You're looking at the Roosevelt Hotel. Been here since eighteen ninety-three — started as the Grunewald, renamed for Teddy Roosevelt because the Panama Canal was making New Orleans money. Not Franklin. Teddy.
Inside is the Sazerac Bar. Forty-five feet of African walnut carved from a single tree, Art Deco murals on the walls, and a bullet hole that everyone gets wrong. We'll get to the bullet hole.
The drink that made this bar famous was created across town by a man named Henry Ramos. In eighteen eighty-eight, at the Imperial Cabinet Saloon, Ramos invented the Ramos Gin Fizz. Gin, heavy cream, egg white, lemon, lime, orange flower water, and soda. His recipe required twelve minutes of continuous shaking before serving. Not a suggestion. A requirement.
During Mardi Gras in nineteen fifteen, Ramos had thirty-five shaker boys working in a line. Passing drinks down the bar like an assembly line. They still couldn't keep up.
Here's what makes Ramos genuinely fascinating. He closed his ba
r at eight o'clock every night. He walked the room personally, spotting anyone who looked tipsy, and had them cut off. A nineteen twenty-eight newspaper put it best — nobody could get drunk at the Ramos bar. Not because they didn't try, but because old Henry wouldn't let them.
He supported Prohibition. Closed his saloon voluntarily. Guarded the recipe until days before his death. Finally gave it
