Welcome to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Roger, do beer and cocktail, mix some cocktails. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. I'm Pat, I do spirits. I'm Jim, I'm the engineer of this podcast. Engineer? Yeah, sure. You're an anti-zionist, New Orleans enthusiast. Yeah, and New Orleans enthusiast. Donut and drinking enthusiast. Yes. Today, we are going to be celebrating Fat Tuesday. Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras episode here. So we're going to be talking about a couple different cocktails that are classic to New Orleans, including the official cocktail of New Orleans. No, it is not a hurricane. It is not a hand grenade. It's not even a brandy milk punch. It is, of course, the Sazerac. And we're going to bring back one of my favorites of Vucaray as well. I've always kind of wondered about New Orleans cocktails. You talked about the hurricane. What's the overlap between New Orleans traditional and Tiki? Is there overlap or are they just close? So, the hurricane cocktail is a pretty interesting story. So, the idea is that these bars needed whisky. That's what everyone wanted. Scotch, more specifically, not American, ironically. The adage was that for every one bottle of Scotch that they would sell you, you had to take a case of rum. These bars were like, what are we going to do with all this rum? So, when you look at hurricane recipes, most of them call and Pat O'Brien's is very open about this. For like four different rums? Four, no, four ounces of rum. Holy cow. So, usually it's just white rum. A lot of the better recipes call for dark rum, or I usually do a mixture of rums, but four ounces in one drink. So, obviously, you've seen a hurricane glass that's like a hurricane lamp. So, you basically just fill that with crushed ice, and then they're mixing the rums with some sort of fruit mixture. So, this is where like the cocktail nerds have pages upon pages of what's the fruit flavor and what should you use. So, the really short version. You don't resemble that remark at all. Yeah, right. Hey, it even got too nerdy for me. Like, it's this type of syrup called fashioniola syrup. It's a mixture of like strawberries, passion fruit, and other stuff. And there's like only one company that recreates it. Then there's these ridiculously complicated versions of how you make it. It's really a rabbit hole of cocktail nerddom. But anyway, really good syrups can definitely be worth the money. So, the predominant flavor in a hurricane is passion fruit. passion fruit by itself is super tart. You really need sugar. So, when you're making a hurricane, you pretty much need some sort of passion fruit juice or syrup. If you actually find juice, which is tough, a lot of the times it's like 10 percent. If that's maybe 2 percent. You can probably get some nectar at a Hispanic grocery store. Yeah, you could use a nectar or there's a few. Like you can also order stuff on the Internet. But yeah, passion fruits out there, you just kind of got to look for it. Even like Welch's makes like a passion fruit blend in a refrigerated container that's actually not that bad. So if you want like the authentic hurricane, that's not like what you're going to get in New Orleans, you would be using a quality rum, preferably at least some part dark, so like a Gosling's of Myers. And then you would use passion fruit syrup and lemon juice. That's all it is. So again, you're just basically drinking straight booze. With a little bit of fruit juice. Little bit of juice, yeah. Maybe a pineapple wedge and an umbrella. Yeah. So in reality, that's where, if you say you enjoy hurricanes, if you go to bars, they're probably using some sort of juice or sour mix. They're probably using Hawaiian punch. Yeah, I mean, literally. I mean, fill in the blank. I've seen hurricane recipes with pineapple would be the most common. Seen them with orange juice, lime juice, lemon juice, wine punch, tons of grenadine. Yeah. Then sometimes they also use like an almond flavor to them. So that would be a tiki overlap. So a lot of tiki drinks use orgeat syrup, that almond flavored syrup. Some people use creme de noyau in them. Like a lot of times when I make hurricanes, I'll use that. What did you use during the Rome podcast? Yeah, that. Creme de noyau? Yeah. Well, no, I use an orgeat syrup in that, I think. But creme de noyau is dyed red, so it's like killing two birds with one stone. Since people think that they should be red because of Pat O'Brien's, the bar that created the drink, essentially. Instead of using grenadine, which nowadays grenadine is basically just dyed simple syrup, you can use creme de noyau. You're adding a little different component to it, and it's turning it red. So, the hurricane is just translated into a generic tropical drink now. That's like the word highball is a spirit mixed with a fizzy soda. Yeah. Yeah. It could be vodka, it could be scotch, who knows. Speaking of which, a kind of interesting New Orleans drink that's forgotten about, that's actually a British drink, is a Pims Cup. Love a Pims Cup. Pims is- Never had a Pims Cup. It's best for brunch because, well, Roger will tell you. It's a very low alcohol drink. So if you want, like we were talking before about the alcohol-free or low alcohol cocktails, Pims is a very low alcohol pre-mixed gin sling, essentially. Okay. I know we sell it. So yeah, you're just- I haven't tried it. I knew it was essentially an RTD, but I wasn't sure what it was modeled after. So it was the first RTD that came out in 18th century or 19th century. But so you pour two ounces of Pims, number one, in a glass, and then you just start sangreying the glass, like just pick fruit that you like and it looks pretty. Like slices of cucumber and stuff like that. You garnish it with a cucumber to give it some aroma and look cool. But then as far as what you top it with, it's like, what do you like? Like lemonade, fizzy lemonade, ginger ale, ginger beer, 7-Up, soda water, anything fizzy. It's the fruity Bloody Mary. You want it spicy, you want it with pickle brine, you want it with horseradish, you want it with a cheeseburger, go ahead. You want it with a smaller Bloody Mary up there, that's fine. I mean, when it's super hot, like if you're in New Orleans and it's this crazy hot, you go to a place like Napoleon House, which has really kept this drink alive, and you order one of those, it's fizzy, it's sweet, it's sour, it's got some All this episode is teaching me is that I need to go to New Orleans with Roger. It seems like it. I thought it was a British drink. It is. That's what's so weird that, again, it's an outlier in New Orleans, but again, it's such an antiquated bizarre drink. Like one of the only times people would talk about Pym's Cups is at Wimbledon. They sell like a ton of them at Wimbledon. But yeah, there's a couple of cocktail bars. You know, that's what's neat about New Orleans. These establishments have just persevered for decades, if not centuries. Roger is deftly maneuvering around the citrus lemon peel. He does the suggestive spritz, where he's not actually spraying anything into the cocktail. He's superstitiously waving the citrus around the glasses, though it's imparting some level of flavor. It is. If you saw it, it is. I think you do a pretty poor job of expressing those oils, Roger. See these tools I have to work with? If we had a full bar set up, no problem, baby. Oh, I thought you meant your big banana hands. What's the name of this episode? Roger Does All The Work? That's why I emailed Roger separately for us to ask him if he'd be willing to put in the work before I suggested it to the group. I was excited because this- You got to get comfortable at a place where you can just tell Roger what you need him to do. Makes life a lot easier. I'm a huge fan of Cajun, Creole, Louisiana culture. Love Zydeco music. Going to see CJ Schenier this weekend, two days. Can't wait. Leading Zydeco artist right now. You use exclusively Tony Sashare's Bloody Mary mix? No. I don't even exclusively use Tony Sashare. I like to spice things up every once in a while with some different. I started with an interest in good old Paul Perdom, Rest In Peace. I bought his cookbook at a very young age and just started making stuff out of it, and just fell in love with Cajun cooking. I'm picturing preteen Roger. Everybody else comes home from school to play Sega Genesis, and Roger's in the kitchen making a gumbo. He puts on his big chef hat, right? Yeah. He's totally got a big floppy chef's hat. I guarantee. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I've been loving learning about Louisiana culture, visiting New Orleans, making cocktails. Cocktail culture down there is huge. They have the Museum of the American Cocktail is there. If you are into fine cocktails, there are people down there that are committed to making it a better experience, like bringing back some of the classy cocktails that the city was once known for. It wasn't that long ago that you'd walk into the Carousel Bar and ask for a Vucaray, which I'm going to make next. And they kind of would scratch their head and go, what's that? So thanks to the efforts of certain people, if you're going to pick up a cocktail book, Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails by Ted Hague is one of my favorite cocktail books of all time. They have made this a reality down there. So you can really drink amazing drinks. So the first thing that we're going to try, I mixed up here, is the Sazerac cocktail. So again, not that long ago, you say New Orleans, what do you think of? You think of hurricanes, right? Hurricanes and those zombies, those hand grenade drinks, right? So this now is officially recognized as the official cocktail of New Orleans. It has a pretty cool storied history. Pat, you're familiar with the Sazerac company. And by far, the most sought after bourbons that we sell are all from Sazerac at this point. The Weller Bourbons, the Antique collection stuff, Pepe Van Winkle, et cetera. But it all started with a cocktail called the Sazerac cocktail. So Pechaud's Bitters, talked about these in the previous podcast where we were doing Manhattans and mixing them up. Pechaud is named after Antoine Pechaud, who emigrated from Haiti during the Haitian slave revolt. And he set up an apothecary shop in New Orleans. And apothecary shops were famous for mixing together different elixirs that typically would be used for their medicinal purposes, but also just like for enjoyment as well. But it usually was like going to be beneficial for you in some way. So he was mixing his form of bitters with a brandy and a little bit of sugar. And that cocktail ended up eventually being known as the Sazerac cocktail, because the token ingredient in it at the time was brandy. And the brandy that they were using was a type of cognac called Sazerac. So we kind of just keep following this name as it goes from the Sazerac cocktail. They then name an entire bar the Sazerac bar. Then that Sazerac bar gets purchased by Thomas H. Handy. So if you're a fan of the antique collection, you'll recognize that name. They've kind of honored him with their version of rye whiskey. That also is important because once they purchase this bar and the name and everything, the cocktail switch from a brandy based cocktail to a rye whiskey based cocktail. So it's actually a pretty simple cocktail as cocktails go. This isn't like a zombie that has 15 ingredients. This is actually just rye whiskey. You begin with a little bit of sugar. In lieu of using a sugar cube, if you don't like kind of having to muddle it and it being grainy, you can either use simple syrup or I used a little bit of superfine sugar, which is kind of like bar sugar, but without foamer, it just dissolves. You get that at the grocery store? Yeah. We might sell it as well. Yeah, quick dissolve, superfine sugar. Quick dissolve sugar. Pechot's Bitters, mixed with that. Then added the rye whiskey, the rye whiskey that we're using today. There is a Sazerac rye. We unfortunately get it every once in a while. In lieu of that, an equally excellent rye is Rittenhouse rye. This is one of the ryes that really brought back rye. Bartenders fell in love with this. They liked that it was 100%. It mixes super well. Is this in the Pennsylvania style? No, not anymore. It used to be. It's a legendary Pennsylvania producer, but now it is firmly in the Kentucky style rye, where it's only about 51% rye. So again, if you're interested in rye, but you're not ready to dive in both feet first, this is almost like drinking a high rye bourbon. Rittenhouse 100 proof. So we got the Rittenhouse 100 proof, the Peychaud bitters, sugar, stirred all that up. This little guy here is a bottle I poured off of my bottle of absinthe. You have a tiny little dram of an absinthe. I just have this around here in the office for a little bit of a- It's a sort of emergency. Yeah. A little bit of absinthe goes a long way. So we did this basically just called an absinthe wash, like you mentioned before, when I was preparing this. A lot of people put it in a little spray bottle now. So in lieu of sitting there where I was twirling the glass, you can just spray the glass with a couple of sprays of it. So stirred all that, strained it in to the absinthe rinsed glass, and then garnished it with a piece of lemon peel, which yes, as you pointed out earlier, is expressing the oils with a little twist. He was twisting the lemon peel to express the citric oils on to said cocktail and glass. You did do the superstitious little wave of the peel around the glass. So no, I was touching the rim of the glass, so it was to get some of the oil on it, so that when you drink it. All right, cool. I wasn't just showing it to the glass, which some bartenders pretentiously do. They do. It's mind-numbing, but it's pretty good. Anyway, so have a taste. Thanks, Fred. I've always thought this was one of the most complex cocktails that's out there. Because you take whiskey, you tend to take whiskey and then mix it with something sweet, and this is mixed with something bitter and something sweet, and then also something herbal. Usually, you want to showcase whiskey, you don't want to cover it up with herbal flavors. Right. Again, I can't express enough, like the absinthe can quickly take over this cocktail, so really like rinse the glass with it and toss the extra, or use the spritz, because otherwise, like, you're going to pick up on just that, but the way, you're absolutely right, like the way they harmonize together is really nice. And again, this is a cocktail that, you know, you're describing it over the mic here for the podcast, it seems more complicated than it is. Like, it's a pretty simple drink. Whiskey, bittered up sugars. Yep. And a little bit of citrus peel. In a lot of ways, it's kind of like, you know, an old fashioned, you know, beginning of it, so. But yeah, that's the Sazerac. Yeah, nice work. It's good. Thank you. If you go down to New Orleans now, you can get them in a lot of, you know, it's become the well-known cocktail that it once was. A lot of people make an excellent version of it. Our Nodes is known for their French 75 cocktail, which is one that I considered doing today, but it's a little involved. Maybe for another episode we'll do that. But they make an excellent one. They also restored the Sazerac Bar to the Roosevelt Hotel Bar. So if you want to go to the place that was kind of the torch bearer of this cocktail from the 1950s on, it is now like restored to its complete grandeur. They have this wooden bar that's unbelievably beautiful, cool murals in there, and they really do everything like by the book. Like the absinthe is herb synth, which was the absinthe substitute that was made in New Orleans for years. So absinthe has only been legal again for what, about 10 years or so? Yeah, about. So during that interim where you couldn't obtain absinthe, there was a brand called Herb Synth that was basically a pastis, so very similar style of liquor. So they used that, they used the Pechot Bitters, and then they used the Sazerac Brie from the Sazerac Company. You know, a cocktail you can do and not be too intimidated by, you don't need too many accoutrements to make it happen. If you're a fan of things like old fashions and Manhattans, this is like adjacent and flavors, so give it a try. It also is an excellent alternative for your Mardi Gras parties if you don't want to just mix up some disgustingly red Hawaiian punch. Hurricanes or... You do need a pretty dainty glass. Yeah. So again, cocktail glasses. If you're going to go garage sailing, that's a great place to get them. Goodwill stores. Garage sailing. Took me a second. But yeah, so that's a Sazerac in a nutshell, but a cool cocktail. Official drink of... What I like to call an improved Manhattan. That is a skeptical. I don't know what to call it. If I've ever heard one. Yeah. Improved. Pretty hardcore air quotes over that. Yeah. Well, it's definitely a Franco filed or a Frenchified Manhattan. So that means we're not winning a lot of fans over here, Roger. We're not getting whiskey in this. There's no rye involved. Yeah, there is. Oh, yeah. Rye and cognac. So here, let me give my affairs an order here. Start mixing it up. Mixing it up. The Vieux Carré was invented at the Hotel Monteleone, which is the alleged birthplace of author Truman Capote. He says he was born there. They have a bar called the Carousel Bar, and it's a bar that rotates slowly around. It was not there when the cocktail was invented though, but it's become like a touristy kind of thing to go sit at the Carousel Bar and kind of just rotates very slowly around so you can get on and off easily. Sounds disorienting. I know myself. It's pretty slow. It's pretty slow. It's really slow. You've never been in a revolving restaurant before or something? I have. Over Toronto. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't quite the same. Did have a good time though. It's a beautiful, beautiful bar. The hotel is. There's a satellite bar, too. So if you can't get a... You usually have to jump in and get your spot at the carousel. They have like couches there where you can chill, and then if somebody gives one up, you just got to be like, pardon me, jump in. Roger knows how to throw elbows to get a spot on the couch. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. No, that's it. That's all I got. Truman Capote, his mother lived there while she was pregnant. Okay, right. The nerds have insisted that he wasn't actually born there. But I believe he said, I believe that was his thing that we said. It's a hotel. Not a lot of people are born in them. Right. That's true. A bunch of famous writers used to hang out at this hotel. So Hemingway basically drank himself everywhere. It's like you can pretty much hang up a sign that said Hemingway drank here if it's an old bar. Oh, they invented a cocktail here? Let me go check it out. Yeah. William Faulkner. Tennessee Williams. This is another drink which involves more ingredients, but it's... I like cocktails that are equal parts. And for the most part, this is an equal parts cocktail. There's all kinds of throwbacks happening to previous episodes that are on the table right now. You have a graduated cylinder. You're mixing into an interesting vessel. What is that? This is kind of like a... It's just like a mixing glass. So it's got different measurements on it. I'm using big ice cubes. These are the classic cubes that we sell. I like these. I like that it's got pouring spouts on three sides. That's pretty sharp. Yeah. And where did you get this fancy ice? At Binny's. This is just a big cube ice. Classic cubes. Classic cubes. Nice. They're not sold at all, Binny's, but a lot of them have... In the big ice machines in the front of the store, we'll have the classic cubes, which are kind of halfway between the cheap ice we sell and the super expensive quarry ice we sell. From across the room, they look pretty clear, and they're much bigger than usual chunks. Yeah, cool. Yeah, so the idea whenever you're stirring or shaking a cocktail is to introduce a little bit of liquid, but I like these ice cubes. It's going to melt, but not melt a ton. It's going to still... It's going to dilute it a little bit, but not a ton. Good old Rittenhouse rye, again. This is the 100 proof. If you were to order either of these cocktails down in New Orleans, there's a good chance you're getting either this or Old Overholt. Old Overholt was the only rye that was available for a long time. I think you're much better served if you use Rittenhouse, or there's many other ryes now that are nice, while Turkey has always made an really nice rye. You have any other favorite ryes, Pat? Rittenhouse is usually my go-to, personally. You know what one I thought was pretty good in Manhattan at Morton's was Bullet. Bullet rye is totally fine. MGP rye. It has a fluffy sweetness on the back end of it, so it's good. Yeah. I like redemption rye, which is also MGP rye. I really like Whiskey Acres rye. I think they make a great rye. One ounce of rye whiskey of your choosing, one ounce of cognac. You could use a different brandy if you prefer. If you like an American brandy, Copper and Kings makes excellent brandy. As far as cognacs go, there are some cognacs that are VS that are not crazy expensive. And to be honest, in France, they would view a VS as something that you would use in a cocktail. Yeah, it's a cocktail base. As opposed to enjoying it like sipping it neat. I would suggest a drier variety. I really like Hardy. It's not necessarily dry, but I think it makes beautiful cocktails. It's not as sweet as Hennessy and the big ones. So something they don't talk about a lot in cognac is, how much sugar is added to cognac. And Hardy is one of the drier, for sure. AE Door also makes a very nice VS Cognac that I believe we sell for 40 bucks. Are you just using Dolan because it's your house, Pramov? Yes. And it's French. Remember French? We're in New Orleans. There you go, French. So you need sweet vermouth. You can make it with dry, but most people make it with sweet. So that's an ounce of sweet vermouth on top of the ounce of cognac and the ounce of rye. So everything is equal parts right now. Cool. Another French ingredient here, Dom Benedictine, one of the oldest proprietary liqueurs. So this is an herbal liqueur. Did you ever cheat and use B&B instead? Yeah, for sure. Oh. You can do that. It's a little redundant because you're already putting cognac in there. That's what I mean, instead of the cognac. Oh, it would be way too sweet. So this stuff a little bit goes a long way. It is like syrup. Yeah, it's really sweet. So again, some recipes save way too much of this. You should use half a teaspoon or maybe a teaspoon. And what exactly is it, Roger? So it's a French liqueur that was created by the Benedictine Order of Monks. And it is one of the most replicated, copied. Like they have a museum of counterfeits where this is produced of people trying to create a drink with it. This mixed with brandy is a really popular way to consume it, became one of the first premixed cocktails. B&B, Benedictine and Brandy. So again, I love it. You just need to remember how sweet it is. So it's flavored with honey, right? It's flavored with a proprietary blend of herbs so they don't tell you what exactly. It is 80 proof, so it's not low, like some liqueurs. I think this is great with bourbon. I've heard it called a Kentucky Colonel to mix this with bourbon, which I kind of like. Again, that drink must have been created by someone in Kentucky. Garnish it with a chicken wing and some Colonel Sanders. Yeah, there you go. It's super sweet. I mean, if you like sweet tea, again, do not use equal parts, which is what that recipe usually is. Use a quarter ounce of this. All your ice is going to melt if you keep talking and not pour it here. Talking is the point of the podcast, but so is tasting. Now, we just need to introduce the bitters. Pay shows again. Pay shows, two. Healthy shakes. It's towards the end of the bottle. Two Angosturas. Yeah. Both of the classic bitters are in this drink. Some people shake this drink. If you shake it, you're going to introduce air into it, and it's going to get a little cloudy. You can serve this up, but usually it's served on the rocks. So kind of up to you how you want to mix it. I like a lot of shaking cocktails, but this one I would prefer stirred. Keep it clear. Since I've been talking while I poured this, it's probably chilled. I won't need to stir it as long. There's nothing quite like getting one of these in a go cup and then wandering the streets of New Orleans. You got to give back. I'm going to serve it to you with one cube of ice. I mean, that's pearls will force wine. You know what my Manhattan doesn't have that this does, besides cognac, is the citrus quality from the lemon. This needs a Luxardo cherry. Yeah, that would be nice. Nice addition. Is that? No. No. But you can pretty much toss a Luxardo cherry in anything and make it better. That's actually, yeah, you're starting with a Greg Hatton, plus some cognac and- Benedictine. And Benedictine, sweeten it up. So equal parts cognac vermouth rye, plus a little bit of Benedictine. That's it. Can I smell the Benedictine? I went through a bottle of this in college. You guys should try some on its own too, just so everybody gets a sense. That's a good one for what does this taste like? This can be a nice addition to a lot of, like the way people use- We should pour this over our Rompope French toast. It is, it's maple-y. The way people use, if you ever heard, remember when we were talking about the elderflower liqueur, Saint Germain, how like I heard it called bartender's ketchup once. I thought that was funny. You can just like add it into anything. I think you can, but whereas that's more floral, this is similar in like sweetness level and herbaceousness, but less floral. So that's giving some of the sweetness, and then honestly, the lemon peel goes pretty far in here, because it fills your nose with this brightness that I don't ever have in my Manhattan. Yeah. The pay show has a little bit of- Because he did a good job of expressing the juices. Damn it. I got to tell you, once again, you've shown me that my Manhattan can be made more interesting with other features. It's a nice change of pace. It's not what I'm looking for. Vieux Carré is a cool cocktail, because it means the French Quarter, and the French Quarter sometimes gets dismissed as like, oh, the French Quarter is just bourbon street, and the bourbon street is obnoxious, and the cocktails are a joke. Whereas really, the French Quarter does still have some venerated, beautiful places. Our notes, French 75, I can't recommend enough for just a great place to sit down and have a cocktail. The Hotel Montelone with the Carousel Bar is beautiful. I was just there this last year, and with a bunch of my family, and we loved sitting down and having both of these cocktails at both of those places. The Napoleon House has excellent Muffaletta sandwiches. They do. With the Pimp's Cup. Yup. You don't like a Muffaletta? Not an olive guy. What is that? It's just like an Italian sub-sandwich with like... Muffaletta is like Jardinero, but made from olives. Yeah. And not spicy. The bread's kind of like a focaccia, but not quite as soft, like in between like an Italian loaf and a focaccia. But the Napoleon House, it's a big sandwich, but the Napoleon House will quarter it for you, and they will heat it for you. So you can share it with buddies. So you don't have to eat the entire giant sandwich, because the central grocery will make you eat the whole thing. It's a lot of food. Sir, you can't leave until you eat a sandwich. Get some beignets. Look at this whole slice of culture I've been missing out on my whole life. My only New Orleans experience is the Simpsons and Confederacy of Dunces. You've never been there? No. We've got to go, man. We should go. I've been once for... I was at the Abita Brewery, and we were staying right on Bourbon Street, and it was just three days of just madness. So you were asking about Tiki culture. So Jeff Berry, who I've mentioned before, Beach Bum Berry, who basically is like the Indiana Jones of the Tiki world, he opened up his own Tiki bar in New Orleans, and I went there for the first time. This last time I went, and I mean, it's like unbelievably good drinks, presentations off the charts. But the drinks are just made perfectly. I mean, anybody who opens up, like a lot of people who open up cocktail bars, they've become very famous. Smuggler's Cove, Three Dots in a Dash, Smuggler's Cove, best bar I've ever been to in my life. I mean, Jeff Berry made that possible. He's a consultant. He might be part owner, too, actually. But it wouldn't be possible without this guy. So you gotta, if you love Tiki drinks, like go there and pay homage to the person that basically saved them. James brought in some puchkies. Jim brought donuts. Donuts. The Polish-American tradition here in Chicago for Fat Tuesday. Wait, are there six donuts there and four of us, and you're planning on cutting them up? Don't you wanna try the chocolate? Are you confusing us with guys who only eat half a donut? I don't, you wanna try the chocolate kind and the other kind, right? What's the other kind? Glazed with raspberry jelly and then chocolate with custard. I'm generally of the opinion that fruit ruins most desserts. That's the punch key though. This is what they do. I know, but for authenticity's sake, I feel like I should try it. What is the difference between a punch key and a donut? I find the punch keys to be a little bland, but they're not as flavorful. I don't know if this is apocryphal, but the supposed reason is that before Lent starts, you're supposed to take all of the stuff in your larders and make pastries of some sort, get rid of it all before you start fasting. So Polish people happen to have a lot of fruit preserves? I've just, you know, flowers. I love a good larder. You gotta have a good larder. But this is like the place that the TV crews go on Fat Tuesday. WGN is there or ABC or something every year that I've lived in. Am I supposed to eat this yet or am I waiting for a Sazerac to pair with it? I don't think it pairs with anything. It has nothing to do with New Orleans either. This is not like New Orleans cuisine. Mouthful of Poonchke. It's fine. There's like orange on the bottom. Yeah. What's that about? Is that a thing? What's that about? I've never cut them in half before. Hey, what's that all about? That leaves a really waxy residue. Yeah. My mouth is oily. So where are these Poonchke's from, Jim? These are from Delightful Pastries on Lawrence Avenue in the heart of the Poonchke district. Yeah. Marianne's Poonchke. She'll get in the Poonchke with you. Yeah. I got to go down the hammock district. Here's the one thing I will say. A, these are fresh and these are delicious. Fresh baked this morning. I'm sure this will come as a shock to you, Pat. I've tried millions of different kinds of Poonchke's from several different pastries. Roger has a strong opinion. Yeah. And one thing I will recommend is that you should try Poonchke's not on Poonchke Day because no bakery is prepared for the onslaught of customers. These are all about freshness. Whether they say or not, they're lying. A bunch of them are made the day before so that they can fulfill all the orders. So this is going to be fresher and cleaner tasting than a Poonchke from Poonchke Day. You're frying donuts. The oil after a while is going to drop in temp. The dough is going to start sucking up the oil. Have you thought these are greasy? These were greasy. These is nothing. These taste great. They don't taste like old oil and they're not, they're just nothing. I've had them from Oak Mill, Racine, Kersh Bonds. I'm expecting you to drop the greatest Poonchke place in Lombard. Oh, well, Lombard, actually. I was joking, Roger. These are good. The Raspberry doesn't have a ton of filling in it. Yeah. That's kind of the Poonchke thing when people ask like, okay, well, why is this different than like a Bismarck? And it isn't really, but usually Poonchkes have a lot of filling in them, like almost too much sometimes, but. Oh, these were incredibly lacking in filling, in my opinion. I think you're used to jelly wrapped in donut as opposed to a jelly-dough donut. Yeah, I know. I never do jelly donuts, though. So I think the answer is that they're using higher quality fillings, and they're not just like blasting in like a ton of filling. Filling blast. It's like, oh, we need to get rid of this stuff. It's like, oh, we actually use like a high quality filling, so we'll put a demure amount in there. They have, on Fat Tuesday, they will have like probably 10 different fillings, and they're... They do like some of the fancier, like the booze ones, right? The booze ones have passion fruit jelly, I think guava. Lemon poppy seed. They might have a lemon poppy seed or some kind of lemon. Sounds rad. Yeah. Nothing says delicate flavors like fried dough. Yeah. Puppet full of that rose jelly. It's interesting the different combinations that the bakeries have, too. Some of them have peanut butter on top and then the raspberry filling. Those can be good. Oh, I bet those are awesome. Those are good. Those punch keys are good? Yeah. Those are legit. All right. A couple of NOLA cocktails. I mean, we really only scratch the surface. So we got Roger's two easy favorites for a Fat Tuesday cocktails and some opinions on punch keys. And I think we're pretty set up for Fat Tuesday, then. I think I can make it through. Yeah. I'll find a way to eat and drink too much. There's so many great cocktails from New Orleans. We just really scratched the surface. I mean, we didn't really talk enough about Absinthe. You've got Brandy Milk Punch, which is a big. What the hell is that? Almost like a handmade eggnog, but with Brandy. Sounds like Rampe. Yeah, in a lot of ways like Rampe. But it's pretty amazing, like the cocktail culture in New Orleans. It definitely is part of the reason they decide to have a museum to cocktails there. But for so much of my life, I just thought, you know, oh, hurricanes and those stupid hand grenade things. Yeah, that's all I've really had down there. But yeah, you can have some beautifully made cocktails in some really classy, cool settings. All right, cool. Well, let us know what other New Orleans cocktails you want Roger to talk about because we're happy to drink them while we watch him make them. Yeah. Thanks for making a couple of cocktails for us. Yeah. My pleasure, man. I love this stuff. Sharing your passion. And if you've enjoyed Roger's passion, leave us a review on iTunes, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Pat. I'm Roger. I'm Greg. I'm Jim. Keep tasting.