Cocktail Culture Meets Fine Dining

Plenty of restaurants boast chefs’ tables—exclusive kitchen seats where customers enjoy personalized menus and attention—but at Café Adelaide and The Swizzle Stick Bar in New Orleans, the really hot ticket is the bar chef’s table.

By Allison Perlik, Senior Editor -- Restaurants and Institutions, 4/21/2008

Plenty of restaurants boast chefs’ tables—exclusive kitchen seats where customers enjoy personalized menus and attention—but at Café Adelaide and The Swizzle Stick Bar in New Orleans, the really hot ticket is the bar chef’s table.

About once a week, Bar Chef Lu Brow and Executive Chef Danny Trace team up to create a customized multicourse menu highlighted by creative cocktail pairings for parties of four that reserve the prime table, situated adjacent to the Swizzle Stick’s U-shaped bar. As food and drinks are served, the two hosts mix in some tableside service, interactive cocktail demonstrations and stories about the drinks’ histories. Per-person pricing ranges from $100 to $125 per person depending on the menu. One night might find a starter of shrimp and tasso "corndogs" matched with New Orleans Original Lime Daiquiris (light rum, muddled lime and sugar with crushed ice), followed by beef short ribs osso buco and Derby Cocktails (bourbon, sweet vermouth, orange liqueur, lime juice and mint leaf).

"A lot of times we build food around the cocktails, but we also do the reverse," Trace says. "The same way you would serve wines, where you have a lighter white, then heavier whites, then reds, you want to have a flow with the cocktails—start lighter and then go heavier."