H is for HURRICANE: New Orleans Signature Drink

On a recent trip to New Orleans, I quickly discovered why this fruity alcoholic drink, what locals call The Hurricane, is so popular.  The cocktail is made with rum and fruit juice, and either syrup or grenadine.  I love me some rum grenadine, ha.  Don’t lie, you would order a shirley temple nowadays if you wouldn’t get made fun for it.  [I still do, and am not ashamed one bit.]  It was definitely my drink of choice at bar/bat mitzvahs back in the 90’s.

Back to the letter at hand: H.

We were mostly served our Hurricanes in plastic cups, which made it easy (and legal!) to bring our drinks with us wherever we pleased.  You definitely can’t do that back home in New York.  Kind of felt like we were in a classier Las Vegas for a hot second.

Some brief history:

The drink was created by Pat O’Brien, owner of a New Orleans tavern in the 1940’s.  He was actually forced to create a new drink in order to get rid of all the less popular rum that distributors forced him to buy.  People were more into scotch and whisky those days.

The name behind the HURRICANE?  Pat would pour his newly created concoction into hurricane-lamp-shaped glasses which he then gave away to sailors.

Passion Fruit + Rum + Grenadine?  No wonder it stuck.  Probably with the ladies I’m guessing.

So next time you find yourself in NOLA, run on over to Pat O’Briens to get yourself a world-famous Hurricane.  And bring back one of the highly-sought after Hurricane glasses to that alcoholic in your life.