New Orleans was once a beacon to fine spirits enthusiasts across the nation, to the degree that Huey P. Long once flew a bartender from the Roosevelt Hotel’s Sazerac Bar to New York City to show the bartenders there how to mix a proper Ramos Gin Fizz.
Once again, the cocktail renaissance is in full bloom and it is a great time to be a bartender in New Orleans. Transplant mixologists from Portland to New York are falling over themselves to mix drinks here; but it takes more than a snide attitude, a waxed moustache and a bitchin’ forearm tattoo to assemble a cocktail worth $12. An engaging new guard is emerging, keepers of the craft that love the spirits on their shelves and sharing their passions with customers.
From within this legion of customer- friendly bar chefs, a cocktailian Constantine has raised his banner at Tivoli and Lee (on Lee Circle). Posers, know-nothings and pretty boys beware: Steve Yamada has arrived to school you with a smile.
A self-described bar nerd, Yamada is obsessed with carbonation and how it can be manipulated in the hand-bottled sodas he cranks out as foundations for his cocktails. Smoke is one of his favorite ingredients, and he makes a compelling case for a gin and jasmine-tea smoked cocktail. He owns a centrifuge, a homemade sous vide machine, a cocktail-friendly chemistry set and a PolyScience smoking gun, and he’s not afraid to use them. Oh yeah, he’s a bit of a SciFi geek too. He plays a lot of board games—City of Horror is his favorite. He’s also a reformed motorcycle ninja and Rick Flair once put him in the figure-four leg lock.
Despite all of his reductions, emulsions, carbonations, tinctures, bitters and vapors, Yamada remains one part mad scientist and two parts average joe. It wasn’t so long ago that his first taste of whiskey came from a handle of Old Crow at a fraternity party. “I reached a point where I wanted to learn about fine things. So I started with wine, but that was mostly just a curiosity. I bought books on wine to try to break down the scene, but I found the wine world very frustrating. It was a very difficult world to break into.”
That outside-looking-in vantage point didn’t sit well with Yamada, and he was determined to develop a more supportive community as he redirected his interests toward fine spirits. Yamada’s pivotal moment came among the rows of cookbooks at the
Kitchen Witch Bookstore in the French Quarter, where he discovered a copy of Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. He recalls, “I found this really cool spiral-bound second edition with fantastic artwork. Ted Haigh has this way of writing where he paints a beautiful picture and his descriptions are so floral that it made me stop and think, ‘there’s a better way of doing this.’ That idea really enchanted me.”
With his cocktail sensei’s instruction manual in hand, Yamada’s natural curiosity led him to riff on the classics. Using the recipe for the “Last Word” as a foundation, he created his signature “Word to Yamada,” which uses bonded applejack brandy, Cynar, green chartreuse, lime juice, a dash of simple syrup and fresh mint. Today, his understanding of the classics gives him hundreds of established starting points from which he can overhaul recipes, strip down concepts or start from scratch in his quest for the next great drink.
When he isn’t working the bar at Tivoli and Lee, Yamada serves as the Vice President of the local US Bartenders Guild, which brings the city’s most creative bartenders together to collaborate not for tips but for the love of the craft. In the ego-heavy world of professional bartending, Yamada is convinced that this brain trust is the fertile soil from which a vibrant new era in cocktails may spring.
