Bourbon House - A Bar Review
It doesn't get more iconic than New Orleans's famed Bourbon Street in the city's French Quarter, the site of daily debauchery and especially frenzied partying during Mardi Gras. My wife and I spent the past weekend down in Nola and were able to enjoy a few whiskey bars. The first and largest has a prime street-corner location just a few blocks down Bourbon Street past the entrance to the French Quarter and is aptly named, given its location and primary spirit of choice, Bourbon House.
Atmosphere and Service: Bourbon House reminds me of the old world, bustling, banquet hall restaurants of Paris. The huge space, high ceilings, and grand, wood-paneled decor all speak to a classic and enduring character. The bar-restaurant balances this aesthetic well with a more southern, American combination of casualness and decadence. Bartenders wear suspenders, and there is a semi-circular multi-seat oyster bar next to the long, marble countertop bar. Of all the places we checked out, Bourbon House was the largest and fanciest, although it's still not a dress-up kind of place (this is Bourbon Street after all).
A lot of the decorations in the bar consist of cabinets filled with rare whiskey bottles, including Old Forester Birthday, Elijah Craig Barrel Proof, Orphan Barrel, and Four Roses Limited Editions. In addition, one cabinet near the bar contains bottles signed by the master distillers of virtually ever major Kentucky distillery, including a bottle of Parker's Heritage signed by Parker Beam himself. Definitely the most beautiful of the bars we visited, especially since it was full of what amounted to shrines to whiskey.
Before heading to Bourbon House, join the New Orleans Bourbon Society on the restaurant website. Then see the host and get a membership booklet (all free) when you arrive. The booklet entitles you to a free 1 oz pour of the designated Bourbon of the Month, which is often a mid-range, $30-40 bottle. In September 2017, it's Basil Hayden, and prior months have included Bulleit 10 and Wild Turkey Rare Breed -- all a cut above the standard well drink and a great touch to build a dedicated fan base. You can't beat free, particularly when developing your palate for bourbon.
Selection: 9 pages of bourbons and other whiskies with 20 or more options per page. I'd guess something in the range of 180 bottles total. Is that a selection or what? The bar also features a huge wall length board that lists the current bourbon selection, with the upside down bottle symbols representing what's currently out of stock. The selection is beautiful to behold, shelf upon shelf of bourbon, and loosely arranged by brand and distillery grouping (e.g., a Heaven Hill cluster with Elijah Craig and Evan Williams).
The one caveat I'll add is that the selection is almost entirely bourbon and rye. Bourbon House appeared to have only 4 or 5 bottles of the most basic scotch you could imagine, like Glenlivet 12 and Johnnie Walker Black Label. So this is not a bar to try to hunt out a rare Japanese whiskey or hard-to-find scotch -- it's all about the bourbon here.
Rare Bottles: The upside of Bourbon House's obsessive focus on their namesake is that they have tons and tons of rare or hard-to-find bottles of America's greatest whiskey. They had a half shelf with five of the Orphan Barrel series, and often have a member of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection (this time around, they had William Larue Weller, although I did not order any). Other bottles that are now fetching outrageous secondary prices, such as E.H. Taylor Four Grain (review forthcoming), are part of the bar's impressive, deep collection. Moreover, it seemed like some of their rare bottles weren't even in circulation but were there for the time being as decoration -- they need to bust those out sometime and add them to the menu!
Value: Here's the best part of New Orleans for someone like me, who comes from Miami (this will hold true of people from New York or other major metropolitan areas as well). The prices are really reasonable in the city, and Bourbon House was not bad at all even though it was probably the priciest of the four bars I'm going to review. In addition, the bar sells everything by either a 1 or 2 oz pour, meaning that people who enjoy trying and reviewing more whiskies can get through quite a few samples in a night. Moreover, the price of the 1 oz pour is exactly half of the 2 oz pour, so the bar isn't taxing you for buying a smaller volume, which I appreciate. Sample prices from our selection included $9 for a 2 oz pour of Henry McKenna 10 and $10 for a 1 oz of E.H. Taylor Four Grain, a bottle that rare whiskey purveyors now list at $400+ online. In other words, it'd be cheaper to buy the whole bottle off the shelf at this restaurant than to use Wine Searcher to find it online.
***
I'm going to be reviewing three more bars and saving my favorite for the very end, but that's no discredit to this bar-restaurant. I'm not ordering the other three bars because each had its unique charm and each is well worth a visit. Bourbon House provides the quintessential upscale whiskey bar experience, has the largest food selection of the bars I visited, and charges reasonable prices -- especially considering its premium location. For anyone who's looking for a real drink on Bourbon Street, rather than downing their umpteenth hurricane, this is the place to go.