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This project was sponsored by a grant from Southern Comfort.

Interviews and photographs by Amy Evans

Greg Cowman

“I’ve lived enough places in my life [that] it’s almost impossible not to have a connection somehow with somebody. They come in and are from Connecticut. Well, I know people who in Connecticut—friends that I visit. Or they come in and they’re from San Diego or someplace I’ve lived before. And it’s easy to get something going with them. [T]hat’s what I really like about [bartending]”

– Greg Cowman

Greg Cowman fell into bartending while he was living in New York City. In 1989, his uncle, chef Tom Cowman, talked him into heading to New Orleans, and for the next sixteen years Greg plied his trade in the French Quarter. He’s kept a few shifts at the Napoleon House for the past fourteen years, but Greg also spends his time doing web design and getting some acting gigs in local commercials. But it’s tending bar at the Napoleon House that he’s dedicated to continuing. The social interaction, the feel of the place, the people he meets—all things Greg isn’t willing to give up any time soon. And the drinks? He’s not into the trendy French Quarter cocktails, but he’s happy to make you something civilized like a Sazerac. As he puts it, “bartending is ten percent knowing how to make drinks and ninety percent just knowing how to chat with people.” Chatting at Greg’s bar will make you want to stay for a few more rounds.

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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: Greg Cowman, bartender
DATE: April 1, 2005
LOCATION: Napoleon House
INTERVIEWER: Amy Evans

Amy Evans: This is Friday, April first, two thousand and five, and this is Amy Evans for the Southern Foodways Alliance. I’m at the Napoleon House in the French Quarter, with Greg Cowman, a bartender here. And Greg would mind saying your full name and then also your birthdate for the record please, sir?

Greg Cowman: Greg Cowman. September fifteenth, nineteen forty-seven.

All right. And, um are you from New Orleans originally.

No. Born in Ohio, and raised in Michigan.

Okay. What brought you to New Orleans?

My uncle, primarily. [Chef Tom Cowman] We were very close. I’ve been—I’ve been close to my uncle, well, since I was a kid. And we worked together in the sixties and seventies in his restaurants up north and –oh, in Florida too—and then, uh, the real reason I came down was he was having his knees replaced, which everybody in our family done. And I just—I’d helped my father through the same operation, so I came to help him through that and just didn’t want to go back to Los Angeles…So I stayed.

What year was it that you came down here?

That was, um, eighty-nine.

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And then, where did bartending come into play?

Well, I started bartending in New York, when I moved there. After, uh—after we quit working in East Hampton and we—everybody kind of split. And my girlfriend and I moved to New York City and, uh, she was working in a restaurant there, and they needed a bartender so—I’d never bartended before but [Laughs] how hard can it be?...I would say bartending is—is ten percent knowing how to make drinks and ninety percent just knowing how to chat with people…That’s—that’s the fun of it anyhow for me. So I worked at Charley O’s restaurant in Rockefeller Center for, I think maybe—I guess about four years or so in the mid-seventies.

Okay. And so then it was more or less like on the job training there behind the bar—

Right.

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Did you know anything about New Orleans cocktail culture when you came down here to New Orleans?

Not really, no. I wasn’t really planning on it [coming to New Orleans]. I had been working with my sister in a car parts business and, uh—Well, my uncle was working at a restaurant when I came here, and I really [short pause] I don’t know if I should say this, but I really didn’t like the owner. And, uh, so I knew I couldn’t work with him there. There would have been—eventually, there would have been friction, I think. A falling out one way or another. And he was too important to me to jeopardize that so—so, um—and right before I came down here, too, I was in a bad car accident. So I couldn’t work for a while. And then when I got better, I had to work [at] something, and I was working a horrible job uptown. Just awful, where I’d walk out making three dollars for the day. And plus the—the manager, was stealing tips from everybody. It was not a nice place. It was a great place, actually, but the people that ran it didn’t know what they were doing, and it was not good. And I just drifted in here [to the Napoleon House] one day and, uh, poured my heart out to the bartender, saying, “God, I really just hate this place [where I’m working now].” And he said, “Hey, man, we got a place here.” So he was—because he was actually moving up to management, so he was quitting so—So I took his place.

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And you like to make the Sazerac, [like] you made for me the other night. [When the interview visited the Napoleon House three days before this interview, Greg was working the bar. When asked what drink he liked to make, he said the Sazerac. The interviewer ordered one right then and there.]

Well, I don’t like to make them. [Laughs] I don’t know that—it’s—it’s time consuming, but it is such a good drink that it’s—it really does taste good.

Do you have a lot of people that come in a request those old-school cocktails like that?

Oh, yeah.

What else do they ask for?

Uh, Brandy Milk Punch is big on the weekends. We serve a lot of Bloody Marys too. We don’t have—we don’t have too many, uh—I can’t think of any really extraordinary drinks. Drinks are pretty much self-explanatory too. Luckily we don’t get much of the trendy kind of stuff either. Uh, dirty martinis, I’ll never understand why people like dirty martinis. Especially when they get call brand, you know? A top shelf dirty martini, what’s the point? Just doesn’t make any sense to me but—Cosmopolitans, we serve a lot of those. But, uh, it’s—it’s your basic gin and tonic, beer and wine, Pimm’s Cup place here. It doesn’t—it doesn’t stray too far.

Do you have an opinion about the tr—the trendy drinks like the Hurricane and the Hand Grenade and how that drives people in to—

Oh, I think they’re trash drinks, and they’re only for—for people that just want to get drunk as fast as they can. For college kids, I guess. I don’t know, I’ve seen—I’ve seen grown men on their knees at noon drinking Hurricanes. And it’s just—it’s just [short pause] It’s just for getting drunk. It’s a sweet, sweet drink. You don’t realize there’s four ounces of rum in the thing! If you have one, that’s enough! If you have two, you’re toasted, and you’re like ready—ready for bed I’d s—I would be, you know. I don’t have a high tolerance for alcohol. I’ve never had a Hand Grenade [and] probably never will. I don’t have any idea what’s in it…I don’t know, I like social drinking better. I—I don’t—that’s why I don’t like making—I don’t like making or getting really strong drinks. I don’t think most people like to have a really strong—they want to be social, they want to pace themselves, they don’t what to just get drunk in half an hour. They want to stretch their evening out for a couple of hours. Be able to walk out and go someplace else. So, uh, yeah. Those drinks, I guess—obviously they have a place because they sell thousands of them every day to tourists and the, uh, college kids mostly. You know, people come in and ask for Hurricanes here, and I just say, “No, we don’t make them here. Try our Pimm’s Cup.” Or I’ll make them a rum punch, which is a very good drink. It’s not—it’s not going to set you on your you-know-what for—in ten minutes.

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Well, um, behind the bar from a business kind of standpoint, do you have a certain way you like to keep the bar or perform behind the bar or stock your bar?

Yeah, well, I’m a Virgo and…a pretty good one at that so—

Organized to the “T”?

Organized and clean. I can’t, uh, I can’t handle certain dirty glasses…So when I come in, I generally wash most of the glasses every day. Just—just—I don’t know. It disgusts me to see some of the glasses, you know, lipstick and…I understand lipstick you can’t get off. You have to wipe that off to get it clean but, uh, [buzzing sound appears on the recording] I guess that would be my—my thing: that I’m neat and organized.

Yeah?

And that—and this is—it’s—it’s hard to—hard to be that way here too. And at night you—I’m sure—you know, I don’t—I think part of the daytime bartender’s job and responsibility is to clean up the place and make sure things are stocked, so I try to do that as much as I can too. And, uh, for my own purposes and for the night guy. [Buzzing sound ends] He shouldn’t have to come in and have to look for stuff…It should all be right there and, uh—as much as I can. If I get too busy to get something or make something then, I’m sorry. I’ll tell him at least. You know, “You don’t have any whiskey, you don’t have any of that.” You know?...But, uh—yeah. That’s my style, I guess.

What is the worst thing about bartending, if you had to say?

Worst thing? Oh, gosh.

And then we’ll work up to the best thing, so it will be balanced.

[Laughs] Oh, gosh. I guess, uh, geez, I don’t know. It’s hard to think of any really bad things. I’ve only had to throw out one person. Well, two. In all the time I’ve worked here. [That’s] another reason I don’t work at night, because I think there’s a chance of—of, uh, problems at night—more so. During the day people are a little bit more sedate. The worst thing? I guess, uh—I guess when you just get so busy [sound of car horn] that you don’t have time to pee. And you’re—you know, you look up, and you’re making drinks. You’ve got ten drinks in front of you and you’re making them and you look up, and there a line out the door and you just say, “Am I ever gonna get a break here?” And, uh, like I say, I’m getting older, and it hurts more now. You know [Laughs] about five or six hours in, I’m ready to sit down, and I don’t get that chance either. So I think that’s probably the [short pause] hardest part to it.

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What are the best parts?

Oh. [Short pause] Like I say, I think the interaction with people and, uh, I’ve lived enough places in my life—I guess, met enough people that it’s almost—it’s almost impossible not to have a connection somehow with somebody. They come in and are from Connecticut. Well, I know people who in Connecticut—friends that I visit. Or they come in and they’re from San Diego or someplace I’ve lived before. And it’s easy—it’s easy to get something going with them, that’s—that’s—like I said before, that’s what I really like about it.

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