• The Old Absinthe House
• Poster of the bar's outside
• Absinthe House Frappé
• Herbsaint

Centuries of Character

In 1806, Napoleon captured Warsaw, Lewis and Clark wrapped up their cross-country tour, and the Old Absinthe House, America's oldest bar, began its celebrated history. In that year, the handsomely weathered, balconied building on Bourbon Street in New Orleans' French Quarter was built by a Spanish importer; by 1815 it had become a saloon. In a room rife with history, its copper-clad cypress bar still lined with antique marble water fountains, the Old Absinthe House continues to serve drinks nearly 2 centuries later.

While much about the building, the street, and the city have changed in the last 200 years, the Old Absinthe House remains a timeless landmark, bridging generations of New Orleansian merrymakers.

One of the reasons the bar has endured is because of its way with absinthe, the anise-flavored spirit that gives the saloon its name. The alcohol, known for its reportedly addictive, hallucinogenic, and generally pernicious effects, was outlawed in 1912 after it was blamed as the cause of a Swiss man's highly publicized murder of his family, but before then, it was all the rage in bohemian Paris and French-influenced New Orleans. Bartender Cayetano Ferrér popularized the drink at the Old Absinthe House in 1874 when he began serving it as a frappé, over cracked ice. The bar, which had been called Aleix's, was renamed in honor of the drink.

Today, Goldie Palama, the latest in a long dynasty of bartenders, will still make you a "frappe" Absinthe House Frappé at the recently renovated Old Absinthe House, and thousands of people order it every month. Many of them add their contributions to the inch-thick layers of business cards covering the walls, a testament to the bar's motto, "everyone you have known or ever will know eventually ends up at the Old Absinthe House." Okay, maybe not everyone . . . but Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and President Franklin Roosevelt are some of the notables that made their way to the bar in their day.

Countless stories give the bar its vibrant, historic flavor (stories with slightly more significance than the beer-soaked ones that Herb and Norm used to tell). Among the bar's tales is the story of the legendary secret meeting between pirate Jean Lafitte and then-colonel Andrew Jackson, in which the pirate agreed to help defend New Orleans against the British in exchange for a full pardon. Was he bribed into this decision by the offer of two overflowing bowls of beer nuts? Only the bar's walls know the answer. . . .

After 200 years of ups and downs, including the Civil War, the banning of its lifeblood absinthe, and (deep breath) Prohibition, Hurricane Katrina was "no problem whatsoever" to the bar staff. The historic building, situated just a few blocks from the banks of the Mississippi, suffered little more than minor roof damage.

Nowadays, the bar makes its drinks with Herbsaint, one of several legal versions of absinthe that leave out the toxic ingredient wormwood. The frappés might not induce the delirium and madness they used to-but then again, they might. "Two hundred years," says Palama, "and this place is as crazy as ever."

 

Posted on July 24, 2006