The Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans just introduced their latest table side drink offering – the Warm Brandy Milk Punch. The drink, a spin on the New Orleans classic, is made in a siphon (as pictured below) and infused with vanilla beans, cinnamon sticks, Marigold flowers, pralines and more. It is available in the hotel’s signature restaurant, The Grill Room, for $32. (recipe below)
Another classic New Orleans drink made in this siphon tableside at The Grill Room is the Café Brulot. It is infused with brandy, Cointreau and spices like cinnamon, cloves, star anise, cardamom, orange peels, which became popular in the 1800s during prohibition as a way to hide alcohol sales/consumption.
Warm Brandy Milk Punch
Top Chamber-
- 2 split Vanilla Beans
- 2 Cinnamon Sticks
- 2 White Chocolate Flakes
- 1 halved Praline
- 1 Marigold Flower
- 2 sprigs Fresh Tarragon (flowered)
- 1 tablespoon Sugar
- ½ teaspoon Mace
- ½ teaspoon Autumn Spice
- 8 Small Cloves
Bottom Chamber-
- 2oz Landy VSOP
- 6oz 2% Milk
- ¼ teaspoon Vanilla Syrup
- 5 drops Orange Flower Water
- 1/4 teaspoon Red Hawaiian Salt
Steps-
- Build in Chambers as stated and shown
- Light Butane torch at high heat and place under bottom chamber
- The moment all but .25 oz of the liquid has been vacuumed into the top chamber remove from heat.
- Allow it to return to bottom chamber.
- Remove top chamber placing in its holder
- Pour into snifters
- Garnish with fresh grated nutmeg.
The Windsor Court in New Orleans: The Grill Room
The Grill Room, helmed by Chef de cuisine Daniel Causgrove, has received both Forbes Four-Star and AAA Four-Diamond designations, and its menu has great range and versatility, with appetizers ranging from $9 – $19 and entrees from $27 – $47. Chef Causgrove, who previously worked at Dijon and Le Petite Grocery, is fascinated with Creole and Cajun cuisine and incorporates everyday Louisiana dishes onto the Grill Room menu while transforming and elevating them with high and low local ingredients. The Grill Room also offers the most impressive wine selection in New Orleans and has received the Best of Award of Excellence from Wine Spectator. Sara Kavanaugh, the esteemed sommelier, will help guests select from more than 600 labels to ensure they find the perfect pairing for the meal. Kavanaugh’s vast knowledge of wine growing techniques, regions, storing and grape varietals, as well as her extensive travels through European wine regions enables her to create astute pairings to the creative dishes in the Grill Room.
The Windsor Court Hotel has also become one of the forerunners in craft cocktails in the city since renovating its lobby Cocktail Bar, and is always looking to elevate its customers’ cocktail experience.
Cocktail Bar one-of-a-kind craft cocktails dreamt up by the hotel’s mixologist and Food & Beverage Director Skip Adams, utilizing unique ingredients like homemade shrubs, local barrel-aged honey, rosewater, Earl Grey infused vodka and premium spirits like Ron Zacapa 23 year-old Rum, John D. Taylor’s Velvet Falernum and Monkey Shoulder Scotch. For example, the Cynical Parrot, uses local honey that’s been barrel-aged in Negroni 3 times over the past 2 years, resulting in a citrusy tang with bitter herbs and very mellow oak spice. The cocktail also includes Evan Williams Single Barrel Bourbon, straight from the first barrel of the hotel’s unique barrel exchange partnership with other cocktail leaders in the city called The New Orleans Spirits Exchange, or NOSE. The NOSE program isn’t about affecting sales, rather providing cocktail aficionados with the best possible product. With demand of certain spirits up, the forecasted needs of production are off balance and it places the product on allocation for every market. By purchasing barrels, which can yield anywhere from 1,600 – 2,600 cocktails, NOSE can have an effect on NOLA’s entire market share of a product in the allocation – an important factor for such a cocktail-centric city.
