The Spirited South

Lula Restaurant-Distillery, quintessentially southern with a distinct Louisiana influence, offers an incredible experience in the shadows of gleaming copper stills along the historic streetcar line of St. Charles Avenue.

ARTICLE BY VANELIS RIVERA AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY KELLY MOORE CLARK

New Orleans, while notorious for its grimy ghost stories and haunted houses, has new spirits rising in the streets of The Big Easy, and you won’t want to exorcise them. In the heart of New Orleans, expertly crafted spirits, food, and cocktails intertwine into a unique privately owned micro-distillery and restaurant. Lula Restaurant-Distillery, quintessentially southern with a distinct Louisiana influence, offers an incredible experience in the shadows of gleaming copper stills along the historic streetcar line of St. Charles Avenue.

The first and only restaurant-distillery in New Orleans and the Southeast United States is the brainchild of Jess Bourgeois (Owner/Operator) and Bear Caffery (Owner/Distiller), who both share a passion for outstanding food paired with finely crafted cocktails. Caffery, originally from northeast Texas, studied biology and chemistry at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana, where he was also a member of the powerlifting team. He attended medical school in Shreveport and completed his residency in Baton Rouge in 2008. Shortly after, he took a job in New Zealand. Finding it incredibly interesting that home distilling is legal in the southwestern Pacific island, it became the perfect platform for honing his interest in the distillation process. The two friends and business partners met there in 2009 when Bourgeois tagged along with mutual friend on a vacation to visit Caffery. After a conversation about the superfluous availability of sugarcane in Louisiana, they began to toy with the idea of sugarcane vodka, an uncharted spirit at the time.

The Lula concept really took shape when Caffery moved back to the states, settling in Louisiana in 2009. Setting their sights on expanding their knowledge, the pair completed an apprentice course in Spokane, Washington led by one of the most successful micro-distilleries in the country. Caffery also completed a distillation course at Cornell University through their Food Science Department and a Rum Production Course at Moonshine University in Kentucky. Even after learning the ins and outs of distillation, opening a full-service restaurant that doubled as a micro-distillery introduced new and unexpected challenges. Needing approvals for zoning and federal permits led them, in the spring of 2015, to introduce their very own legislation to allow the restaurant-distillery concept to exist. Thankfully, House Bill 233 passed with a unanimous vote, acting as a stepping stone for any future restaurant-distillery concepts to flourish. After settling in a spacious former furniture store that was also a battery charging station in the fifties, their doors opened on February 13, 2017. As a Mardi Gras week, the opening was a whirlwind. “In order to get enough booze, we were distilling around the clock,” remembers Caffery. He was in the distillery sleeping on stacks of sugar, while Bourgeois slept on lined-up bar stools.

At Lula, cocktail is clearly king, though they are happy to pour anything you would like—beer, wine and everything in between. It all starts with flawless spirits made from a deeply engaged distilling process abetted by top-of-the-line equipment. Their stills were exclusively manufactured in Eislingen, Germany by CARL Distilleries, a family-based leader in the still industry for the past 150 years. Lula vodka, rum, and gin crafting is rooted in a two-hundred year history of a long gone industry prominent on the outskirts of New Orleans. All Lula’s spirits are made of one hundred percent Louisiana sugarcane products, mainly from Lula-Westfield (their namesake), manufacturers of sugar and molasses with factories in Belle Rose and Paincourtville, Louisiana.

Lula vodka is a highly rectified spirit, smooth and clean with a soft finish. Its clean taste is pervasive in their signature Cucumber Vodka Collins, also their number one bestseller—cucumber infused vodka, lemon, sugar, and soda. This suave and polished classic is well balanced and accessible on tap! Set-up with a draft cocktail system, the bar provides consistency and speed for a handful of their most popular cocktails. Another addition to the Lula draft system includes their nuanced spin on the Ramos Gin Fizz, a classic New Orleans cocktail. Exclusively made with Lula gin, which is steeped with the best botanicals available including juniper, coriander, angelica root, orange peels and lemon peels, Lula’s Fizz is a creative balance of lemon and lime, orange flower, sugar, coconut cream, and aquafaba (water made from chickpeas) instead of the traditional egg white. “It still foams very elegantly and it’s completely vegan,” informs Caffery, adding that instead of traditionally shaking the mixture for ten minutes they are infusing it with a blend of nitrogen and carbon dioxide and serving it on tap like a stout. “Well balanced, consistent, and quick,” says Caffery. The Lula cocktail philosophy is simple. Each cocktail, modeled off classics, balances booze, bitters, citrus, and sugar. They are sessionable, meaning that they are suitable for drinking for extended periods of time, an advantage to any night out in New Orleans. Using no more than five ingredients in their signature cocktails displays the potency of simplicity.

When it comes to sugar and the distilling process, rum is usually a natural pathway. Lula’s pot-stilled white rum is an un-aged “aguardiente,” a Spanish term for alcoholic beverages containing between 29-60% alcohol by volume. It’s also a cross between American colonial-style and Puerto Rican-style rum, “which may actually be a Louisiana style rum because that is where we fall on the map,” says Caffery, referring to New Orleans as the northernmost part of the Caribbean. Taste-wise, it’s “banana on the nose and a little bit of bubble gum,” which mixes well with cocktails. In a mixer like the Cuba Libre (Rum and Cola), they combine their house-made cola—a lightly sugared, unique essential oil blend—with their rum and carbonate the mix together. That way, it stays fizzy. The result is a light and syrupy take on a refreshing classic. In the Mojito, Caffery discovered a magical ratio, a result from traveling the Caribbean, stopping in island paradises like festive Puerto Rico and luxurious Turks and Caicos, in search for the perfectly balanced Mojito. His adventurous island hopping, further proof of Caffery’s dedication to pristine product extends into the Lula cocktail prep kitchen. This space is a behind-the-scenes command post that not many get to venture, but its sole purpose is dedication to the production of fine mixed drinks. Full batches of cocktails end up in kegs and display refrigerators are lined with their other carbonated delicacy, their Gin and Tonic. “I have almost as equally complicated relationship with this, than the [Mojito],” says Caffery. Using a pressure bottle filler, the limey tincture is carbonated and chilled in champagne flutes. Like most of the Lula’s cocktails, balance is key.

The development of Lula wasn’t just a booze cruise, though. The experimental phase of cocktails were complemented with food lead by Bourgeois, a native of Donaldsonville, Louisiana and Louisiana State University alumni, where he got a B.S. degree in Food Science and Nutrition. He’s responsible for Lula’s carefully designed brunch, lunch, and dinner menus. Their Shrimp Boils, a must-try appetizer option, are works of art. Jumbo shrimp are prepared three different ways—Ginger Lemongrass, Garlic Butter, or Hot Garlic—and served over fries. Another clever appetizer is the Lump Crab & Avocado Dip: crab, mango, spicy green curry, and wonton chips. On the lighter side are the salads and sandwiches. In the salad section, choose your protein (grilled skirt steak, gulf shrimp, salmon, fried oysters, grilled/fried chicken) and then one of their leafy creations, like their Iberville salad: mixed greens, cheddar cheese, grape tomatoes, sweet and spicy pecans, and smoked poblano ranch. The Fried Chicken Sandwich is a classic: crispy fried chicken, bacon, cheddar cheese, with a molasses fig sauce palate surprise. If you’re up to going big on the Lula menu, go the entrée way. BayouLife recommends the Pork Osso Buco. This ramped up dish is Louisiana tender pork shank mounted on house-made stone ground cheese grits and roasted corn salsa. With the meat falling off the bone, this Viking-esque dish is executed to an elite level. You also can’t go wrong with the Buttermilk Cornish Hen (tea brined and fried) or the Grilled Gulf Fish (green onion popcorn rice, grilled veggies, and chimichurri).

At Lula, you are meant to booze and feast. Ask for food and cocktail pairings, like the rum-on-rum marriage of this old-world beverage and inventive appetizer. Order their traditional Planter’s Punch, made like it would be in Jamaica. Here, Louisiana black tea is combined with Lula rum, resulting in a bouncy cocktail that compliments the Sugarcane Pork Skewers. A delight to eat, this appetizer consists of sugarcane sticks wrapped in pork sausage and grilled with a spiced rum glaze. The wildly stunning juices from the heated cane stalk finish well with the strong bitters of the punch.

A house of spirits at heart with a banquet-style affinity for audacious dishes, Lula Restaurant-Distillery, one of its kind in the south, should be your next New Orleans food escape. Caffery and Bourgeois have managed to keep local spirits uplifted—figuratively and metaphorically speaking—all while maintaining an experimental vitality for food and drink exploration with a unique historical stamp on New Orleans and the state of Louisiana.

Visit the restaurant-distillery at 1532 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70130, and be sure to pick up bottles of their distilled creations. Visit their website to make a reservation or learn more about their private dining space, which can accommodate parties up to 150. From business dinners to rehearsal dinners, they can tailor your packages to fit your private party needs: http://www.lulanola.com. You can also follow them on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. The restaurant is open Sunday between 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. (Brunch 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.); Monday to Thursday between 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Saturday 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. (Brunch 9 a.m. to 3 p.m).