JEFF “BEACHBUM” BERRY’S LATITUDE 29 COMES TO THE BIENVILLE HOUSE HOTEL IN NEW ORLEANS FRENCH QUARTER Dear Friends, As most of you know, my wife Annene and I have spent the last two years in search of a New Orleans location for a Beachbum Berry drinking and dining establishment. We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve found one: the soon-to-be vacated space currently occupied by Iris restaurant, located in the French Quarter’s Bienville House Hotel (321 N. Peters St.). Our place, which will be rechristened Latitude 29 (named for the latitude where New Orleans is located), will open this fall. We feel extremely fortunate to work with a hotel of the caliber of the Bienville House; it’s not only an establishment with impeccable standards, but a place to which we feel personally connected. Annene and I are some of those people -- there are more with each passing year -- who were introduced to New Orleans through Tales Of The Cocktail, in our case back in 2005. Our subsequent stays at the Bienville House and our experiences at Iris, which housed one of the first local bars to feature world-class exotic drinks (by then-bartender Alan Walter), both contributed to our love of New Orleans and our desire to make it our home. We aim to begin our buildout in June. In the meantime we’ll be refining our menu and decor with the key players on our team, some of whom you know from the New Orleans hospitality industry. We’ve included bios for Steve Yamada, who will serve as Head Bartender and Co-General Manager (in collaboration with Annene); Chris Shortall, our Executive Chef; and Bosko Hrnjak, our interior designer. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. Mahalo, Jeff “Beachbum” Berry Steve Yamada: Head Bartender/Co-General Manager Steve began bartending after moving to New Orleans in 2003 and still utilizes the skills he acquired in his first jobs working at casual French Quarter venues, where customer interaction and satisfaction came first. A chance encounter with Ted Haigh’s “Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails” fired his imagination and lead to a more serious study of spirits, and since then Steve has brought cordial service and world class cocktails to bars like Victory, Tivoli & Lee, and his own successful “pop up” venture, the Alchemy Lounge. In 2012, he joined the opening team for Chef John Folse and Chef Rick Tramonto’s Restaurant R’evolution, where he was responsible for setting up all systems pertaining to bar operations and training the bar staff in proper technique and guest relations. Steve is the newly elected President of the local USBG (after first serving as Vice-President), a regular competitor in National cocktail events, and has been featured in publications such as GQ and New Orleans Magazine. Chris Shortall: Executive Chef Chris Shortall moved to New orleans in 2008 from Dallas and began his local career with an internship at Restaurant August (the final requirement for his bachelor’s degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management from the University of North Texas). He continued working under Chef John Besh until an opportunity arose at a new restaurant called Coquette. After two years of helping the restaurant evolve into the New Orleans institution it is today, he met Twelve Mile Limit’s Cole Newton and took him up on his offer to open his own operation under Twelve Mile’s roof. Since then, Shortall’s BBQ has garnered great reviews and generated a loyal customer base, while still hosting the occasional epic event, such as the Russian Style Spirited Dinner for Tales of the Cocktail in 2013. With his first restaurant thriving, Shortall began looking for new ventures, and Newton introduced him to the Berry’s, who were already fans of his food and his approach. While his BBQ joint will continue at Twelve Mile, Chris is looking forward to utilizing some of the knowledge he acquired during a three year stint cooking Thai food in Texas to bring a new kind of Asian-inspired cuisine to the French Quarter. Bosko Hrnjak: Designer In the early 1990s, Bosko was the first artist to revive the lost mid-century art of Tiki-carving and Tiki mug-making, which led to numerous newspaper and magazine articles, including the New York Times and US News & World Report. His artwork has been exhibited at Track 16, Outré gallery, Tamara Bane, M-Modern gallery, Beyond Baroque, Harold Golen Gallery and many others throughout the world. In his role as a commercial space designer, Bosko went from being the creator of the world’s ultimate home Tiki Bar (his own, which has been featured everywhere from French TV documentaries to Imbibe Magazine) to a $600,000 project for The Ark Group in Las Vegas. Formerly located in the Venetian Resort and Casino overlooking the Strip in Las Vegas, Taboo Cove was, at the time, the first authentic Tiki bar built in America since the early 1970s; Bosko’s next project was the creation of 40,000 dollars’ worth of carvings and other decor for the Mister Tiki Mai Kai Lounge in San Diego. Since then, he’s worked closely with bar and restaurant designers around the world on projects as diverse as embellishments for Disney theme parks and Le Tiki Lounge in Paris.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 00:11:54 +0000
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