Ramos Gin Fizz — Imperial Cabinet Saloon

Henry C. Ramos invented this drink at the Imperial Cabinet Saloon on Gravier Street in 1888, in a city that had been the largest port in the Southern United States for most of the century — a place built on trade routes that began as Native American portages and grew into the funnel for the nation's cotton and farm products to Europe. What he built was a cocktail that required what the port city had always required: coordinated human effort, timed to the second. Gin, lemon, lime, egg white, cream, sugar, orange flower water, and soda. Twelve minutes of continuous shaking. During Carnival — the annual ritual that still defines the city's calendar — Ramos employed teams of "shaker boys" who passed each drink down a relay line. The drink is the most labor-intensive cocktail in the American canon: a fifteen-minute commitment for the bartender. Order one at the Sazerac Bar or the Hotel Monteleone's Carousel Bar. Watch what happens when someone decides your drink is worth that kind of time.