Tag: cocktails

On the Rocks Cosmopolitan Cocktail Review

And some words on the Jalapeño Margarita

A few weeks ago, Safeway had On the Rocks Cocktails on sale for $5 for the 375 ml (12 oz) bottle. I’m not much of a cocktail drinker – I don’t like the taste of alcohol – but I figure it was worth trying a few. I got the Cosmopolitan, the espresso martini, the Margarita and the jalapeño pineapple Margarita – the latter two for my husband.

A cosmopolitan is a simple cocktail of sweetened cranberry juice, lime juice, vodka and orange liqueur. It was the favorite cocktail of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, and that’s probably why I finally tried it some years ago. And I liked it. If you’re lucky, the sweetness masks the alcohol and makes it easy to drink.

In that sense, On the Rock’s cosmopolitan is initially successful. The alcoholic taste is pretty well masked by the sweetness and acidity in the drink. It does, however, burn a little going down the throat. That makes it feel unbalanced. Still, I’ll buy it again if I see it on sale again.

The 375ml bottles are usually $13 at Safeway and $11 at Target.

New Orleans Food Tour: Tropical Isle

A Taste of the South: Notes from a Trip to Louisiana

Alcoholic Slushies in a Fun Venue

Bourbon Street has an endless number of bars selling both serious cocktails and fun artificial-fruit-syrupy ones. Tropical Isle falls happily in the second category. With four different locations on Bourbon Street alone, you don’t have to walk far to get your next hand grenade – their signature drink. We only visited one of the four locations, but if we were younger and liked to drink more, I’d had visited them all.

The bars are just cool. The drinks might be the grown up version of Kool-Aid, but the bars are the grown up versions of a daycare classroom, at least one decorated with flea market finds, featuring outrageous decorations that occupy your mind as it gets dumber and dumber from the alcohol.

As mentioned, their signature drink is the Hand Grenade. This is supposed to be made with “vodka, rum, gin and melon liqueur,” though the actual recipe is kept secret. In reality, it tastes like yet another super sweet Kool-Aid type drink with alcohol. It’s served either frozen, in a slushy form, or on the ice – though you can pay more to have without ice altogether. You’d have to have an extreme tolerance to sweets to go that route. The drink’s trademarked tagline is as “New Orleans most powerful drink,” though it’s unlikely that’s the case. We had the frozen Hand Grenade and it didn’t seem particularly strong, though the sweetness does a great job of hiding the alcoholic flavor. It also slows down how quickly you can drink this.

We also had the Tropical Itch, which comes in a totem-like red plastic glass. This had more of a tropical punch flavor. Again, it was too sweet and not too strong.

As much as I didn’t really liked the drinks, I did enjoy the cups and even brought them home. I also enjoyed hanging out by the window in the bar, looking at the decore.

Tropical Isle Bourbon
721 Bourbon Street
New Orleans, La
Daily 12:00 p.m. - ?


New Orleans Food Tour


New Orleans Food Tour: Pat O’Brien’s Courtyard Restaurant

A Taste of the South: Notes from a Trip to Louisiana

Good Food at the Birthplace of The Hurricane

Pat O’Brien’s is one of New Orleans institutions. The bar has operated in one form or another since 1933 and it famed as the originator of the Hurricane, New Orleans’s signature drink. It’s also famed for its beautiful central courtyard, which you can access through both of Pat O’Brien’s locations, on St. Peter and Bourbon streets. Despite the restaurant’s name, when we went the central courtyard was reserved for people who were drinking and not eating, and was not available for anyone under 21.

We sat instead on a side patio – probably the one that came with the house on Bourbon St. – in a roofed but open area. It wasn’t as nice as the courtyard, but it had less foot traffic. The restaurant/bar has a very casual atmosphere, with plastic tablecloths.

The food menu is pretty limited and as I still wasn’t too hungry, I went with a small cup of jambalaya (chicken and sausage – $8). I was surprised that it consisted of a stew with a lump of rice in the middle. When I’ve made Creole jambalaya myself, I’ve cooked the rice in the stew. Still, I noted this method of cooking stews and rice separately show up at several restaurants we went to. I wonder if it’s just a way of saving time in the kitchen. While this jambalaya was quite flavorful, I think I prefer cooking them together.

I had heard somewhere that Pat O’Brien had a good bread pudding ($8) and they were right. It was delicious, so good that my husband liked it. The whisky sauce didn’t taste alcoholic and reminded me, instead, of toffee. The pudding was light and the pecan on top gave it the necessary crunch.

You can’t go to Pat O’Brien and not have a Hurricane ($8.50), of course, so we ordered one to share. As the story goes, O’Brien invented this drink in the 1940’s when whiskey was in short supply. Rum was plentiful, however, and O’Brien experimented until he invented a rum-based cocktail that his customers liked. The cocktail is made with passion fruit pureé, citrus juices and grenadine – or at least, it was originally. Nowadays, Pat O’Brien sells a Hurricane mix made with sugar or high fructose corn syrup, citric acid and natural and artificial flavors. Given that this was the first time we had a hurricane, I couldn’t tell if the drink we got had the real ingredients or the mix. I rather think that it was the latter, as the drink was overwhelmingly sweet and one-toned and not particularly fruity and way too red to not contain at least dye. Think tropical punch with added sugar and alcohol.

While the sweetness does a good job of hiding the alcohol, it was still pretty strong for me – at least at the beginning. While the glass is impressively large, it’s filled with ice, so there is a relatively small amount of alcohol in it – so by the time some of it melted away, the drink was mild enough for me to enjoy.

In all, we had a pretty good time at Pat O’Brien’s, and I’m glad we went. I am curious about trying a Hurricane made from real ingredients one day – I might just do that.

Pat O'Brien's
624 Bourbon St
New Orleans, LA
W-Th,Su: 12 PM - 12 AM
F-Sa: 12 PM - 2 AM

New Orleans Food Tour


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