Clothes sometimes do make the man

So far, I've tried to cook at least one recipe from each of the restaurants in the cookbook, but one restaurant is giving me a bit of trouble. I've been going through, looking for something that I want to cook from Arnaud's and it just seems to elude me. Eventually I'll have cooked everything in the book, but there are a bunch of recipes I'm putting off for awhile. Most of those seem to involve canned fruit or pineapple (gag!), and most of them happen to be from Arnauds. (Was there some craze for pineapple in the 1940s or 1950s that I am completely unaware of? )

A couple of times I thought I'd found something of Arnaud's to cook, only to be foiled by either crazy instructions or strange ingredients. At first glance, the recipe will read okay, but when I start to think about how to put it together or imagine what those flavor combinations would taste like, I'll realize that its completely whack-a-doodie. Chicken Bostonian, for example, is a half-chicken that sits on a bed of Lima beans, pimentos and string beans. I don't have anything against Lima beans or string beans, but I'm just not sure that they belong together or paired with chicken and pimentos. Pimentos? Really?

Arnaud's was the largest of all the restaurants featured in the cookbook, and for many years was the largest restaurant in New Orleans. I think it still has the largest kitchen in the entire city. Afterall, it covers nearly an entire block in the French Quarter. At its peak, it could seat 1600 and had a staff of 150. Founded by "Count" Arnaud Cazenave in 1920, by 1967 when the cookbook was published, the restaurant was being run by his daughter Germaine, and was in the middle stages of its very, very long decline.

Count Arnaud, it seems, wasn't really a Count nor was he a chef, but he was brilliant at marketing, and by the 1940s he'd built Arnaud's into the city's premier restaurant. At this point it was more important than Antioine's, its older and more venerated competitor and Galatoire's was still a small family restaurant. He had some vision and a whole lot of style and was the first to exploit the potential that tourism had for the restaurant business in New Orleans, and he aggressively advertised both the city and the restaurant to the outside world.

He also liked to drink. He started the day with a pint of Champagne and ended the day with countless cups of coffee laced with 50% Bourbon, with Sazarac's rounding out the middle and cocktail hours. Arnaud's has one of the most beautiful bars in the city, The Richelieu Bar, housed in one of the oldest parts of the restaurant (1799). And while the Volstead Act caused a minor speed bump, Arnaud's continued to serve hooch in coffee cups both in the bar and in the restaurant. Arnaud was eventually arrested and the restaurant shuttered, but luckily he'd evaded arrest until 1931, and he was released and the building re-opened after the repeal of Prohibition.

Germaine took over when her father died in 1948 and ran the restaurant until 1980. Theatrical and over-the-top even for a city where over-the-top wasn't really a big deal, she continued her father's foray's into p.r. She set up a mini-museum in the restaurant to house her collection of Mardi Gras costumes and examples of her mother's needlework, and if you go to the restaurant today, you'll still find them there. She also instituted a version of New York's Easter Parade through the French Quarter.

She also liked more than the occasional cocktail, so I suggested to Christie that we might start with some of the cocktail recipes from Arnaud's. One in particular caught my eye, because, well, it seemed a little crazy. Named after Germaine, it boasts a combination of gin, bourbon, triple sec and champagne. Crazy, right? I couldn't even begin to imagine what that would taste like. Even thinking about it sort of made my tongue hurt.

Germaine Special
Arnaud's

2 dashes orange juice
1 oz. gin
1/2 oz. bourbon
1/2 oz. Triple Sec
Champagne

Shake juice, gin, bourbon, and Triple Sec with ice and strain into a champagne glass. Top with Champagne.

I laid out the ingredients first. It was quite the line-up.

Christie said no to Triple Sec, so we used Cointreau. I measured out the gin, bourbon, Cointreau and orange juice and gave it a good shake over ice. I poured it into Champagne glasses. I did pause for a moment. There seemed a lot of room at the top for Champagne, which scared me. I never know how much to use when a recipe says just "to top," and there just seemed room for sooooo much in that glass. Too much. I compromised and gave it a couple of splashes.

On first glance, it was a bit urinal in color. Never my go-to color in a cocktail. And the taste? Well, it wasn't awful. It didn't taste like gin nor bourbon nor was it too sweet. Its honestly hard to say what it tasted like. And do you know how hard it is to come up with a gin recipe that completely erases the taste of the gin or a Cointreau recipe that isn't too sweet? The second one went down a whole lot easier, helped along by some Regan's Orange bitters.

I tried to find something on the net that was similar to this cocktail and I couldn't. (If anyone knows of anything, please let me know). The cocktail, like its namesake seems pretty singular.

Just one aside before I wrap up. I think I've written before that my mom absolutely refused to let us go to Arnaud's. My mom thought, that Germaine was...how to put this...relying on the kindness of strangers. A lot of strangers, and usually fueled by a lot of booze. My dad thought the ban was ridiculous, but my mom was adamant. She felt it just wasn't a place for us. So I didn't get to experience Arnaud's growing up. However, my mom's attitude softened a bit after Germaine's death. Her family held an enormous estate sale, and like a lot of things in New Orleans, the auction had an air of Carnival about it. She lived in a 23 room mansion on Esplanade Ave., and it seemed the entire contents of the house was up for auction--including her collection of hats, gloves, and evening gowns. She was an outrageous lady, and she had the wardrobe to match.

My mom later found out that a group of drag queens bought most of Germaine's clothes, and were producing a show using them. She was horrified, repeating over and over, "that poor woman." Moral of the story: You can be a total 'ho in life, but having a bunch of drag queens buy all your clothes when you're gone is a fate worse than death. I love my mom's priorities!