Bar Uncommon (Closed)

Address: Renaissance Pere Marquette Hotel, Common Street (corner of Baronne), New Orleans, Louisiana, LA 70112, United States
Tel: +1 504 525 1111
Website: view Bar Uncommon (Closed)’s website
Door: Open door
Style: Hotel bar
Food: Set menu

Review

A bar is only as good as its bartenders. So despite its modern, stark appearance and situation adjacent to a corporate hotel lobby, Bar Uncommon is indeed excellent, due only to its being presided over by fourth-generation bartender and New Orleans native, Chris McMillian.

Chris makes classic cocktails the old way and while doing so is likely to recount fascinating historical facts about the drink he is making. This big man has a big heart and an incomprehensible knowledge of cocktail history. He is also one of the co-founders of the Museum of the American Cocktail.

Don’t ask for a drink’s menu, instead order a classic, or better still ask Chris to suggest a drink for you. He is renowned for local drinks such as the Sazerac and Ramos Gin Fizz but the Mint Julep is his speciality. Chris smashes ice cubes with a heavy wooden mallet as he prepares this and if you are lucky he will recite ‘An Ode To The Julep’, written in the 1890s by J. Soule Smith, a Kentucky journalist.

(Note: Chris does not work in Mila next door, nor Sundays, nor during Tales of the Cocktail).