Latest / The Restaurant Guys / Jeff “Beachbum” Berry & Dickie Brennan LIVE in NOLA!

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Jeff “Beachbum” Berry & Dickie Brennan LIVE in NOLA! · The Restaurant Guys

• 0:30
  the-restaurant-guys_3_07-31-2025_144505: Hey folks.
• 0:31
  the-restaurant-guys_3_07-31-2025_144505: As always, thanks for listening.
• 0:33
  the-restaurant-guys_3_07-31-2025_144505: You will be hearing a podcast today that we recorded in front of a live audience with Jeff Berry and Dickie Brennan, restaurant Royalty from New Orleans down at Latitude 29, which is the best tiki bar in America.
• 0:45
  the-restaurant-guys_3_07-31-2025_144505: We hope you enjoy it.
• 0:46
  the-restaurant-guys_3_07-31-2025_144505: we had a lot of fun and so will you.
• 0:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Hello everybody, and welcome.
• 1:01
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You are here with the restaurant guys.
• 1:03
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I'm Mark Pascal, he's Francis Shop.
• 1:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Together we own stage left in Catherine Lombardi restaurants in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
• 1:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We're here to bring you the inside track on food, wine, cocktails, and the finer things in life.
• 1:16
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Live here at Latitude 29.
• 1:18
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Hey there, Marky.
• 1:19
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Hey Francis.
• 1:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, welcome everybody in Podcast Land.
• 1:23
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You are listening to a show that we are currently recording at Latitude 29.
• 1:26
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Jeff Beachbum Barry and Anin Kay's Place here in, new Orleans during Tales, the cocktail in front of a live audience.
• 1:33
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: uh, we are super jazzed to be here and we thank all of you for coming and, uh, we love that you came here because you like us.
• 1:40
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We did have to bribe you with cocktails.
• 1:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We're okay with that, but, um, we give out free booze at our live events sometimes because, well, we are better when you're drinking.
• 1:48
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So it's, uh, it's how that works.
• 1:50
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: today we have as a guest and, for you and who can't see us, those who can, we, uh, have some New Orleans royalty here with us.
• 1:57
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We have a couple of different guests we're gonna be talking to.
• 1:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We have Jeff Beach, bum Berry.
• 2:01
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: This is his place.
• 2:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And normally we'd like to welcome you to our show, but welcome to your own fricking bar.
• 2:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Thank you.
• 2:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I guess it's about time I put it in appearance here, isn't it?
• 2:11
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Just a guy.
• 2:12
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 2:12
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, so we'll talk about Jeff in a moment.
• 2:14
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We also have sitting at the table with this, we have Dickie Brennan because we are the restaurant guys in every city of the world except for New Orleans.
• 2:21
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: In New Orleans.
• 2:23
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Dickie Brennan is the restaurant guys.
• 2:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So on one of the show, stop that.
• 2:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, so we're, we're gonna start off talking, uh, Tiki with Jeff Berry because there's no better person to talk Tiki with.
• 2:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, just a little background, for those of you who don't know, of course I'm in a room full of bartenders with drinks in their hand in New Orleans.
• 2:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: People who know these guys already.
• 2:41
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But for you all on podcast land, um.
• 2:43
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Journalist author, one of them by magazine's, 25 Most Influential Cocktail Personalities of the Century, drinks International's, 100 most influential figures of all time.
• 2:56
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Esquire calls him one of the instigators of the cocktail revolution and the New York Times cites him as get this, the Indiana Jones of tea drinks.
• 3:04
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Jeff, when we say this century, do they mean 20th or 21st?
• 3:07
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Which, which century are we we talking about?
• 3:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I feel like we're talking about the 18th right now.
• 3:12
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right now.
• 3:13
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: no podcast in, so we have to do it now.
• 3:15
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And I also have to, uh, thank an audience member for that lovely Esquire quote, which I've been abusing ever since it's been, I love it.
• 3:22
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: That's why we included it.
• 3:23
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So, David One Rich is in the audience who wrote that for Esquire, the Long Times Drinks Writer for Esquire Magazine, other cocktail celebrities.
• 3:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: In the, in the audience we have Tim McCurdy from the Cocktail College podcast, you know, which you'll hear us on I know a lot about cocktails.
• 3:37
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Mark knows a lot about cocktails.
• 3:38
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I learn something every time I listen to that show.
• 3:40
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Pretty amazing.
• 3:41
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I learn something every time I got drinking with David wdr, but I usually forget it, so I just may be learning the same thing over and over.
• 3:50
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: That's it.
• 3:50
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, so I think what I wanna talk, we wanna talk about, uh, Tiki specifically with you, Jeff, and then, and then Dickie.
• 3:57
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We wanna talk about New Orleans in general and the restaurant revolution here and your specific tiki history.
• 4:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But, um, why don't we start off with, why don't you tell us about your house?
• 4:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We're in your house.
• 4:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 4:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I, I sometimes refer to this as the largest home bar in the southeast, because most of the decor came from.
• 4:15
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, my, my house or an in my house, was either in our office or our, uh, storage area or, well, it's awesome that you have one of those restaurant guy podcast, uh, banner posters in the back.
• 4:26
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 4:26
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: In, in your house.
• 4:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I know that.
• 4:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, that's, you know, that's amazing.
• 4:29
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: People talk about a signature piece in a restaurant.
• 4:32
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, sometimes it's a chandelier, sometimes it's a painting.
• 4:35
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: In this case it's the restaurant guys.
• 4:37
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 4:37
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Podcast poster.
• 4:38
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, don't expect to be leaving with that.
• 4:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So, no, a lot of the, a lot of the, uh, carvings, the lamps, the, uh, wall art is, it all comes from our house.
• 4:50
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, When I give little tours, it's like, it even surprises me how much of this stuff really we're gonna be taking with us when they kick us out, you know?
• 4:57
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So, so why don't you talk to us about your life now.
• 5:00
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Latitude 29 is amazing.
• 5:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It's kind of tiki central of the world, right?
• 5:04
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: This is, I'm not gonna argue with you.
• 5:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It's ground.
• 5:07
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: This is literally, this is ground zero of tiki of an entire, of the current wor state of tiki.
• 5:12
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: This is it.
• 5:13
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: you basically saved tiki from obscurity.
• 5:16
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: if you had not come along for another 20 years, we would've lost the recipes.
• 5:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We would've lost the culture.
• 5:21
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Would've lost the stories because it was an oral history until you came along.
• 5:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 5:26
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It would've been a, it would've been a start over instead of a, Hey, we have this great, this rich history already.
• 5:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Can you talk to us about how the one man saved the tiki universe?
• 5:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, basically nobody else wanted the job, you know, so it was like, uh, um, no, no.
• 5:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh.
• 5:40
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It started by accident.
• 5:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I mean, I never expected for any of this to happen.
• 5:46
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I never expected for all of us to be.
• 5:48
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Thank you all for coming, by the way.
• 5:49
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It's lovely to have you.
• 5:49
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Woohoo.
• 5:50
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, and, uh, putting up with all this nonsense, the situation when I came of drinking age, back when, uh, snakes had legs and dinosaurs rule the earth, this was 1980.
• 6:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Snakes have legs again, Jeff.
• 6:04
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Oh, what goes around comes around, you know?
• 6:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, anyway, that was the dark edges of the cocktail, which, uh, Dave Winterish has also written about, and I'm sure many of you also have is cocktails were Dead Gone.
• 6:17
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: They were what your parents and grandparents drank.
• 6:19
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, if you went to a bar in the eighties, either a singles bar or a fern bar as, or a restaurant bar, uh, you were going to drink either a Heineken, you know, an imported beer or a white wine spritz.
• 6:31
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Not much else.
• 6:32
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Maybe a pina colada.
• 6:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: The industrial.
• 6:35
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Food complex had pretty much destroyed craft cocktails.
• 6:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Everything came out of a can or, um, a gun or a bottle.
• 6:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Or a gun.
• 6:43
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Soda, guns.
• 6:43
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 6:44
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: the only places that I would go in the eighties when I was drinking that made decent drinks were tiki bars.
• 6:52
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And it was because they were doing what they always did.
• 6:55
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, back in the day, back in the thirties and forties when the, you know, the, the whole golden age, they never changed.
• 7:00
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, they, maybe it was just out of habit or, or you know, don't, if it, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, you know.
• 7:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But, um, well, can we dive into that?
• 7:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I just wanna stop you right there because that's very interesting.
• 7:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: 'cause I think Tiki, especially the dawn of the pre-prohibition renaissance of pre three, three ingredient pre-prohibition drinks.
• 7:19
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I think I, I was one of those young bartenders, I looked down my nose at tiki drinks'cause I'd never had a good one.
• 7:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right.
• 7:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And I didn't know there was actual technique behind it, but that was actually the only extent surviving quality.
• 7:33
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Genre left.
• 7:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And is that because it started later?
• 7:36
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Is that because old guys held on longer?
• 7:38
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Is it'cause it was sweet.
• 7:40
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Why was that still here?
• 7:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Why were there still remnants of that alive?
• 7:44
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, that's a good question, but let me back up a little bit because what you said about thinking that tiki drinks were part of the problem, in the early.
• 7:52
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Cocktail Renaissance is, is exactly what I encountered.
• 7:55
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I think we're getting ahead of ourselves now, but why not?
• 7:57
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Let's jump around in time.
• 7:58
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Let's, let's be Elaine Renee instead of Marvel movie makers.
• 8:01
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, the, uh, the situation is, I encountered it when I first started, um, finding and, and writing about and, um, and, and touting all of these classic Tiggy drinks that had never been written down is that no craft cocktail bartender would touch'em with a 10 foot tiggy pole.
• 8:18
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Mm-hmm.
• 8:19
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Now, they were not interested.
• 8:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: They thought it was part of the problem, and that is because the younger bartenders.
• 8:24
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Kraft cocktail bartender.
• 8:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We're talking about the late nineties early aughts.
• 8:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Now the beginning of the Renaissance, which was like, uh, London, Chicago, New York, um, and New Brunswick, New Jersey.
• 8:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Thank you very much.
• 8:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Let us not forget New Brunswick, um, a hotspot, if ever there was one, but for cocktails it certainly was.
• 8:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yes.
• 8:40
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: They all, what they knew about tiki drinks was just the, the devolution of them.
• 8:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: They knew about the devolved versions.
• 8:47
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right.
• 8:47
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I mean, in 1987, you were as likely to, you were more likely to have Kool-Aid in your planter's punch than actual juice.
• 8:54
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Oh, it, it was, it was worse than that.
• 8:56
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: If you ordered a planter's punch back then or a daiquiri, both drinks would come in a giant.
• 9:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Hurricane glass, they'd be frozen, like, uh, seven 11 Slurpees.
• 9:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: There'd be whipped cream on top, and then there would be like grenadine pour on the whipped cream, and then there'd be a chariot add insult to all those injuries.
• 9:12
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, so I'm serious that's what you would get.
• 9:14
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And that for a long time, I thought that's what a daiquiri was.
• 9:16
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: The first time somebody gave me a daiquiri and a coop, it was like, what, what the fuck is this?
• 9:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know?
• 9:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 9:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 9:22
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Anyway, um, to get back to the, the craft cocktail scene, uh, at the turn of the century.
• 9:28
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, so that's what they knew.
• 9:29
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: They, they, they thought these were syrupy, slushy cruise ship drinks.
• 9:32
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Sure.
• 9:32
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And they did not wanna be serving them in the bar.
• 9:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: The whole ethos of the craft cocktail scene, especially the first wave, was we want to get back to the roots.
• 9:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We wanna get back to cocktails as a craft, right.
• 9:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, with, uh, fresh ingredients, you know, with, uh, premium spirits, made the way they're supposed to be made, not just used in a blender.
• 9:48
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I remember, I don't wanna tarnish Toby Millennium, but one of the, um, one of the bartenders at the, uh, violet hour.
• 9:56
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I remember this quote because it sort of struck me right through the heart.
• 9:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: this was in the early, late, early two thousands.
• 10:03
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, he said, if anybody ever tried to bring a blender in my bar, I'd throw it in them down the stairs.
• 10:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Oh, yeah.
• 10:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I, I'm share with you personal history, Okay.
• 10:12
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Statue of Limitation has run out.
• 10:14
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, frog the peach people would make blender drinks, and they weren't asking me to make really great blender drinks, but they'd want me to make pina coladas.
• 10:22
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Sorry.
• 10:23
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Blender's broken.
• 10:24
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And then that's one way to deal with it.
• 10:26
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I, I was like, ah, blender's broken.
• 10:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Why is it broken?
• 10:28
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Because I pulled the plug out.
• 10:29
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: somebody put a spoon in it?
• 10:31
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I don't know what happened.
• 10:32
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It's making sudden it's not working.
• 10:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So good.
• 10:35
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It's true, but it's true.
• 10:36
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We, we didn't fricking know Yeah.
• 10:38
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Until toss.
• 10:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, the, you were, you were smart about the Pina'cause.
• 10:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It is a crap drink.
• 10:43
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I mean, I, I'm not going to defend that particular drink.
• 10:46
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I mean, it's, it's never been good.
• 10:48
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It wasn't good in 1954 when it was invented, uh, in, San Juan.
• 10:52
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It's not good now.
• 10:53
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Mm-hmm.
• 10:54
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It's an unbalanced drink.
• 10:55
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It has no sour element.
• 10:56
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It's just sweet.
• 10:57
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And then, uh, lactic.
• 10:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Cream.
• 11:00
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And it's like, I mean, you can't argue with success.
• 11:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It is probably the most famous drink ever created.
• 11:04
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, uh, as Jared and Anastasia, the two cocktail, yes, thank you.
• 11:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, as, as he once wrote in the Journal of the American cocktail, it's the most successful drink of all time.
• 11:14
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You can't argue people like pineapple, coconut ice cream.
• 11:17
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So they like a pina colada.
• 11:18
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But to me it's a bad, if I, if I got a nickel every time somebody made one, I would, I'd be a big fan, but I, but I don't.
• 11:23
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So anyway, so you walk into a world where the only, the, the only sort extent, you know, still quality drinks being made are in the tiki realm.
• 11:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 11:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And it gets, it gets no respect.
• 11:32
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: like comedians of your, because there were some real tiki drinks, but still, most of the tiki drinks that most of us were drinking at Lee's Hawaiian and Lyndhurst were, I was thinking of the shipwreck in Seaside Park.
• 11:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Okay.
• 11:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So, but whatever.
• 11:46
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, and terrible drinks.
• 11:47
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But, so what did you see?
• 11:49
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: What did you change?
• 11:50
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, to flash back again, uh, to the 1980s, um, I was very happily drinking these drinks and, and it was, it was just my preferred cocktail.
• 12:00
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And I liked being in, uh, tiki bars and restaurants.
• 12:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: There were a lot of really nice, very high end white tablecloth, Polynesian themed restaurants still left, uh, particularly Trader V's in Beverly Hills.
• 12:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Mm-hmm.
• 12:11
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: these were fine dining places back in the day.
• 12:13
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, and I never gave it another thought.
• 12:17
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I mean, I, I'm enjoying these drinks.
• 12:18
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I like them.
• 12:19
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, gradually the places started to go out of business and part of the reason, especially with high end places like Vix and on the Beach, Beachcombers and Luelle and all that were that, um, their overhead was just too high and the people had moved on.
• 12:33
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: The fad was over, um, after 40 years, by the way.
• 12:36
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I mean, this was the longest lived cocktail trend.
• 12:40
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I think in American history is like unquestionably, I mean from the, from uh, the depression to disco basically.
• 12:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, I think one of the things that people, the younger generation doesn't realize is when I bartended.
• 12:52
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You could put out, you know, four Manhattans, three gin and tonics.
• 12:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Six rum and Cokes in three minutes.
• 13:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right.
• 13:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You could put those drinks out like lightning.
• 13:05
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So all of a sudden you had to invest in time and in people and in, you know, your cocktail's gonna be two minutes.
• 13:11
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: My goodness.
• 13:12
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: When we opened in 1992, when we told people their cocktail was gonna take five minutes, they were like, why would a cocktail take five minutes?
• 13:19
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 13:19
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: What, like, how could, how could that be?
• 13:21
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You're distilling the gin, whatcha doing?
• 13:22
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 13:23
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, mark, that's a great point.
• 13:24
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And that's one of the reasons why these drinks went away, um, is because places like, I mean, I talked to, um, Bob Espino, an old, uh, bar manager from the Contiki chain, uh, that was in all the Sheraton hotels, just like Trader Vick's was in the, uh, Hilton chain.
• 13:38
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And he told me that they, he would have eight bartenders on the line at one time, and it was like a Ford assembly line.
• 13:44
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Somebody would be making the ice shell, somebody else would be building the drink.
• 13:47
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Somebody else would be shaking them.
• 13:48
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Somebody else would be pouring them, and you would get.
• 13:51
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: A very complicated eight ingredient drink in two minutes.
• 13:54
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, but that's a lot of people.
• 13:56
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: That's a lot of money.
• 13:57
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: you, you can't keep that up if the fed's over, you know?
• 13:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, and I remember when, when we, when we started bartending, so I started in 86.
• 14:03
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: people would order a tiki drink and we would have some, Mr.
• 14:05
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Boston died, which was, had formerly been a great guide and then wasn't, and then was again, and now is kind of in the middle.
• 14:12
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: but you would make the hurricane or the Singapore sling or whatever, and it was just crap, right?
• 14:18
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It was a lot of different kinds of crap.
• 14:19
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It was one of those, it um, I remember when we were young bartenders, we'd make the Long Island iced teas and the Singapore things.
• 14:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You would have all the bottles for the Long Island iced tea right next to each other.
• 14:29
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So you could grab three bottles in each hand and go like this.
• 14:32
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, and who, how much went in, I don't fucking know about the same amount of each thing.
• 14:36
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right.
• 14:36
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: and that about the same amount of each, and that's what this, the, the bottle that was lower got a little more than the bottle that was higher.
• 14:43
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right.
• 14:44
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So, So that's why it got no respect.
• 14:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But at the same time, we were these old guys with the old recipes making, you know, the cocktail renaissance of the pre-prohibition cocktails.
• 14:52
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And that sort of ilk was, they were three ingredients.
• 14:55
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: They were three or four ingredients, and this is six or seven multiple kinds of base spirit, different blends of rum, but I think that the interesting thing that I kind of want to get to is that shit wasn't written down anywhere.
• 15:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: No, you're absolutely right.
• 15:09
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And I discovered this, um, when these places started closing up.
• 15:14
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, uh, it occurred to me that if I wanted to keep drinking my favorite kind of drink, I'd just have to learn how to make them at home.
• 15:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, and I went looking for recipes and, uh, at this time there was no internet.
• 15:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: There were used bookstores and there were libraries.
• 15:28
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, and that's where I went.
• 15:29
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And I found very little drinkable recipes.
• 15:33
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I mean, there were recipes for the zombie, there were recipes for the Navy garage.
• 15:37
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: There were recipes for all these drinks.
• 15:38
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And I would make them at home and they all sucked.
• 15:41
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And it's like, why did this trend keep going for 40 years?
• 15:43
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And why am I drinking good versions of these in the bars?
• 15:46
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: There's a disconnect here.
• 15:47
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Mm-hmm.
• 15:47
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, looking at old magazines, the Periodical Index, uh, you know, taking Forever Microfiche was another, all these ancient, ancient things that probably half the people here, luckily for them, will never encounter.
• 16:00
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, they revealed very little.
• 16:04
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: That was good.
• 16:05
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I find there was one used bookstore in Glendale, California, which is not far from where I lived in Hollywood, that had, um.
• 16:13
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I used cocktail book section and I'd never, you rarely ran into that.
• 16:17
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It was always cookbook sections and there would be the three or four old cocktail books in this.
• 16:21
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So this was an entire cocktail, and I, I basically rated it.
• 16:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And at that time, you could get things like the 1928 Jerry Thomas, uh, reissue, um, by, uh, Asbury five bucks.
• 16:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 16:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, and, uh, and the same thing with, um, Charles Baker and all these classic books.
• 16:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, um, uh, Ted Sassier, I was, I bought all these things for nothing, you know, and, uh, and, and I would comb them looking for decent tiggy recipes and even the Esquire.
• 16:49
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, drink book, which was, had a lot of great recipes in it.
• 16:52
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And Ted Sasser's book, which had real recipes from real restaurants, very little.
• 16:56
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Then I found the 1972 Trader Vic Bar Guide Uhhuh, a long outer print.
• 17:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But at that point, Vic was a multimillionaire.
• 17:05
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: He was kind of the Gordon Ramsey of his day.
• 17:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: He was, um, you know, a sort of a superstar chef restaurateur.
• 17:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, and at that point he felt confident enough to I'm just gonna reveal the recipes.
• 17:13
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: People are gonna still come to my restaurant, you know?
• 17:15
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right, right.
• 17:17
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And that was, uh, that was an eyeopener because I could take that book to Trader v's.
• 17:21
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, and uh, have it under the table.
• 17:24
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And I, and I, I could order a drink from the menu and then look it up.
• 17:28
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Oh, alright.
• 17:29
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: That's what I'm drinking, and I, I can train my palate and learn the ABCs of these things that way.
• 17:35
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: The other way was to go to the bars that were still around and watch them make the drinks.
• 17:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And you learn very little that way because.
• 17:41
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, my local watering hole, TET, uh, which was started in 1961 by Ray Bowen, who was one of Don the beef crumb's, original bartenders, and basically poached all of Don's secret recipes.
• 17:52
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And he made them in his own bar.
• 17:53
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, they were stellar drinks, but you could never tell what was in them from watching them make them because the bottles didn't have labels.
• 18:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, that was like, was a big trademark of Don Beach.
• 18:05
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And Trader Vic was, the recipes were all secret and not written down.
• 18:09
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Even the bartenders didn't know what they were making.
• 18:11
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: What I could learn from the tiki t uh, was how these drinks were made.
• 18:15
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And almost all of them were made using a flash blending process, a top down Hamilton Beach mixer, uh, not the bottom up, uh, wearing.
• 18:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And they would blend for just three seconds with a very carefully measured amount of crushed ice, the same way that they measured the other ingredients.
• 18:32
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And the idea was consistency.
• 18:35
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: That way.
• 18:35
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: The drink tastes the same every time.
• 18:37
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Instant dilution, instant chill, instant aeration to give it a mouth feel that you can't get by shaking or by doing a and you don't get a slushy drink because you don't have that much ice in there, right?
• 18:47
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I'm talking about four, you know, half a cup, four ounces of ice, right?
• 18:50
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Maybe or two jiggers of ice, you know?
• 18:52
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I could learn the technique that way.
• 18:54
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But I still didn't have the recipes to try out that technique.
• 18:57
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Don, I, I found Vick's recipe.
• 18:58
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Sure.
• 18:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But, you know, Vick's Navy Grogg recipe in the book, because he was still selling shit, was uh, three ounces of Trader Vic Navy Grogg Rum.
• 19:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 19:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And three ounces of Trader Vic Navy Grogg mix.
• 19:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right, right.
• 19:09
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, you know, so that wasn't very helpful.
• 19:11
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, the, the Esquire bar guide had a DA partial, the Beach Cummer recipe.
• 19:14
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: He wouldn't reveal the whole thing.
• 19:16
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Theirs was, um, three quarter, uh, lime, three quarter grapefruit, three quarter simple syrup.
• 19:23
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And then, uh, he listed three different rums.
• 19:26
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So I knew what those rums were.
• 19:28
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: but I made the drink and it was like, nah, that doesn't taste any down.
• 19:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Still not the real drink.
• 19:32
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: How did you hunt down the real recipes?
• 19:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, it was shoe leather.
• 19:36
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I was fortunately in the right place at the right time.
• 19:38
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I was in Los Angeles in the 1990s, and by the way, this is just a hobby.
• 19:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I wasn't, I didn't wanna be a bartender, I didn't wanna open a restaurant.
• 19:46
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I wanted to be drink the drinks I liked.
• 19:48
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Mm-hmm.
• 19:49
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: This was just a hobby for me, strictly amateur.
• 19:51
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: but I went further and further down this rabbit hole.
• 19:53
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And every so often in Los Angeles, you would randomly encounter.
• 19:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, somebody who had worked at Don the Beach come, or had worked at the luau, had worked at, I mean, a telephone repair guy came in one day, our phone was out at home, came in and he saw all the tiki crap in, in my room, and he said, um, oh yeah, I used to work at a place called The Luau in Beverly Hills.
• 20:15
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I was like, really?
• 20:16
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Did you have any drink recipes?
• 20:17
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, he just like, it was, it was that random.
• 20:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Forget the phone.
• 20:21
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah, just the phone.
• 20:22
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: No, but my brother, my brother might went down.
• 20:24
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It took an hour to fix.
• 20:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah, right.
• 20:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, but I was in advertising at that point, a copywriter and uh, a client of mine wanted to meet.
• 20:33
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: A and I and his wife and I at a Chinese restaurant called Madam W in Santa Monica.
• 20:38
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And it's like, ugh, really?
• 20:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Cantonese food.
• 20:40
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I mean, the big deal then was Chelon Nan.
• 20:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right, right.
• 20:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, and Madam w was like old school Chinese.
• 20:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: but we went, we were a, and I were early.
• 20:47
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We went to the bar, which was empty.
• 20:49
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, and there was a Filipino guy behind the bar who turned out later.
• 20:52
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I learned his name was Tony Ramos.
• 20:54
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And that he was Frank Sinatra's bartender at Don the Beach and would make Frank his Navy gros in his private room.
• 21:00
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, and uh, I, the only reason I found that out was because he gave me a drink menu.
• 21:04
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And in, at this point in the early nineties, a cocktail menu was a very weird thing to get.
• 21:11
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah, you didn't see that.
• 21:11
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 21:11
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You didn't get them, you know, you got the mat bars'cause they had 30 different drinks, but you never got them in a restaurant bar.
• 21:16
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, and he handed me a cocktail menu and I looked at it and I knew enough from my collection of old menus, and old articles about Don Beast, that these were his drinks.
• 21:26
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, there was a rum barrel, there was a new nui, there was like all this stuff.
• 21:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right.
• 21:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And so I ordered as much as I could before the, the boss got there and, uh, uh, and started talking to him.
• 21:37
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And eventually he became kind of a, I never asked him for a recipe.
• 21:41
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I was just not that.
• 21:43
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um.
• 21:44
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Nervy Uhhuh.
• 21:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, also should have spent more time in Jersey.
• 21:47
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 21:47
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Really?
• 21:48
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, uh, so, but I became a regular there.
• 21:51
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We drive in from, you know, across town and I told all my, what few Tiki friends I had,'cause again, you know, it's totally random.
• 21:57
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: If he met somebody who was into this stuff.
• 21:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We went there and he became kind of like our, our guru, you know.
• 22:03
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We would order these drinks.
• 22:04
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And so how did you come up with, how did the recipes get into your, your grubby little hands?
• 22:07
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: There was a guy who you may know, uh, Dr.
• 22:09
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Cocktail.
• 22:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Ted Ha.
• 22:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Ted ha Sure.
• 22:11
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: He was the, um, alpha guy that I was not.
• 22:15
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, I was a strictly beta customer.
• 22:18
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, I would order the drinks, be very grateful.
• 22:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I would tip well and talk and fi try to find out, I would actually write this stuff down on a matchbook cover.
• 22:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, I would ask him questions, but it'd be totally off the cuff.
• 22:28
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It was not a, a set time interview.
• 22:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: there would be a lull during service, But Ted, I took Ted there.
• 22:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, uh, Ted, if, if, if you've ever heard him talk, he sounds like a Jimmy Stewart.
• 22:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, only a Jimmy Stewart as a charming visitor from the 18th century.
• 22:44
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: so I took him there and he was very outgoing guy and he, and, uh, he dressed at that time, um, like a 1920s f Scott Fitzgerald's happened.
• 22:51
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: He drove an old 1930s Packard.
• 22:54
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, he was sort of living that vintage life and his interest was craft cocktails, pre-prohibition.
• 22:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Craft cocktails.
• 22:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right.
• 23:00
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But I took him there.
• 23:01
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, and, um, he, he had some Tony's drinks.
• 23:04
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: He was going.
• 23:05
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Hey, Tony, what's in this one?
• 23:07
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, it was a Montego Bay.
• 23:09
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: What's, what's in this Montego Bay?
• 23:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, and, and Bar?
• 23:11
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: He wrote it down and gave it to him.
• 23:12
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Oh, that's awesome.
• 23:13
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, and there were, I got three Donna Beachcomber recipes.
• 23:15
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: The first ones I ever got because of Ted at Tony Rounds.
• 23:18
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And this, it was a process that repeated itself with different people at different bars.
• 23:22
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, you never knew who you're gonna run into.
• 23:24
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: How do we get to your first book?
• 23:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Because that's when the world then said everyone who, who has a, a father or an uncle or a brother who.
• 23:32
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, passes away or retires, and they find their notebook, they send them, they send it to you.
• 23:36
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, that eventually, that eventually happened.
• 23:38
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And that's all thanks to the internet.
• 23:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, you know, when, when it became easier to get in touch with people or for them to get in touch with me who had this knowledge.
• 23:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Anyway, um, long story short, to answer your first question, um, uh, we're celebrating the 30th anniversary of the First Beach Marbury booklet, uh, which was done as a sort of a cut and paste zine.
• 23:56
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: This was before I had a computer anyway.
• 23:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I mean, I, before Photoshop, at any rate.
• 24:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: put it out in 1995.
• 24:03
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And the only reason I did it again, strictly amateur, I, I didn't.
• 24:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Considered myself to be a cocktail writer at all.
• 24:09
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I was in trying to get into the movie business.
• 24:11
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, I should have been working on that instead of this.
• 24:13
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But, um, this is kind of the hobby that took over my life.
• 24:17
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Basically.
• 24:17
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: The siren song of Tiki.
• 24:19
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yes.
• 24:19
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yes.
• 24:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, lemme just before I lose my, because I, I can't have a, I don't have a train of thought anymore.
• 24:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I have maybe a caboose and a coal car.
• 24:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: That's about it.
• 24:28
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: so gradually, one by one, you would randomly meet people who were into the same stuff you were.
• 24:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And I, and I think by the early nineties I knew like five guys, and one of them was, uh, well, his name was Kurt Brown.
• 24:40
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, he worked as a art art director for the Santa Monica Outlook and he was into tiki stuff and he was a surfer and he had a place in Venice Beach, uh, and a backyard.
• 24:49
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And he would invite his, uh, surfer friends over, uh, for Lu House.
• 24:54
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And he found out I was interested in the drink stuff and he had me make the punches at the Lu house.
• 24:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, so I would, and then, um, uh, people would come up to me and say, Hey, what's in this?
• 25:04
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: This is really good.
• 25:05
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Now, when I asked that question to of Ray Bowen, or when I asked that question of any of the bartenders at, uh, trader V's.
• 25:12
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Or many of the other places I went and I said, what's, this is great drink?
• 25:15
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: What's in it?
• 25:16
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: The answer would always be Roman fruit juice.
• 25:18
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, it is like, this is like, how dare you?
• 25:21
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, these are, these are trade secrets, you know?
• 25:23
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I was like, um, but I thought, I'm not gonna be that guy.
• 25:26
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, what's, why would I be that guy?
• 25:28
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So I, I did a little cut and pasting.
• 25:31
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Here, here's everything I know, and one of those found its way up to a comic book publisher in San Jose.
• 25:36
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, it was a underground comic, alternative comic, actually.
• 25:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Slave Labor Graphics was the name of the company.
• 25:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And the, uh, owner, Dan Vado had two main interests, um, monkeys and Tiki, um, kind of go together.
• 25:49
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, but, um, and he got in touch with me through, um, Kurt, who had his tiki, his Nam Tiki was OT Von Stroheim, Kurt Brown.
• 25:58
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, uh, I complimented him once on his, um, uh, his knowledge of early silent cinema, uh, OT von Stroheim, the famous film director, me widow and greed and all that.
• 26:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, and I said, yeah, so you named yourself after, uh, the film director.
• 26:11
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: He goes, who?
• 26:13
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So he had no idea.
• 26:15
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: He just, he just saw that randomly somewhere and said, that sounds cool, you know?
• 26:19
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But anyway, I digress.
• 26:21
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um.
• 26:22
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So Dan Vato put out the first grog three years later, as in a spiral bound book form.
• 26:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And then there was a second one spiral bound form.
• 26:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: As I got more and more, more recipes and I could correct inferior versions of other recipes or get earlier versions.
• 26:36
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Finally, after years and years and years and, um, literally about a decade of wondering what was in all these Don the beach come drinks.
• 26:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, and as I found out from a 1948 Saturday evening post article that I dug up out of a, I think it was e by that time there was eBay something, the, uh, reporter said, uh, well, Don's recipes are top secret because everybody's stealing them and opening up rival restaurants, and he's tired of, uh, losing market share.
• 27:04
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So he put his recipes in code, um, and that's why, and there, there's either nothing on the label of the bottle.
• 27:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It was either an old bartender who knew what was in it, or he would have things like number Don spices number two or, or dashes number four, or whatever.
• 27:18
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: That would be the label.
• 27:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So if I hire, um, if I hired Dickie to 10 bar down the Beach Comer, uh, but I don't know him, I don't know if he is gonna be tempted away by somebody offering him more money, he's probably gonna bring'em all back to his restaurants, just so you know.
• 27:35
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, this would obviously be before he became the Dickie Brandon.
• 27:37
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But, uh, And Dickie would look at the recipes.
• 27:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: He go, okay, so Annunu is, uh, two ounces St.
• 27:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Croix, uh, quarter ounce number two, quarter ounce number four.
• 27:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Orange fine.
• 27:46
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Good.
• 27:47
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So he'd turn around to the back bar and there would be number two and number four on the label.
• 27:51
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Now, um, Francis, if you hire Dicky away because you wanna cash in on this huge trend, he didn't know it was in those drinks.
• 27:56
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, he would go to your back bar and he'd make the be happy to make the drink for you.
• 28:01
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But where's your number two?
• 28:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Where's your number four?
• 28:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So were you able to crack the code if what was in those days?
• 28:05
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It took about 10 years.
• 28:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: That's amazing.
• 28:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But here, but the first I had to get the recipes and finally, um, a lady named Jennifer Santiago was a, a hairdresser for the movies, lived in, uh, Virginia, Uhhuh.
• 28:16
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: She got in touch with me through auto and um.
• 28:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: She said, well, my father, Dick Santiago was a maitre d at Don's in 1937 through the war.
• 28:26
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, uh, he had this little black book of recipes, like a little telephone book they used to keep in his, um, shirt pocket.
• 28:31
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And would you be interested?
• 28:32
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Wow.
• 28:33
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I said, yeah.
• 28:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 28:35
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So she was kind enough to xerox them and I got them.
• 28:38
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And some of them were interpretable because I had, they didn't tell you how to make the drink.
• 28:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: They didn't say shake, blend or anything like that.
• 28:44
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right.
• 28:44
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But I knew from the TET and also from the balance, if, if somebody, if something had three ounces of ruminate and one and a half ounces of, of modifiers, right.
• 30:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: syrup, fruit juice, whatever, you knew that it had to be blended because you needed the deletion from the, from the, from the ice.
• 30:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So I, I, I knew how to do that thanks to the Tgt.
• 30:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Alright, so all the bartenders out there, what you need to do if you wanna be really good is quit your job and just do nothing but research and research and research for 10 years.
• 30:41
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And then you can, you can make some really cool cocktails.
• 30:44
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I was doing other stuff.
• 30:48
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But being where we are in the city of New Orleans, I wanna, I Dickie thank you for your patience.
• 30:52
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: for those of you who, who don't know about New Orleans, the Brennan family is restaurant royalty here since the 1940s at the very least.
• 30:58
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: like I said, we're, we're the restaurant guys everywhere else.
• 31:01
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Dicky Brennan's a restaurant guy here, Lolly Brennan and, and his cousin c Martin Own Commander's Palace.
• 31:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right now, the Brennan family has been involved in, in restaurants here forever.
• 31:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Dickie has a bunch of restaurants on his own, including, Dickie, Brendan Steakhouse, which is amazing.
• 31:14
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: but what a lot of people don't know is that, uh, you also had a, an early start in Tiki back in, uh, in Mexico City you worked at, at a tiki restaurant.
• 31:23
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So for, but before we get into you and Tiki, uh, you are royalty here in this town.
• 31:28
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, so I, I, I, I asked Jeff about his house.
• 31:32
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I'm gonna ask you about your city.
• 31:33
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Talk to us about, he tells the cocktail New Orleans cocktails here and are too many bartenders for you this time of year over year.
• 31:40
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know what's going on?
• 31:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Thank you, This, this royal stuff.
• 31:44
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I don't, we don't know how to deal with that.
• 31:46
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So you got, everything is named Royal down here.
• 31:50
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We're really happy to have you here let me say this.
• 31:53
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Jeff and I knew who they were before they came and did Latitude 29.
• 31:58
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And these guys could go anywhere in the world they wanted to from Latitude 29.
• 32:03
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And when they decided to do it here in New Orleans, what a gift for New Orleans.
• 32:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And fortunately for me personally, we've become really good friends.
• 32:13
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So, uh, I get to hang out with these living legends and, uh, you know, just hearing what he's saying today and what I've heard, you know, for the years we've gotten to be friends.
• 32:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Does anybody else agree this is a movie?
• 32:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Oh yeah, it's definitely a movie.
• 32:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Why wouldn't we make a movie about, you know, the passion and your path, but, um, I think it'd be one hell of a move in.
• 32:38
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Be great for everybody.
• 32:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well make, making a movie will drive you to drink, but we're already there, so why we can skip that step.
• 32:44
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So Dickie, you have obviously rich roots in this town and a lot of family and my goodness, I mean, I mean people with the name Brennan or cousins there, there must be 75 New Orleans restaurants Somehow, somehow our tribute to you or people who work for you or people with your name.
• 33:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But I just wanted you to know, I saw your cousin t yesterday and she said that, the fish she caught on your fishing trip this weekend was way bigger.
• 33:12
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 33:12
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: She said, tell Dickie my fish is bigger.
• 33:16
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Just like, just letting you know it's out there.
• 33:17
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: She's broadcasting it that she is a better picture to.
• 33:20
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So can you give us, I'll show you a picture later.
• 33:22
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So can you give us now Dickie, I, I have to say, so this is a real restaurant town with the most important restaurant towns in America.
• 33:28
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: When you talk about palace.
• 33:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Emeril Lag started Commanders Palace.
• 33:33
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: One of the first celebrity chefs in America was Paul Prude, who when you were a kid, was a chef at Commanders Palace and you knew him back then.
• 33:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Can you give us just a little bit of the family tree of the Brennans and what's gone on since, Owen started, you know, in 1946 or whenever it was, he started, I, I'd love to'cause it's, it's a crazy story.
• 33:52
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Uh, you know, back in the forties, my dad's oldest brother, uh, there was six kids and there was five years between each kid.
• 33:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So, um, isn't that interesting?
• 34:03
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But, so the oldest brother Owen, uh, was kind of an entrepreneur.
• 34:07
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: He was selling liquor and some men said, look, we want to help you buy this place on Bourbon Street.
• 34:15
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And it was the old absent house, so.
• 34:18
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Um, and our family came here from Ireland, so made a lot of sense that the Brennan's had the old Abson house, which was a hell of a saloon.
• 34:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It was a piano bar on Bourbon Street, and we were bartenders and, um, having a good old time.
• 34:33
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: sweet Emma Fatz, peon, you know, these incredible piano players.
• 34:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But all next to us were these wonderful French restaurants, all run by classically trained Frenchmen.
• 34:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So the late forties across the street from the old absent house was the Bure restaurant, and it became available and our family was like, well, let's you know, all our patrons want food.
• 34:54
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Let's, let's open a restaurant.
• 34:56
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And my dad's oldest sister Adelaide, you know, they grew up in the our channel and she was the family member that wanted, she took care of every her little brothers and sisters and wanted'em to get educated.
• 35:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I mean, she wanted the family to go from being.
• 35:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Working class poor to, you know, being educated.
• 35:13
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And so she said, if we're doing a restaurant, it's gonna be nice.
• 35:16
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, nice.
• 35:17
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: In the late forties in New Orleans was French.
• 35:21
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So the original sign on the original Brendan's restaurant on Bourbon Street was Brennan's French restaurant.
• 35:28
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 35:28
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: The famous Bruno's, half a block away is Gala Uhhuh, a hundred year old classical, uh, French restaurant.
• 35:35
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Across the street was Arno's, another classic French restaurant.
• 35:41
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And then around the corner was Antoine's, which is the oldest French restaurant in America, all run by classical trained Frenchmen.
• 35:47
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And here the Brendan's, the bartenders from the Irish channel, like let's do a French restaurant.
• 35:53
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: That was some big green balls is what that was.
• 35:56
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It makes no sense.
• 35:57
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I don't, so, so they, so they had a lease, you know, they were doing good.
• 36:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It's a five year lease.
• 36:03
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It ran out and the landlord said, I want a piece of the business and I'm raising the rent.
• 36:07
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So we ended the lease.
• 36:09
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We found a location on Royal Street, which was back then, there was three or four blocks on Bourbon Street at nighttime.
• 36:17
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: That was it.
• 36:17
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Royal Street was totally retail, dead at nighttime, whatever.
• 36:22
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And I like the way my family rolls.
• 36:24
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: 'cause the last day of the lease, all the customers came.
• 36:28
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We had lunch, and then when lunch was over, everybody grabbed chairs, pots, pans, all the kitchen.
• 36:35
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And we had a band.
• 36:36
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And we second lined over to Brendan's on Royal Street.
• 36:41
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Love it.
• 36:41
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Went in the building and had dinner and threw a party.
• 36:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And that was the next chapter.
• 36:46
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, kept going.
• 36:49
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: we had a bar in New Brunswick do things kind of similar.
• 36:51
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: They moved from, from one location to the other.
• 36:54
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I'll say the name of the bar'cause I wanna give the full details.
• 36:56
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Alright, well why don't you go ahead and give the full details because, because I'm afraid to say we're in New Jersey, allegedly there was this bar and they were gonna move from one street to another and they had the oldest bar in New Brunswick inside the bar, like physical bar.
• 37:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And it was on this hill that went kind of down to another street and had to go across this way and then down and around.
• 37:16
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And the guy, uh, who was owner of the bar was a real interesting character, he didn't really play by the rules.
• 37:22
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So he got his own employees.
• 37:24
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: They got a permit to close the street for one day and they're gonna move this 160 year old bar down over and around like 40 foot bar, and so they got a bunch of rollers, which you basically took telephone poles and cut them up.
• 37:36
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So they were like, you know, four foot length.
• 37:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And they rolled it like, style.
• 37:41
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Like they were building a pyramid.
• 37:41
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yes.
• 37:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Like they were moving the rocks for the pyramid.
• 37:43
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And so they roll it down It was terribly dangerous.
• 37:46
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And he was, this was the eighties and he was like, alright, I got free cocaine for everybody.
• 37:52
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Let's move this fucking bar.
• 37:54
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And literally moved, put lines of cocaine on the bar.
• 37:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Isha boy took their turn, get her done, and then volunteered right up.
• 38:04
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So it's like a less wholesome version of the Brennan story from the 1940s.
• 38:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Sounds like a normal day in New Orleans.
• 38:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah, that's a New Jersey second line, right?
• 38:13
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Well, so, so I gotta ask you guys, so you guys bond over Tiki, um, but there's a whole thing, and I wanna ask you both because you know, you, I mean, you've created a whole bunch of different concepts here.
• 38:23
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You do.
• 38:23
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Your family proud.
• 38:24
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Here, hold on one second.
• 38:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Cheers.
• 38:26
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Oh, here, here, here, here.
• 38:29
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: To our lovely audience.
• 38:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Make yourself a drink.
• 38:31
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: If you're listening to this, unless you're driving, It's delicious.
• 38:33
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Thank you.
• 38:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So, so I wanna stick with the Brennan family for a while.
• 38:36
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: 'cause Dickey you have now, you, you two generations.
• 38:39
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Hes, and, um, so the, the Irish family opens up a French restaurant in a city that is basically the most French city in America.
• 38:48
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So that is a big finger up in the air.
• 38:50
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And you made that work.
• 38:51
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So then Dickie comes along and he al he, most of your, the predecessors of you stuck to one or two concepts and sort of stayed in Atlantic except for that.
• 38:59
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But you opened up a across all kinds of the, restaurants one expects to find in New Orleans, but you also in, in your steakhouse.
• 39:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: people were really surprised by that because like an Irish family running a French restaurant, you opened a steakhouse in the biggest seafood town in America.
• 39:16
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: This was not a steak town, but your steakhouse is the, is the anchor steakhouse for the city.
• 39:22
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, my dad, was never comfortable being an Irishman saying he was running a French restaurant.
• 39:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Mm-hmm.
• 39:29
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And, uh, we lived in the, uh, so you had the Irish channel and next to it is the Garden District.
• 39:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So all the Brendans that grew up in the Irish channel is a, the, the dream in life was to have a house in the garden district.
• 39:40
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So when I grew up as a kid.
• 39:43
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We all live within a block of each other.
• 39:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, me and all my cousins and the, the neighborhood restaurant was Commander's Palace and we all moved in the neighborhood in the sixties, well, like 67, Mr.
• 39:54
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Moran passes away.
• 39:56
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So my dad walks over to pay respects Ms.
• 39:58
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Moran and she's 80 and she's like, I don't wanna run a restaurant.
• 40:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Kids aren't in.
• 40:02
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And he's like, well, you know, we run restaurants in the French court.
• 40:06
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We, we live in the neighborhood.
• 40:07
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Let me know if you are interested.
• 40:09
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And everybody said, don't buy it.
• 40:11
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, our bankers terms.
• 40:13
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And my dad's like, you gotta be crazy.
• 40:15
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: This, you know, and it was very run down back in the, and so we bought Commanders The, the oldest brother who got us into the business.
• 40:25
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Had a heart attack and died at 45.
• 40:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So he didn't see the move at the, the new Brennan's, he did the original restaurant that passed away.
• 40:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We had the three sons as they got older, you know, and the brothers and sisters had built the business and they were coming into the business.
• 40:43
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It was just a different philosophy.
• 40:44
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So we ended up, my dad's generation split the business, so my dad and his brother and sisters left the original Brennan's and moved into Commanders and started over.
• 40:54
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And at that point, my dad and Paul PDO had worked at the Brennan's downtown as a bus boy.
• 41:03
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So they knew Paul, but then when Paul left Brennan's, he started cooking.
• 41:08
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: 'cause he grew up, you know, in a family that cooked.
• 41:10
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: He said, Hey Paul, why don't you try this cooking thing?
• 41:12
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It might work, it might work out.
• 41:14
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It might work out, might work out for you, might work.
• 41:15
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So they, I mean, my dad's like, I, I don't want a French chef.
• 41:18
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I want an American chef.
• 41:19
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, someone that knows the farms, a fisherman.
• 41:21
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, I mean, back then the sixties, we weren't doing farm to table.
• 41:24
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Everything was processed and coming in from overseas.
• 41:27
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And so my dad knew that.
• 41:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Paul said, let's give it a try.
• 41:31
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: I, I literally have an, a coffee cookbook that my dad has pencil marks in.
• 41:35
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: 'cause he'd give it to Paul and say, here, make a stock.
• 41:38
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: 'cause Paul back then was using beef base or chicken base.
• 41:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Mm-hmm.
• 41:42
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: You know, everybody was, Paul had no base's, just the way it was done.
• 41:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Right.
• 41:45
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But he had no formal education.
• 41:47
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But, so in anything, the man, nobody was more sincere or wanted to know more so, I mean, it was the right time for Paul.
• 41:56
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: But our family and everything we did at Commanders was trying to be American.
• 42:01
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Instead of being a French restaurant.
• 42:03
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And when Commanders turned a hundred years old, we did a dinner and it was like the, what was the old, um, it was a, a, a fine dining restaurant award that was in all the restaurants around America.
• 42:16
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And they did an annual banquet during the restaurant show in Chicago in May.
• 42:21
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And our family said, can we host that banquet in New Orleans, get all these other fond dining restaurateur to help us celebrate being a hundred year old American restaurant?
• 42:30
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Which they said Absolutely.
• 42:32
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Was that holiday?
• 42:33
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: The holiday?
• 42:33
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: It was the holiday awards.
• 42:34
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Holiday awards, yes.
• 42:35
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Holiday awards.
• 42:36
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And then saw all these restaurateur.
• 42:38
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And back then, I mean, the fine dining restaurants were in downtowns and there were French, German, Italian.
• 42:43
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: The menu was written in French, German, Italian, maybe some English.
• 42:46
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: They were old, formal, you know, old world restaurants.
• 42:50
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: So they all come to New Orleans.
• 42:52
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: We, uh, we do this amazing dinner and on our menu it, it's saw shell crab.
• 42:58
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: And we said, who, who brought it to us?
• 43:01
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Some quail that we had a, a farmer in Mississippi that was raising these, uh, pharaoh quail, not bob white quail, beautiful quail, all this stuff that was coming in fresh and we were saying who it was, everything was in, and every wine we did was an American wine.
• 43:18
  the-restaurant-guys_1_07-22-2025_140647: Yeah.
• 43:18
  Francis: This party, this party is legendary.
• 43:20
  Francis: You can actually read about it, but it was kind of foundational to the whole idea of like there being an American cuisine, an unapologetic American cuisine.
• 43:28
  Francis: there was a famous author.
• 43:29
  Francis: Calvin Trillin And there's a wonderful interview with him where he says he would, he, he would invariably get off an airplane at some local airport.
• 43:37
  Francis: And then somebody in like Des Moines or a suburb of Des Moines would be like, oh, Mr.
• 43:41
  Francis: Fillon, we're really glad you're here and, and you know, we have an excellent little French restaurant.
• 43:44
  Francis: We'd love for you to try.
• 43:46
  Francis: And he said it was every, took everything in his body to not respond.
• 43:50
  Francis: What he thought was, he always wanted to say, no, you don't, because, because of course you, if you need a little country French restaurant, you need to be in a little French countryside.
• 43:59
  Francis: Right.
• 44:00
  Francis: And, and your family kind of pioneered the idea, which was.
• 44:04
  Francis: Unheard of back then was I can be fancy without being French.
• 44:07
  Francis: I'm gonna find some cool stuff locally, which of course encourages more people to make more cool stuff locally'cause they have a restaurant they can sell it to.
• 44:14
  Francis: But I heard that party was a real shit kicker man.
• 44:16
  Francis: I mean if you read about this party, it was awesome.
• 44:18
  Francis: It was shit kicker means good, but okay, but let me say this, the majority of the people there were old French, German, Italian restaurateurs.
• 44:27
  Francis: They weren't young American chefs or whatever.
• 44:30
  Francis: But there were two people attended the dinner and the next year they started the American Symposium of Regional American cuisine.
• 44:40
  Francis: So I mean, that dinner kind of instigated going foundational instead of having to say you're a French restaurant.
• 44:45
  Francis: And that was my dad going, I'm not French, I'm an American.
• 44:48
  Francis: And the one thing in America going back over the years was if French said we do this better than Amer.
• 44:58
  Francis: The one thing we had was American beef.
• 45:00
  Francis: Yeah.
• 45:01
  Francis: And so that's what instigated the steakhouse was hands down our prime beef, you know, and nowadays you've got Kobe, all this other stuff.
• 45:08
  Francis: But, so he wanted to open a restaurant that he never got to do.
• 45:13
  Francis: He wanted to do a steakhouse.
• 45:15
  Francis: 'cause it was so American.
• 45:16
  Francis: Everything he wanted to do was American.
• 45:17
  Francis: And um, so I got to do that.
• 45:20
  Francis: That's pretty amazing.
• 45:21
  Francis: And I have a, I have a collection of Irish whiskey.
• 45:26
  Francis: Just to honor him or whatever.
• 45:27
  Francis: So if anybody likes Irish whiskey, I got a shitload of Irish whiskey whiskey.
• 45:30
  Francis: Is there anybody in the room who likes Irish whiskey?
• 45:32
  Francis: I'm just curious.
• 45:33
  Francis: Any one of any of our listeners, one who like Irish whiskey, one of the restaurant guys might be an an Irish that's, uh, yeah, the, the, that steakhouse is, and by the way, the bar is a great place to eat in the steakhouse too.
• 45:44
  Francis: Thank you.
• 45:44
  Francis: Um, the, the Irish whiskey program there is, is amazing.
• 45:48
  Francis: You know, it's like, I love it.
• 45:48
  Francis: There's nothing like it in the city.
• 45:50
  Francis: I love you.
• 45:51
  Francis: What are we doing after the podcast?
• 45:52
  Francis: Mark?
• 45:52
  Francis: Feels like we're going to have some Thank you.
• 45:54
  Francis: Brendan Steak whiskey.
• 45:56
  Francis: Irish whiskey steak.
• 45:56
  Francis: So listen, I just wanna, I wanna, we, we we're, we're coming to the, the end of our allotted time, but we have a little, we have a little bit of time left.
• 46:03
  Francis: I just wanna ask, I wanna ask you a, a, a question, throw it back at either one of you gentlemen, because I think that's how, and or maybe both of you gentlemen can answer second, can you guys harmonize?
• 46:12
  Francis: Can you do that?
• 46:12
  Francis: Yeah, exactly.
• 46:14
  Francis: No is the answer to that question.
• 46:16
  Francis: So.
• 46:18
  Francis: So world's worst, doo, so here's, we need more drinks, sound better to us.
• 46:25
  Francis: It doesn't make it, that's recorded.
• 46:27
  Francis: It doesn't sound better to anybody else.
• 46:28
  Francis: So, so here was the interesting thing about like, okay, cocktails we're in, we're kind of just about, we're gone.
• 46:35
  Francis: And then, and then the pre-prohibition cocktail era comes back, helped by our friend David over there and, and OGs, um, you know, bring in the pre-prohibition era, cocktail back, you know, the three ingredient, four ingredient drinks.
• 46:47
  Francis: And then, um, we spend, we know obviously in the most important person of that is Dale Degra.
• 46:53
  Francis: You can't, right?
• 46:54
  Francis: So we spend seven to 10 years recreating classics because again, this is before the internet.
• 47:00
  Francis: So we're, you know, using old books and finding old books and those recipes are wrong and the ingredients have changed and we're share, we're meeting each other and saying, here's how you fix that.
• 47:09
  Francis: And we spent a long time, and the cocktail list would have all the histories of, this is from the thirties, this is from the twenties.
• 47:16
  Francis: And then, and only then did we start to increase the cannon.
• 47:19
  Francis: Did we try, try to start to bring, bring more forward.
• 47:22
  Francis: Now, Tiki is behind, right?
• 47:25
  Francis: But at the same, but the same token.
• 47:27
  Francis: Tiki does the same thing.
• 47:28
  Francis: Tiki comes and we are recreating these old drinks.
• 47:31
  Francis: But now we're also, you, you have authored a lot of drinks.
• 47:35
  Francis: I mean, you, you, you, if you look at most of the historic tiki drinks, you can bring them back to Trader V or Don Don Beach, right?
• 47:41
  Francis: But now people are creating new tiki drinks.
• 47:44
  Francis: My question to both of you is what makes a tiki drink tiki?
• 47:50
  Francis: So if we invent bar, is it fruit, juice and rum is, does that enough?
• 47:55
  Francis: Are there other things that can you make a tiki drink that's not fruit, juice and rum?
• 47:58
  Francis: Now I'm a bartender.
• 47:59
  Francis: I'm opening a bar.
• 48:00
  Francis: I want to have a tiki section.
• 48:02
  Francis: Don't necessarily want to pick one of the classics.
• 48:04
  Francis: Do I need a swizzle stick?
• 48:05
  Francis: What, what makes my tiki drink?
• 48:07
  Francis: Well, that's, um, that's a very interesting question, and my usual answer is, there's no such thing as a tiki drink.
• 48:14
  Francis: Um, it's a misnomer.
• 48:16
  Francis: That, and the, and we can thank 21st century craft cocktail commentators, writers, bloggers, um, for coming up with that term because they needed something to describe this category.
• 48:29
  Francis: They called them Tiggy drinks.
• 48:30
  Francis: That's a 21st century term.
• 48:32
  Francis: Back in the day, they, nobody who made these things called them Tiggy drinks.
• 48:35
  Francis: They were called tropical drinks or exotic cocktails.
• 48:38
  Francis: And, um, the de the definition of a tropical drink goes back to, I think the Caribbean made that.
• 48:45
  Francis: Their foundational kind of cocktail.
• 48:48
  Francis: It's basically sweet, sour, strong and weak.
• 48:50
  Francis: The Planter's Punch formula, it's, uh, rum, lime, and sugar.
• 48:53
  Francis: Mm-hmm.
• 48:54
  Francis: And then, uh, the weak would be either ice or water.
• 48:57
  Francis: Um, that's the foundation, that's the, the building blocks of all tropical drinks or what we now call Tiggy drinks.
• 49:03
  Francis: The look, you can't stuff the cat back in the bag.
• 49:06
  Francis: I, I call them tiggy drinks now too, because that's the only thing that it's, it's a shortcut to understanding the category.
• 49:12
  Francis: Um, but basically, um, it used to be that, let's just, let's use the term Tiggy drinks, just for sake of, um, brevity.
• 49:22
  Francis: It used to be that in order to, uh, qualify as something like that, it would have to be, uh, citrus spirit, usually rum, um, sweeteners.
• 49:34
  Francis: Mm-hmm.
• 49:34
  Francis: And, uh, and lots and lots of modifiers.
• 49:38
  Francis: Basically a, a tiki drink is a tropical drink, cubed or square.
• 49:42
  Francis: What Don Beach did was every single part of that formula, sweet, sour, strong, and weak.
• 49:48
  Francis: He would complicate each element instead of just one citrus, instead of just lime, he would add lime and grapefruit, maybe lime and grapefruit and orange, uh, and, and for the strong, instead of just one rum, he would, he would blend through rems together, create a base spirit that no one expression could give you.
• 50:06
  Francis: Same thing with the sweet.
• 50:07
  Francis: Instead of just, uh, sugar or simple, he would infuse his syrups with a cinnamon or vanilla or all.
• 50:13
  Francis: So it has to be kind of baroque.
• 50:15
  Francis: It doesn't have to be, is a thing or on, on fire.
• 50:18
  Francis: That that's the general, the general.
• 50:21
  Francis: The, the general, um, thing is that, yes, uh, Baroque is a good way to put it.
• 50:25
  Francis: I've used that term myself.
• 50:27
  Francis: Um, it's a, it's a complicated, A tea drink is a Caribbean drink.
• 50:32
  Francis: It's a planter's punch cubed or spoiler, basically on it.
• 50:34
  Francis: But that no longer self applies in the, in the 21st century, especially in this decade because what you have is a new generation of bartenders who no longer have, have a prejudice against these kind of drinks.
• 50:45
  Francis: They're embracing it and they're moving it forward.
• 50:48
  Francis: And one of the most gratifying things for me to see is, um, these people coming up with, uh, stirred no citrus, but still very baroque.
• 50:57
  Francis: Um, uh, you know, cocktails like the one that Dicky just drank and, uh, using ingredients that were simply not available to the old masters.
• 51:07
  Francis: Yeah.
• 51:07
  Francis: Um, yuzu has come into play a lot of Southeast Asian ingredients.
• 51:12
  Francis: I saw pandan Pandan word.
• 51:14
  Francis: That's big by the way.
• 51:15
  Francis: Maybe my new favorite flavor.
• 51:16
  Francis: Uh, crazy ingredients.
• 51:18
  Francis: I wanna, I wanna throw a last, I have, I have a question, but, but Dickie's got a, I'm sure you gotta take, I wanna throw the same question to Dickie though, if you wanna have, have a run at that or we'll give you a new question if you feel that's been already dealt.
• 51:27
  Francis: So I believe me, have no way to answer and I'm hearing what you're saying, but, you know, I'm, I grew up, have bartending experience, but I'm a cook and my whole life, if you take the four old rest French restaurants in New Orleans, which commanders was one, the menus and three of'em are still the same menus that were there over a hundred years ago.
• 51:52
  Francis: When we took over one of these a hundred year old restaurants, my dad's philosophy and Ella was let's evolve Creole cooking.
• 52:01
  Francis: So when I hear you say you hate a pina colada, I want to challenge you because it's a classic.
• 52:10
  Francis: And so I've spent a life of taking old classic recipes, food and trying to update'em and make'em, you know, um, we always had brandy milk punches.
• 52:22
  Francis: Well then we started doing bourbon milk punch because it was American, you know?
• 52:27
  Francis: So, I mean, I think there's a lot of ways to evolve a classic and even make it better than it was, but it's a classic'cause it was good.
• 52:34
  Francis: Mm-hmm.
• 52:34
  Francis: So, I mean, the bones, I love your version, I love your version of a, of what a pina colada could be.
• 52:41
  Francis: Oh, we call it a ke colada.
• 52:42
  Francis: Uh, and it's, um, we, we add some sour.
• 52:45
  Francis: We had some, we had a little lime juice.
• 52:47
  Francis: And uh, you know, that's basically all it takes to make the drink balanced.
• 52:51
  Francis: There you go.
• 52:51
  Francis: So for me, what's exciting and certainly, you know, tales of the cocktail, I can't believe whoever had the vision do this.
• 52:57
  Francis: I don't care where I go in the world.
• 52:58
  Francis: If I'm sitting there and I'm in a bar, hotel restaurant and I say, I'm from New Orleans, I'd say at least 70% of the time the person taking care of me goes, oh, new Orleans Tales of the cocktail.
• 53:11
  Francis: Yeah.
• 53:11
  Francis: And they either go, I've been there or I want to go.
• 53:15
  Francis: And when I see what that part,'cause when I was a kid before the Color Institute of America and to where Americans could actually go learn a formal education of cooking, you know, we didn't, it was Europeans came into, now it's Americans that are great chefs.
• 53:34
  Francis: The same thing's happening in the spirit worlds.
• 53:36
  Francis: So I mean, the men and women behind the bars making these great drinks and all this stuff.
• 53:41
  Francis: It's, it's, it's been a great evolution and well, mark, I think Tiki can be better and more what than ever just with what's going on and because of the pioneers like you.
• 53:53
  Francis: A hundred percent.
• 53:54
  Francis: Mark, I know you have a question.
• 53:55
  Francis: I, I just wanna say one thing before your, your question is what's really interesting if you look at New Orleans and, uh, I came to my first sales a cocktail probably 20 years ago, and s with you probably David, at the, at the 20 years at the, the carousel bar, the View Carre, where you couldn't get a good view Carre.
• 54:12
  Francis: I said, this is cool, this bar's moving exactly this or my is it really?
• 54:20
  Francis: But, but what was in interesting was that New Orleans for a while, it, it had lost the cocktail like the rest of America.
• 54:27
  Francis: Right.
• 54:27
  Francis: But New Orleans had been instrumental in giving the cocktail birth and giving the cocktail to America.
• 54:34
  Francis: Uh, and then sort of, I think New York got it back first.
• 54:37
  Francis: Then sort London and Chicago came on.
• 54:39
  Francis: Actually it was London, the first, that's, that's my take anyway.
• 54:42
  Francis: I mean, other people might disagree, but I'm sorry it was New Brunswick first and then see 93, everybody I learned ball.
• 54:49
  Francis: I learned something today.
• 54:50
  Francis: I have say so.
• 54:51
  Francis: But we're, that's what we teach.
• 54:53
  Francis: But when Tales, the cocktail came back to New Orleans, the cocktail was not still alive here.
• 54:58
  Francis: It wasn't still in good shape here.
• 54:59
  Francis: Mm-hmm.
• 55:00
  Francis: And so what, what I think is kind of beautiful is New Orleans helped to give the cocktails to the world and then it got dormant.
• 55:06
  Francis: And tales of the cocktail helped give the cocktail back to New Orleans.
• 55:10
  Francis: And it's taken its place.
• 55:11
  Francis: Well Said's.
• 55:12
  Francis: Beautiful.
• 55:12
  Francis: Well said.
• 55:32
  Francis: Alright, here we are.
• 55:33
  Francis: It's 2025.
• 55:35
  Francis: This mostly directed at Jeff, but either one of you please answer.
• 55:39
  Francis: So can you say that you have a con in this 2025.
• 55:44
  Francis: Can you say you have a comprehensive cocktail menu without having a nod to this category?
• 55:51
  Francis: Comprehensive.
• 55:53
  Francis: No, because, and, and I mentioned London and, and let's let, let me just say very quickly.
• 56:01
  Francis: To people in England.
• 56:02
  Francis: And I was very surprised.
• 56:03
  Francis: I was asked, nobody wanted me to talk about Tiggy drinks when the craft cocktail thing started and then there was cocktail festivals.
• 56:09
  Francis: It was, they weren't interested.
• 56:10
  Francis: London was interested.
• 56:12
  Francis: And the reason is to them, it was just another category.
• 56:15
  Francis: They were, they were discovering classic cocktails.
• 56:18
  Francis: And to them that was a category of classic cocktail.
• 56:21
  Francis: Those cocktail zombies invented in the thirties, my invented in the forties.
• 56:23
  Francis: They, they had never had this shit.
• 56:25
  Francis: They didn't, they didn't have, yeah, they had never had a, the, the shit versions.
• 56:28
  Francis: So to them it was like, it's just a category.
• 56:31
  Francis: And that's where we are today in the us.
• 56:34
  Francis: Um, you, the might the first drink that jumped the ship from tiki bars to.
• 56:39
  Francis: All bars, restaurant bars, um, craft cocktail bars said it was the Ma Tide.
• 56:43
  Francis: Yeah.
• 56:44
  Francis: Uh, and, uh, you know, everybody's got their speck in all these places and, and gradually you find, uh, the Jungle Bird was another one.
• 56:50
  Francis: And the reason for that is because it has Campari in it.
• 56:53
  Francis: So the, you know, like, like moth to flame, Kraft cocktail bartenders, ah, bitter.
• 56:56
  Francis: You know, so they, so they, that one was the next one.
• 56:59
  Francis: And by the way, that wasn't just, uh, the classic recipe that was, that was served.
• 57:03
  Francis: It was, um, craft cocktail version of it, uh, by, um, uh, Richie Baccato at, uh, PKNY in New York, who, who changed it quite a bit and made it a modern day classic.
• 57:14
  Francis: Uh, but the bones were there.
• 57:15
  Francis: I mean, we're, we're talking about basically his bones.
• 57:17
  Francis: I mean, uh, the, the skeleton, the, the, the red thread, the spine of, of all these drinks.
• 57:21
  Francis: That doesn't change What changes is the flesh that you hang on it and the, and, and how you dress it, you know?
• 57:26
  Francis: Um, and, uh.
• 57:28
  Francis: I do have to say we can't leave today without Dickie telling us a little bit about the mono loa in Mexico City Mo um, you know, where, where monkeys would actually come down from the ceiling on a, on a, on a rope and deliver a drink.
• 57:41
  Francis: Right.
• 57:42
  Francis: Oh, you got this happened and there were live flamingos inside the restaurant and the, and the, yeah, so you gotta talk about that a little bit.
• 57:49
  Francis: Water features and punts.
• 57:51
  Francis: No, I was my, I just finished my senior year of high school and before I went to college, and so I, my dad and I, I mean, I loved being in the restaurant and going to college, but I was gonna, he wanted me to get educated, not working at our restaurants, worked for other people, so I was old enough.
• 58:10
  Francis: And so I go down to Mexico City to work for Nick Noy that had, uh, Delmonico's, but at the same time down there for two months.
• 58:18
  Francis: But he had this second restaurant.
• 58:22
  Francis: This guy, Mr.
• 58:22
  Francis: Noy was such a vision.
• 58:24
  Francis: I mean, he was, but he would implement and.
• 58:28
  Francis: So I wanted to go, he wanted me to work it'cause it was a walk in the kitchen.
• 58:32
  Francis: You know, I've never worked on a walk, but the Monolo was so far be, I mean it was trade of Vix, but in Mexico City that was just off the charts.
• 58:43
  Francis: And I'd say I, I, uh, I would love to have gone to a bar with the train monkeys deliver me a drink if you, if if you good with it.
• 58:50
  Francis: And honestly, I'm sure they do a better job than some of the servers that I've had.
• 58:54
  Francis: I was just about to say, you bring me one is about as close as I've ever had.
• 58:57
  Francis: That's, that's, that was low hanging fruit Man.
• 58:58
  Francis: That was like the old dumb waiter joke.
• 59:00
  Francis: Like, I got a dumb waiter.
• 59:01
  Francis: You wanna get another drink, Francis?
• 59:02
  Francis: You Yeah, I do actually, because I wanted another drink.
• 59:05
  Francis: I think we need to bring this to a close and I wanna say thank you so much for welcoming us in New Orleans, the restaurant guys, in your city.
• 59:11
  Francis: It has truly beenn.
• 59:14
  Francis: Jeff, thanks so much.
• 59:16
  Francis: Thanks.
• 59:17
  Francis: we will be broadcasting this live so everybody else can hear it.
• 59:20
  Francis: Thank heaven.
• 59:21
  Francis: I'm Francis Shot.
• 59:21
  Francis: I'm Mark Pascal.
• 59:22
  Francis: We are the restaurant guys, and you can always find out more at restaurant guys Podcast do com.