Irony Served Over Ice

As tourists in New Orleans, we were in search of the perfect Hurricane, the city’s signature rum punch drink, of course. We’d heard that as a native, you either loved Pat O’Brien’s or you loved The Blacksmith Shop. No one mentioned MRB or the fantastic, made from scratch Hurricane mix by a certain bartender.

We quite literally stumbled upon MRB, or Mississippi River Bottom, on our Haunted History Tour (Thanks, Miss Renee!), and decided that we definitely needed to come back another night of our trip. The problem was that the next morning we couldn’t remember where the bar was, or even the name of it, just these amazing Hurricanes, and a special lady bartender who’d grew up “riding her big wheel in her grand daddy’s bar”. We made it our mission our last night in the Crescent City to find this bar. We set out, bundled in coats and scarves, as true west coasters would, and tried to retrace the steps of our tour for about an hour. Just as we were about to give up and grab some food at Coop’s, we stumbled upon it once more. 

We rushed in and greeted our friendly bartender, glad she was there to make us the same delicious Hurricanes again. We watched her pour light rum, dark rum, some more rum, a splash of red Hurricane mix, and a floater of 151 rum. Then she threw in a few maraschino cherries soaking in the Hurricane mix for good measure. Cheers!

We thanked her and asked her name, since we wanted to make sure we thanked her personally in the blog for a fantastically mixed, warm-you-up-on-a-cold-night, knock-you-on-your-butt-if-you-drink-too-many, Hurricane. “Catrena,” she said. Our jaws dropped in disbelief. The best Hurricanes in New Orleans are made by a bartender named Catrena?? Our writers’ minds could hardly stand the irony of the moment.

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