Bartenders of NO - Home

INTERVIEWS
O’Neil Broyard
Greg Cowman
Gilberto Eyzaguirre
Paul Gustings
Gertrude Mayfield
Bobby Oakes
Michael Santucci
Martin Sawyer
Michael Smith
John Strickland
Floria Woodard

Cheers!
Drink Recipes

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This project was sponsored by a grant from Southern Comfort.

Interviews and photographs by Amy Evans

Bobby Oakes

“It’s so true that in a bar—especially in a busy bar—there are a million details. So to me, what separates good bartenders from bad is being able to interact with customers, you know, in a—in a way that everybody expects but still be able to keep your bar clean and set…it only takes a little bit more effort to do it well.”

– Bobby Oakes

With little experience under his belt, Bobby Oakes knocked on doors all over the French Quarter to find a bartending job he could work at night, so he could go to college during the day. He eventually landed a gig at the famed Pat O’Brien’s, where he quickly learned the business of the cocktail—quantity, not quality. Less than a year later, Bobby made his way to Arnaud’s Restaurant and developed a whole new appreciation for the art of tending bar. For the past nine years, Bobby has immersed himself in cocktail history, tradition and service. These days he only works one night a week, but he takes that night very seriously. Bobby enjoys honoring the traditions of certain cocktails like the Sazerac and the Ramos Gin Fizz, but he is also a connoisseur of good scotch and vintage ports. You’ll find them there on Saturday nights, passionate about the drinks and serious about service.

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What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

SUBJECT: Bobby Oakes, bartender
DATE: March 31, 2005
LOCATION: Rue de la Course Coffeehouse, Magazine Street-New Orleans, LA
INTERVIEWER: Amy Evans

Amy Evans: It’s Thursday, March thirty-first, two thousand and five. This is Amy Evans for the Southern Foodways Alliance, and I’m in New Orleans, Louisiana, on Magazine Street at Rue de la Course coffeehouse with Bobby Oakes from Arnaud’s Restaurant. And it’s about a quarter to nine o’clock [at night]. And, um, Bobby, would you mind introducing yourself to the recorder here and also stating your birthdate, please.

Bobby Oakes: Okay. My name is Bobby Oakes, obviously. Um, my birthday is June 28, 1960. Um, and like, uh, like Amy said, I’ve been a bartender at Arnaud’s for a little over nine years.

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All right, well how’d you get started in the bartending business in the first place?

[M]y wife said, uh, “Why don’t you try to bartend?” And I said, “Well, you know, I really don’t know much about it.” And she said, “Well—” –she was telling me that her sister had bartended her way through college and, you know, it’s—it’s fun, it’s an easy way to make money while you go to school and it’s flexible. So I started going out and giving resumes, which were very thin for bartending—at bars and restaurants all across New Orleans. And I got turned down by hundreds of bars. Um [short pause] I applied at Pat O’Brien’s and it—didn’t hear anything back from—for—from them and got a job at a daiquiri shop—a daiquiri shop in a mall in the river walk. Started working there, and I worked there for a couple of weeks when I got a call from Pat O’Brien’s…And I worked there for about—oh, a little less than a year….Uh, [I] saw an ad in the paper for Arnaud’s, um, hiring a bartender. And it was ironic because I had met a bartender from Arnaud’s at my bar at Pat O’Brien’s one night.

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Were you trained formally during your time at Arnaud’s or you were just thrown into the mix?

[T]hrown into it. Unfortunately, we’re—you’re expected when you take a job like that to have some knowledge, and they knew I had experience. Um, working in [sort pause] a—a bar like Pat O’Brien’s doesn’t really prepare you, though, to work in a place like Arnaud’s, where you’re making—hand-making every cocktail. Uh, you know, the only—the only shortcuts we take are that we make our Bloody Mary mix five gallons at a time and, uh, you know, we use regular sour mix. I pre-make my—my simple syrup so it’s alr—always at the ready. Um, things that I didn’t know about, which have turned into some funny stories along the way, are things like port. Um, how many bars will you work in that will prepare you to decant and serve port wines? Um, much less know really what they are—the origins, the differences. Um, so a lot of things like that I took on myself to learn…When I had started there, we had one single-malt scotch: Glenlivet. Mr. Casbarian [owner of Arnaud’s] added three more for the grand reopening of the Grill Bar. And then at one point I had talked them up to eighteen different single-malts, so we had quite a selection.

How did you talk them into that?

Well, I—I [short pause] it seemed to be around August or September of each year. After the doldrums of the summer were over, I would make up sort of my wish list of things I thought would—would sell well, that I was getting calls for, or a—something that might be missing from—um, you know, it’s like you might have a nice selection, but you’re missing the one thing that completes the set.

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Are there other bartenders there at Arnaud’s that have the same kind of interest in stocking their bar as thoroughly as you do?

I’m—I’ve managed to be the—the—the longest lasting, uh, of the current generation of people. When I started at Arnaud’s, the av—probably the average tenure of staff members in general, uh—front of the house—was probably around six or eight years. And we had one team that had been together for more than fifteen years—as a three-man team in the dining room. Um, the changing economy, the changing—everything. Um, now, I am the oldest, most tenured guy on the floor at Arnaud’s, except for the maitre d’s. At—at a little over nine years. The next closest is probably—well, wait, he’s a maitre d’ too. Um, I don’t know. Four years?

Well let me ask you this: you—you started out doing this as just kind of like a moonlighting gig while you were in college, and now you’re obviously passionate about it—

Yeah. It was—once I got into it, I realized that I really liked it. Um, and—and I warn people that—people ask me all the time about, you know, they want to bartend while they go to college or they want to, you know, [they’ll ask me], “What is it like to bartend? I want to become a bartender.” And it [short pause] like many job—jobs, there’s more to it than meets the eye. It’s, uh, it’s more than just knowing a bunch of recipes. It’s more than just being able to talk to people. Um, people like to go into a bar and—and—and have a good drink in a nice atmosphere, but nobody wants to—wants to—wants to drink in a divey, you know, unkempt bar. One of my mentors, when I was at Pat O’Brien’s was a kid. Um, he was nineteen at the time. Um, Tony, every week we would do a project. And he showed me how to move with purpose, make your trips count for something, you know? And he was always in motion. You know, whether he was cleaning out an ashtray or making a drink or, you know, fixing the coffee maker. He was always doing something. And it’s so true that in—in a bar—especially in a busy bar—there are a million details. So to me, what separates good bartenders from bad is being able to, um, interact with customers, you know, in a—in a way that everybody expects, um, but still be able to keep your bar clean and set and, um, it—I—for that bar—for that size bar, I’m a good fit for that.

But where does the passion come in to play? Where did that come from?

[Let’s out a sigh] You know, it comes from wanting to do it well, I guess. Um, I—I never intended—I didn’t set out to—to be a professional bartender, but working with Tony at—at Pat O’Brien’s, um, I was convinced that I could do it well while I was doing it. Um, and it’s just—it only takes a little bit more effort to do it well. And Tony—Tony is still one of my heroes. Uh, as far as bartenders go. Um [short pause] and I guess it was through him that I—I was convinced that I could do it well while I did it.

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[W]orking at Arnaud’s, I found myself interested in a lot of the—the better things that we had to offer….And, uh, I would do research on my computer, and we would learn about, uh, you know, some new scotch—something we had on the bar…Um, one of my favorites is—is port. And I’ve turned the port into sort of my own show. I—I—I never intended it to be a show. You have to understand, port—port comes in several varieties and, uh, port can have a vintage. And Portuguese law is very strict about their vintages. You can only have three vintages per decade. So that leaves you seven years of non-vintage ports. Well, a good vintage port, like a 1963 or a seventy-seven, by the time you open it now—twenty-five years later—um, a lot of—a lot of the sediment has accumulated in the bottle. Well, we serve it by the glass, so we’re going to want to get the most out of that bottle as we can. So we decant it. Um, and I, for expedience sake, I decant it through, um, like a coffee filter…Um, I decant it into a glass decanter, then I’ll wash out the bottle, then I’ll pour it back into the original bottle. Well, because of height, because of having to deal with everything, I tend to do it behind the bar on top of my little freezer. But there’s people at the bar [short pause]—I’ve always been worried that they were thinking I was doing something underhanded. And so I started making it a point that if I have to decant the port, with people there watching, I involve them in it. And [clears throat] [sound of chair being dragged across floor] so I’ll do part of it on the bar. And what’s left—the sediment that’s left is [short pause] it’s not gritty, it’s not grainy, it’s not slimy, but it is like mashed blueberry skins. I’d read in a, uh, a book by a guy by the name of [F.] Paul Pacult about—he— wrote a book called Kindred Spirits. He’s a spirits connoisseur. He’s a spirits, uh, critic.

Okay.

So I read this little, uh, byline in one of his, uh, in the section about ports, about how he like to save the sediment and put it on his toast the next day. This is one of my—my epiphany moments at—at Arnaud’s and bartending in general. I thought at first that he meant it tongue-in-cheek. Now here I am, I’ve been decanting port for a couple of years by then, I didn’t know what the sediment was. I—I assumed it was like wood pulp from the original barrels it was stored in or something. I just didn’t know. So after reading that story, the next time I decanted a bottle of port, I ate some of the—some of the sediment. And it was—I found it very interesting. So now, as part of my decanting port I, uh, if somebody’s sitting at the bar, I will offer them some. I will always take a pinch first, so that they know it’s safe and not too weird…But it makes for a nice story. And they get—they get a lesson about port wine, I get to do my—my—my work that I have to do—

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Well, let’s see. You’re passionate about tradition and excellence, I think. And performance in your job. Um, how about some of the—the more tedious stuff that I would assume would come with the job of being a bartender in the Quarter and the tourist trade, and people coming in and asking—

[Sighs]—for those cocktails—those cocktails. [Laughs]

[Laughing] Uh, God, we could fill up the rest of the evening with this. I—I’m very fortunate that I don’t work on Bourbon Street. Um, Bienville Street intersects Bourbon [Street] and my—it—my bar is literally half a block off of Bourbon. So I don’t get a lot of, um, a lot of the people that are just looking for a shot and a—a beer kind of place. Although there are seasons, events, depending on what’s going on in the Quarter, where I may—may keep my street door [to the bar] locked. Because if I don’t it just—it’s an endless parade of people looking for a bathroom…Now, occasionally people will come in and—and because they’ve heard of the Hurricane, which Pat O’Brien’s is so famous for, they will come in and ask me for a Hurricane. And I have a pat, flip answer. It’s that I—I proudly don’t make Hurricanes, it’s the house drink of another bar, and they don’t make them there either. They make them five hundred gallons at a time in a warehouse out in the suburbs. Um, I—I—I can’t compete with a Hurricane in that, um, you know, people are looking for a big frosty glass, you know, with fruit punch in it…It’s not what we do.

Well, what about a classic cocktail like the Sazerac or something more old-school, traditional.

I make so many Sazeracs that it’s, um, I can make them in my sleep. Um, a lot of—a lot of—I have some regular guests from New Orleans. Um, we—Arnaud’s caters to, really, an international clientele. People from all over come to New Orleans, they’ve heard Arnaud’s. We’ve been famous for a long time…. BO: Um, so the people that come in and ask for Sazeracs, I’ll tell them it’s a good choice. Um, people that come in and want—and ask for a Hurricane, I’ll say, you know, I don’t make Hurricanes. I gave you the schpeal. And, um, I say, “But we do—we do keep alive the tradition of the—we honor the tradition of the Sazerac and the Ramos Gin Fizz.” Um, I love making gin fizzes, but not if there’s a bar full of people…It—it takes a little time, uh, and I also don’t like to make more than two at a time. When, you know, four people come in and they want gin fizzes, I am then in the weeds for five minutes.

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All right. So my question, as a follow-through to what we left—where we left the conversation is, um, the importance of retaining the Saturday night shift. Is that a love for bartending or is it an allegiance to Arnaud’s or is it—what is it?

It’s all that and more. Um [short pause] bartending there has become my—wait. I hate to say my primary social outlet. But [sighs] I’ve met so many people that make that part of their Saturday night that I get to see some of the same people over and over—you know, once a month, once every couple of months…. It’s, uh, it’s—it’s something I look forward to all week.

To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.