The Ramos gin fizz may be the most beloved drink in New Orleans—for its precarious beauty and its elysian taste. It’s been described as “drinking a cloud” and “the essence of angel feathers blended with whipped moonbeams.”
It may also be the most hated drink, chiefly by bartenders tasked with making it. It’s composed of ingredients that typically don’t see eye to eye—namely, dairy and citrus—and so needs to be shaken into submission to overcome potential curdling and give the cocktail its famous lightness. The shaking time required seems to grow with every telling—sometimes two minutes, sometimes twelve. Henry C. Ramos, who invented the drink circa 1890 in New Orleans, insisted only that it be shaken until not a single bubble remained.
Today, Crescent City bartenders are frequently called upon to shake one up. To avoid inconvenience and rotator-cuff injury, that’s led to ingenuity. Junebug’s frozen Ramos gin fizz comes from the sort of dispenser seen serving daiquiris on Bourbon Street. The Bourbon “O” Bar shakes its version for six full minutes in a device designed for bubble tea. Bar Tonique makes a traditional shaken Ramos gin fizz but asks that you order it as your second drink at the same time you order your first, allowing the bartender a grace period. (The Ramos is also served at the bartender’s discretion, which is to say don’t expect one when it’s two deep at the bar.)
My favorite Ramos gin fizz may be at Peychaud’s, a French Quarter bar that leans heavily in to classic New Orleans cocktails and has a bewitching courtyard. Devised by former head barman Nick Jarrett, its Ramos protocol uses a blender, which would be considered sacrilege in some circles—but given that the bar serves thirty to forty each night, also a mercy.
“We have a system,” says beverage manager Alex Anderson. Peychaud’s makes a minimum of two drinks at a time, setting up ingredients in a row of cocktail tins before launching the process. This calls for three turns of the blender—first with the gin, simple syrup, lemon and lime, orange flower water, and egg whites. Then cream. And finally crushed ice. The mixture then gets poured into narrow collins glasses (primed with a little club soda), and, time permitting, the glasses rest in a cooler for a spell before finishing.
The resting period helps the pillowy crown to firm up and set when you add the final pour of club soda—slowly, gently—raising the billowy drink an inch or more above the rim of the glass, like a cumulus cloud of joy.
While not Ramos’s hand-shaken original, this version achieves what he intended: a drink so ethereal it seems to defy gravity. In a city that reveres tradition while surviving on adaptation, perhaps the blender isn’t sacrilege after all—just the latest chapter in a century-long negotiation between perfection and possibility.
