This year’s Tales of the Cocktail conference in New Orleans was a boozy wonderland that also felt like a world-class food festival.
At Absolut Tabasco’s Château Turkey and the Wolf, Tim Flores and Genie Kwon’s Kasama showcased its distinctly Chicago-Filipino point of view by serving Italian beef lumpia with sweet chili giardiniera. Kasama (which became the world’s first Michelin-starred Filipino restaurant in 2022) was part of a lively indoor-outdoor bash that also featured Stockholm’s Tjoget pouring cocktails like the Spicy Peaches, with olive oil-washed Absolut Tabasco, sherry, peach liqueur, apple and lime juice, last Monday. A couple of days later, Mei Lin was in the Château Turkey and the Wolf trailer, wearing a Chain/Arby’s 13 Hr Drip Fit as she built tom yum fried soft-shell crab baos. Turkey and the Wolf chef-proprietor Mason Hereford made sure there was an ample amount of his famous fried bologna sandwiches and chicken pot pie empanadas at this three-day pop-up.
Château Turkey and the Wolf, which also featured drinks from New York’s Bar Snack (named Best U.S. Cocktail Bar at Thursday’s Spirited Awards) and food from New York’s Dame and chef Nini Nguyen, was one of many New Orleans gatherings that amped up the idea of drinking food last week.
With changing consumer habits and health consciousness contributing to a decline in alcohol sales, many liquor brands hope to grow their business by working closely with prominent chefs and restaurants. And New Orleans, which hosted the North America’s 50 Best Restaurants announcement in May and for the Bocuse d’Or cooking competition this past Sunday, is an ideal destination for these collaborations.
So last Wednesday at two-Michelin-starred Emeril’s, chef E.J. Lagasse cooked alongside Pujol chef Enrique Olvera and Californios chef Val Cantú at a Tales of the Cocktail dinner that featured José Cuervo Reserva de la Familia cocktail pairings from Handshake Speakeasy. Last month, Californios in San Francisco became the world’s first three-Michelin-starred Mexican restaurant. And Olvera’s two-Michelin-starred Pujol in Mexico City has long been known as a standard-bearer for modern Mexican food.
Other Mexican hospitality heavyweights were also in the mix at Tales of the Cocktail. Earlier on Wednesday, chef Francisco “Paco” Ruano of Guadalajara’s Michelin-starred Alcalde teamed up with chef Sue Zemanick at Michelin-starred Zasu for a lunch with Reserva de la Familia (the official tequila partner for the Michelin Guide in the United States and Mexico).
Zasu-8.jpeg?quality=80&w=970″ alt=”” width=”970″ height=”1293″ data-caption=’Sue Zemanick and Francisco “Paco” Ruano at Zasu. <span class=”media-credit”>Proximo Spirits</span>’>
“We’re very excited to work with chef Paco and to drink way too much tequila before I have to work tonight,” Zemanick told the crowd.
The flavorful dishes coming out of Zasu’s kitchen, like tuna crudo with leche de tigre and grilled baby octopus with prune salsa matcha, paired nicely with the top-shelf tequila. Ruano brought out smokiness, sweetness, earthiness and beefiness in a licorice mole dish with green plantain atole and tongue, beef tendon and heart pastrami that was accompanied by a glass of Reserva de la Familia’s new Private Cask Collection Edition No. 2: Mole Cask. This is the first-ever tequila finished in mole-seasoned barrels.
The Mexico-themed revelry continued Wednesday night as L.A.’s Tacos 1986 served carne asada, pollo asado and hongos on handmade corn tortillas and handmade flour tortillas while Bar Mauro and Mixteca poured Don Julio cocktails at Diageo’s House of Agave. It was part of a whirlwind summer for Tacos 1986’s Jorge “Joy” Alvarez-Tostado and Victor Delgado, who had just flown back to the U.S. after a pop-up at Taqueria Super Macho in Hong Kong.
Mixteca-Serves-Up-Specialty-Tequila-Don-Julio-Cocktails.jpg?quality=80&w=970″ alt=”” width=”970″ height=”1213″ data-caption=’Bar Mauro and Mixteca poured Don Julio cocktails at Diageo’s House of Agave. <span class=”media-credit”>Jeffrey “DotShotIt” Batista</span>’>
During Tales of the Cocktail week, New Orleans chef Ana Castro was enjoying her own whirlwind. Castro hosted an 1800 Tequila dinner at modern Mexican darling Acamaya (which, along with Emeril’s and Dakar, reps New Orleans in this year’s North America’s 50 Best Restaurants list) and added an extra day of daytime service at her new Casimiro.
Acamaya, where we and other Tales of the Cocktail attendees (including a group overheard sharing stories about getting lost after drinking too much last year) pregamed before the Ode to the Bowl kickoff party, is a beautiful example of how cultures blend in New Orleans.
At Acamaya, Castro riffs on New Orleans food with soul-warming dishes like blackened drum Veracruz-style that pop with the flavors of tomatoes, olives and pepperoncini. Castro serves little blue crab claws (also known as crab fingers) with spicy green salsa instead of the more conventional Thousand Island dressing. She rounds out her menu with crowd-pleasers like shrimp costra (which has a terrific crispy layer of cheese) and a smoked hamachi al pastor tostada that’s so popular she knows she probably can’t ever take it off the menu.
Another memorable meal we had last week underscored the point that New Orleans is a city where simultaneously recognizing your surroundings and your heritage can create special experiences. Take chef Arvinder Vilkhu’s Saffron, a modern Indian restaurant that serves curried seafood gumbo and roasted Gulf oysters with curry leaf alongside uncompromising traditional curries like pork vindaloo.
Saffron was recommended to us by everyone from Kerry Seaton-Stewart of New Orleans fried chicken institution Willie Mae’s to Ode to the Bowl co-host Marc Rose. Seaton-Stewart, who makes great gumbo herself at Willie Mae’s (which hosted a Bacardi event featuring Bombay Sapphire during Tales of the Cocktail), told Observer that she appreciates Saffron because the restaurant is true to itself but also true to New Orleans.
“They’re representing themselves,” Seaton-Stewart told Observer. “The gumbo is curry-based. When you go to Saffron, you’re like, ‘OK, I can get a little gumbo out of this.’ But I also feel their culture, and I love it.”
It takes moxie to make Indian-influenced gumbo in a city where gumbo and local seafood are everywhere, including at the most celebrated dining institutions. Two of our other best meals in New Orleans, for example, were the gumbo and barbecue shrimp at The Wine Bar at Emeril’s (where we drank a delightful Viet-Cajun margarita and a deeply refreshing imperial sencha and rooibos iced tea) and the gumbo, blue crab beignets and pan-roasted redfish at chef Justin Devillier’s La Petite Grocery. But one thing we realized after eating around the city during Tales of the Cocktail is that chefs in New Orleans cook with confidence, whimsy and a lack of fear.
Seaton-Stewart and Observer discussed the vibrant New Orleans dining scene while sipping Mujen shochu cocktails at Byron Puck’s Beyond the Vine event last Tuesday. Beyond the Vine is a new culinary and cocktail series that is bringing in renowned bars for collaborations at Wolfgang Puck restaurants. Angel’s Share at Spago Beverly Hills on August 14 will be followed by Employees Only at Cut New York and Paradiso 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 showcase what we’re trying to do with bringing food and cocktails together,” Byron Puck told Observer as he and a team that included culinary director Tetsu Yehagi put the finishing touches on prime filet sandos and crawfish cones. “I think Tales always deserved a portion of it to be dedicated to food, to chefs. And I feel like it’s the entire hospitality community’s job to put cocktails in a great light.”
Earlier that day, we popped by the Maison Perrier lounge (where buzzy bars like L.A.’s Vandell were invited to pour) at the conference. That’s where Nestlé Waters and Premium Beverages director of client marketing Jayne Portnoy told Observer that she’s been coming to Tales of the Cocktail for more than a decade, and it definitely feels different now.
“It’s really exciting to see that the culinary part of Tales of the Cocktail is now the same caliber as food and wine festivals,” Portnoy said.
On Monday, cocktails from CureCo.’s Neal Bodenheimer (a New Orleans fixture who is co-chair of the Tales of the Cocktail board of directors) and Kirk Estopinal were paired with chef Andrew Zimmerman’s crispy clam toast and tortilla Española during a preview of Mildred’s at the new Warbler boutique hotel. (Zimmerman previously ran Chicago’s Michelin-starred Sepia for 16 years.) On Tuesday, 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 a Shamrock Shake from L.A.’s Real Charmer.
The presence of so many hospitality players at Tales of the Cocktail is why inKind, which has funded more than 8,000 restaurants, including Willie Mae’s 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 going bigger at Tales of the Cocktail in the future.
“We’re like, ‘Damn, if we get invited again, let’s do more pop-ups,’” Alvarez-Tostado told Observer. “Let’s do events at different restaurants.”
“I landed from Hong Kong at LAX at 11:15 a.m. Monday, and then 10 hours later, I was back at LAX to fly to New Orleans,” Delgado told Observer. “It’s hard to put words to it. It’s really surreal. We’ve never really partnered with an alcohol brand before because we’re not in the alcohol business.”
Being at Tales of the Cocktail might change things. Is this the first step toward creating a Tacos 1986 cantina?
“If anyone wants to have that conversation, let’s have it and see where it leads,” Delgado said.
