While Cane & Table is known for its tropical drinks, the bar also make excellent classic cocktails.
• Do not miss the bar’s take on the Hurricane, which has been painstakingly recreated by bartender Kirk Estopinal, down to the drink’s forgotten ingredient: fassionola syrup.
• While tropical is their bag, the bar
can also make an excellent version of pretty much any NOLA classic. Should
the craving for a Ramos Gin Fizz strike,
just ask.
• Finally, do not sleep on the bar’s rotating selection of frozen drinks, which are among the best in the city, especially when enjoyed in the bar’s lush back patio.
NICE TO KNOW
Housed in one of the city’s oldest surviving structures, dating to the 1700s, Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop is about as dark (it’s lit almost entirely by candlelight) and haunted as any bar in the city. If you’re looking to skip the supernatural, one of the city’s most beloved industry hangouts, Bar Tonique, is just a few steps away.
NOTABLE AND NEARBY
The bar’s lush back patio is ideal for enjoying any number of its “proto-tiki”cocktails.
When Cane & Table opened in the French Quarter in 2013, New Orleans was at the beginning of a small boom of interest in tiki and tropical cocktails: Tiki Tolteca had just opened in May of that year, and Latitude 29, from one of the country’s foremost tiki experts, Jeff “Beachbum” Berry, was months away from flinging open its doors. Cane & Table, though, did not purport to be a tiki bar. If anything, it peddles in what co-founder Nick Dietrich (who previously managed the bar at Cure, and has since opened Manolito and Jewel of the South), along with Neal Bodenheimer and Kirk Estopinal, has dubbed “proto-tiki”—that is, a collection of recipes that pre-date the arrival of tiki in the 1930s, but call for ingredients (spices, tropical fruit, etc.) that flowed through New Orleans via trade routes. The décor, too, eschews the trappings of tiki fantasy, and instead incorporates the bones of the old building it inhabits. Cane & Table feels well-worn not by design, but as a matter of fact. In the decade since the bar served its first drink, it has remained a must-stop for locals and tourists alike for its brand of studied, intricate drink-making that draws on tropical flavors, paired with the kind of laid-back hospitality New Orleans does best.
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Around the corner on Grand Street, Fresh Kills (from Richie Boccato) has been quietly serving some of the best cocktails in Brooklyn for nearly a decade.
NOTABLE AND NEARBY
• When outdoor seating is available, the wisteria-draped garden (book ahead on Resy) might fool you into thinking you’re somewhere between Louisiana and Provence.
• While Maison excels at the A-list classics, look closely and you’ll find lovingly executed takes on B-side hits, like the Yellow Parrot and the Obituary, that make the case for revival.
NICE TO KNOW
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The bar’s take on the Hurricane has been painstakingly recreated down to the drink’s forgotten ingredient: fassionola syrup.
The bar’s take on the Hurricane has been painstakingly recreated down to the drink’s forgotten ingredient: fassionola syrup.