Summer in the South calls for cooling down with chilled sweets: sweating bottles of soda, cones of vanilla soft serve. At New Orleans’ La Petite Grocery, Chef Justin Devillier combines both of those icy treats in one retro dessert. Alongside revolving seasonal dishes like blue-crab beignets, gumbo, and Gulf shrimp and grits, Devillier has served a ten-year menu mainstay: root beer float bubbling with Louisiana-made Abita soda. “The only change we’ve made in the recipe came a couple years ago when we switched to a homemade cardamom ice cream flavor,” Devillier says. “We feel that the hard spice flavors of the root beer really match well with cardamom.”
Cranking up the nostalgia factor at La Petite Grocery is only fitting—the storied yellow cottage on Magazine Street has been a neighborhood gathering spot for more than a century, sheltering a café, grocery store, butcher shop, and florist studio before becoming a restaurant in 2004. You’ll find bits and pieces of its past on display beyond the green front doors, including a collection of glass medicine bottles and the preserved pressed tin walls of the bar room. “We felt a root beer float would be a nice subtle addition to continue that feeling,” Devillier says. Plus, it was a smart way to funnel extra root beer from La Petite Grocery’s short rib dish into a frosty treat.
When re-creating the root beer float at home, patience and time are key, especially when it’s time to temper the egg yolks into the hot mix of heavy cream, whole milk, sugar, and cardamom pods. La Petite Grocery’s pastry chef, Shelby Fallman, shares a key tip. “You want to add the hot dairy into the eggs in a very slow stream while whisking the eggs constantly. It takes a little coordination, but if you rush the process then you will end up scrambling your eggs.” After the egg and dairy are cooked together in a saucepan, you’ll know the mixture is ready when you can coat the back of a wooden spoon and draw a line through the coating with your finger.
Once the ice cream is done spinning in a machine mixer, spoon it into a highball glass and stream the root beer over it so it foams. Serve the rest of the drink alongside the dessert; some guests will pour the rest into the glass as they finish the ice cream, but Devillier relishes drinking it straight from the bottle.
