Jingle and Bingle all the Way!

The holidays are upon us and the Christmas pop ups have surfaced once again in the Big Easy. These pop-ups take over our traditional bars and decorate with a holiday vengeance and rework their cocktail menu with designer drinks that best signify holiday cheer. The pop ups include the Virgin Hotel, the Bower, The Elizah Jane Hotel, The Ritz Carlton Bingle Bar and Barrell Proof. Our favorite happens to be Barrell Proof simply because they have adjusted the presentation over the past years and made it enjoyable and easy to access.

Barrel Proof has created multiple cocktails for their pop up and the glassware is so fun that they have started selling it. Of course, at the price of the drinks, we sort of think you should get your mug as a takeaway but alas, commerce is commerce. We’re mainly Bourbon-based creatures so the holiday Old Fashion was a delight. Several other drinks contained ingredients which closely resembled tiki drinks, making them easy sipping and quite high in alcohol proof. Two special shots were also created for the “naughty” and the “nice” and it would have been way more fun if the bar patrons got to choose who they applied to.

Our friends attended the Virgin Hotel’s Mariah Carey popup and had less than stellar news about the presentation and the fact that her songs were on a thirty-minute loop so you could not hang around without being “Mariahed” to death.

We hung out at the Bingle Bar at the Ritz simply because they have some of the most spectacular decorations in the city for the holiday. The Bingle Bar is of course named for New Orleans most famous snowman Mr. Bingle whose 40 foot recreation used to adorn the very front of the hotel when it was the Maison Blanche department store. Yes, you must be pretty old to remember the store and the Bingle on the front.

The Elizah Jane Hotel also has great cocktails but come on---we want to see a big effort on decorations and those were lacking at this popup. We will give them credit for having wonderful green and blue creations which closely resembled the Star Wars Cantina cocktails in the movies, but we stuck once again with the Bourbon based drinks to be safe and those were milky white.