At the bar, Roch's Reprieve, we've added a new frozen tiki-style drink: the Zanzibar Boogie. The sign we have up in the market says "An Arabi Inspired Cocktail." This was a fun one for me to put together because it's based on a story my grandfather, John Larmann, told me.
A Story from Louisa Street
My grandfather has passed away now, but before he died we sat down and did a Coffee with Kevin episode where we talked about his recollections of St. Roch Market and the neighborhood when he was growing up. He was living on Louisa Street at the time — right around here.
We were talking about cocktails one day, and he told me about how the Zombie was a popular drink around New Orleans in the late 1930s. He was underage at the time, though, and couldn't get served too easily. But there was a bar in Arabi that would serve kids they knew. So he and his friends would take their bikes from Louisa Street down to Arabi to drink at this bar.
The Bartender's Version
The thing is, this bar in Arabi didn't have the ingredients to make a proper Zombie. The bartender told them he could make something called a Zanzibar Boogie instead. So that became the drink — they'd ride their bikes down there, and to them, the Zanzibar Boogie was as popular and as famous as the Zombie was to everyone else.
When my grandfather and I were talking about it, I of course Googled it. Found nothing. As it turns out, the Zanzibar Boogie isn't a real cocktail that I can find anywhere. It seems to have existed only at that one bar in Arabi in the late '30s. We played around with various tiki-style drinks trying to reconstruct it — trying to get him to remember what was in it. We landed on something close to a Zombie, but unlike the Zombie, it had a lot of orange juice. Maybe even satsuma juice, actually, which would have made sense for down the road in St. Bernard Parish.
Making It Frozen at Roch's Reprieve
I've got the frozen machine at Roch's Reprieve these days. I put it in because I really wanted to play around with frozen drinks that aren't all corn syrup like most frozen daiquiri drinks are. I've learned a lot about how difficult it is to do frozen drinks from scratch. You've got to have the right ratio of liquor to sugar to water so it creates the right slushy consistency. Don't get it just right, and the whole thing falls apart. The frozen drink is such a part of New Orleans culture that I accepted the challenge — I really wanted to do great frozens the right way.
So enter the Zanzibar Boogie. I got to make my own version, based on everything my grandfather told me, and serve it right here at Roch's Reprieve in St. Roch Market. It's a frozen tiki-style cocktail, totally unique, rooted in a real drink from an Arabi bar in the 1930s. You won't find this anywhere else.
No better way to beat the heat this spring and early summer than with a Zanzibar Boogie at St. Roch Market. Come by and try it.
The Zanzibar Boogie is available now at Roch's Reprieve inside St. Roch Market, 2381 St. Claude Ave, New Orleans. Open daily.
Meet me at St. Roch,
Kevin Pedeaux
