
“We're like, 'Damn, if we get invited again, let's do some more pranks,'” Alvarez-Tostado told the Observer. “Let's do events at different restaurants.”
“I arrived in Hong Kong at LAX at 11:15 a.m. on Monday, and 10 hours later, I returned to LAX to fly to New Orleans,” Delgado told the Observer. “It's hard to put words to it. It's really sad. We've never met the brewery because we're not in the liquor business.”
Being on Tales of the Cocktail may change things. Is this the first step in building a cantina for Tacos 1986?
“If anyone wants to have that conversation, let's have it and see where it leads,” said Delgado.
