Roosevelt Hotel – Memphis Flyer

You haven’t really experienced New Orleans until you carry a comically drunk stranger back to his hotel (aided half-way through this foolishness by yet another complete stranger), dump the fellow in the lobby, and politely ask the concierge to call housekeeping or security.

I’d dropped in the Royal House Oyster Bar for some oysters and sauvignon blanc — which work together particularly well — and struck up a conversation with a friendly chap, right about the time he quit working particularly well. Shortly after he’d decided that we needed to write a book together and demanded to pay for my dinner, he dropped his wallet on the floor. On his way down to get it, I grabbed his bald cranium so he didn’t split said skull on the marble bar. Say what you want about the crime in New Orleans, everyone around helped him gather his scattered wallet. Having lost the argument over my bar tab, I felt obliged to get him across the street to his hotel. It was like a village, and he was our idiot.

Sazerac Bar Roosevelt Hotel NOLA

He was drinking chardonnay. I don’t think that explains anything, but I thought you should know.
It’s hard to criticize the hordes of bleary-eyed tourists roaming these streets at 9:30 a.m., because it is very hard to find a place where you aren’t expected to be drinking. The Bottom of the Cup Tea Room on Rue Chartres looked innocent enough until a bohemian lady brought some badly strained tea, dumped it out, and proclaimed my fortune. She said I would go away thirsty.

Directly across the street is SoBou (South of Bourbon), the newest member of the Commander’s Palace restaurant family. Like the décor, the food is excellent but more modern than the flagship. One very New Orleans touch was the beer taps in the tables (and it did my heart good to see Wiseacre among them). It’s self-serve, and you’re charged by weight — like a boozy version of YoLo.

There are several local beers, and they do know how to brew for hot weather here, but this is a cocktail town. And few scream “N’awlins” in the right accent like the Sazerac: rye, bitters, and a little simple syrup shaken well and served in a glass with an absinthe rinse. You can get a good one in Memphis, but at the Sazerac Bar in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel, you can get a good one in context: the long undulating bar, spotless and gleaming under the low art deco lights. I’m always slightly surprised to not find St. Peter working the door. They also charge $16 per cocktail.

Honestly, the rotting elegance of the Napoleon House is my favorite spot to have the world’s first cocktail. My mother’s family is from New Orleans, so the city has always been something of a psychic anchor for me, and the Napoleon House is a link in that chain.
I stumbled onto Café Soulé, on Rue St. Louis, almost by accident. You should, too. They claim their food is French–Louisiana fusion; given that traditional Creole is a fusion of French and whatever else was handy, that’s a bit vague. At any rate, the prices are good, the service friendly. The waiter shook my hand when I told him my middle name was Jaubert, and he remembered the old department store that used to bear our name. The place was filled with French people, whatever that tells you, and the crawfish étoufée, with some spice, plays well with a fruity Beaujolais.

I ran into the fellow from the oyster bar a day or so later. He looked rough, but he remembered me. In his honor, I offer this cautionary advice: Southern belles have long employed the trick of accessorizing until perfect, and then removing one piece of jewelry. There is a very feminine wisdom in this — the bedrock assumption that left to our own devices, we tend to overdo it.

I’d reached the point in the evening when a gnat in my drink seemed more like a feature than a bug. I’d reached the point where that line seemed like comic genius, so I tweeted it. I’d reached the point where having a small dog walking up and down the bartop seemed perfectly normal. I’d reached peak New Orleans.

My wife and I journeyed to the Big Easy last week. She was attending a legal conference; I was along for the free hotel room and the chance to spend four days wandering around NOLA.

And so it was, very late one night, that I found myself sitting on a folding chair on the sidewalk outside Cajun Mike’s Pub ‘n Grub on Baronne Street talking to Johnny Poppa. Actually, I was mostly listening, as Johnny stroked his lapdog (a Yorkie named Chile Pepper who’d spent most of the night on the bartop) and told tales of his vast wealth. He was immaculately groomed, wearing hip clothes, all black, and Gucci slippers with no socks. He smoked a large cigar. I made him to be around 60.

Johnny said he’d been a musician but had fallen in love a few years back with a Rockefeller named Nancy and gotten married.

“I love her. And she’s made me very rich,” he said, showing me her picture. She was holding Chile Pepper. He also showed me phone pictures of his new Bentley, and his Cessna jet, and his beach house in South Carolina. As he ordered another round of drinks, he casually pointed to a couple of nearby buildings that he said he owned.

My BS detector was on high alert, but his tales of travel to Vegas and hanging with various musicians were incredibly detailed. Plus, there were a couple of locals sitting with us, and they were taking it all in as a matter of course. They seemed to know Johnny from way back. Still . . .

A little later, Johnny pointed to the Roosevelt Hotel across the street. “See that top floor, the 14th?” he said. “Nancy and I have made that our penthouse. We own the hotel.”

At that moment, my journalism genes, however soggy, kicked in. As it happened, I was staying at the Roosevelt, on the 12th floor. I made a mental note to visit the 14th floor the next day — and to look up who owned the hotel. In the meantime, Johnny Poppa was buying, and I was happy to let him.

The next morning, I headed to a local coffee shop for sugar and caffeine and read about Donald Trump’s latest Kabuki theater performance, a speech in which he called Obama the “founder of ISIS.”

He forcefully reiterated the statement the next day, then said it was sarcasm the next day, then said it “wasn’t that sarcastic” the next. Then he blamed the media for the whole fustercluck.

The pattern is so entrenched now, we should be able to predict it: Say something outrageous, double down, then say it was a joke, then blame the media. Repeat ad nauseum.

But nothing seems to deter Trump’s legion of believers. The truest thing he’s said this entire campaign is that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a core voter. Sometimes faith will sustain belief in the face of all facts to the contrary.

And speaking of facts … I went to the 14th floor of the Roosevelt Hotel that afternoon. No penthouse, just a floor full of hotel rooms. I looked up the owners of the hotel. There were no Rockefellers or Poppas on the board of First Class Hotels, the corporation that owns the hotel (and many others around the country).

So who is the mysterious Johnny Poppa? Is that even his name? I don’t know. And good luck googling him.

I do know that if he’s not working for Donald Trump, he should be. He’s a master of sarcasm.