Cocktail Hour: Nantucket Sleigh Ride

Sure, it’s hard to beat a milk punch at Brennan’s in New Orleans during the holidays, but for the less traditionally inclined, there’s the Sippin’ Santa’s Surf Shack, starting the day after Thanksgiving and running through New Year’s Eve, at the French Quarter tiki haunt Latitude 29. Co-owners Annene Kaye-Berry and Jeff “Beachbum” Berry will transform the bar and restaurant into a tropical Christmas paradise, complete with more than twelve hundred ornaments, “nonirritating Christmas music,” and a special holiday cocktail menu. Lest you write off the pop-up as cheesy Christmas shtick, note that for Berry this is serious stuff. Regarded as the world’s leading tiki expert, he has published six books on the subject and is working on a seventh. For this yuletide remodel, drinks will be “tailored to local tastes,” says Kaye-Berry, which means heavy on the allspice, as with the Nantucket Sleigh Ride, a boozy concoction made with two types of rum, brandy, citrus juice, and St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram. “People here love it because it’s such a Caribbean flavor,” she explains. “Something familiar but exotic at the same time.”