A Lucky Libation

When considering party drinks that could benefit from the oomph that vodka brings, Chef Andrew Green’s Get Lucky highball is a perfectly balanced sweet-and-sour sipper that marries small-batch honeysuckle vodka with blackberries, lemon, barrel-aged bitters and orgeat, an increasingly popular ingredient in recent years. Its idiosyncratic nutty character is essential to bringing out the cocktail’s complexity of subtle flavors.

“It’s very unique,” says Chef Green, proprietor of 1910 Restaurant in downtown Lake Charles, reopened in February 2022 after a 17-month hiatus (prompted by Hurricane Laura blowing off the roof). “We make our orgeat syrup in-house with toasted sliced almonds that are steeped with water in a food processor for 30 minutes, strained and simmered with sugar, accented with Curaçao and cognac and cooled.”

Green’s popular Get Lucky libation was named after Daft Punk’s retro-tinged 2013 hit song of the same name featuring Grammy-winning singer Pharrell Williams.

“‘Get Lucky’ was on the air while our cocktail menu was evolving,” he says. “The orgeat element was inspired by a combination of cocktail books I acquired in 2016 while visiting Death & Co. and Please Don’t Tell bars in Manhattan’s East Village.”

While the orgeat in “Death & Co: Modern Classic Cocktails” blends toasted almond milk with rose water, cognac and amaretto, Chef Green omits the rose water and replaces the almond-flavored amaretto with orange-flavored, bittersweet Curaçao for added depth.

“We’ve brought back Get Lucky and other popular cocktails plus original dishes like our quail bombs and gumbo croquettes by request,” he says.

During brisk autumn evenings, guests enjoy simmering bowls of Chef Green’s sumptuous duck confit gumbo in the courtyard overlooking the reportedly haunted Historic Calcasieu Courthouse (where the vengeful, still-roaming murderess Toni Jo Henry was sent to the electric chair on Nov. 28, 1942). Diners can smell the savory aroma of hickory during Smoke & Barrel’s annual bourbon and BBQ celebration (Nov. 19), held beneath the storied, elegiac oaks.

Home Bar

Get Lucky

2 fresh blackberries
2 ounces Cathead honeysuckle vodka
1 ounce orgeat
1 ounce lemon juice
1 lemon wheel
2-3 dashes of barrel-aged Peychaud’s bitters
1 straw

Muddle two blackberries at the bottom of tall glass and fill with ice. Shake the remaining ingredients (except the bitters) in a shaker with ice, and strain into the glass, then top with bitters. Garnish with a lemon wheel. Serve with a straw.

Optional straw trick: Place a finger over the straw’s hole to create suction, plunge the straw to the bottom of the glass to catch some of the muddled blackberries. Pull the straw out to lift a line of muddled blackberries.

1910 Restaurant and Wine Bistro
949 Ryan St. Lake Charles
facebook.com/1910restaurant-andwinebar