I’ve been to New Orleans twice in my life, both of those during the brutally humid month of July. The first visit, back when I was 15, was to a Southern Baptist Convention and left me with nothing even slightly positive to remember. The next visit, in 2005, was partially overseen by food writer and friend Pableaux Johnson. He took my wife and I to some now-disappeared Marigny neighborhood diner for snapper soup and other local seafood specialties. The turtle broth was as tasty as it was transgressive, but I was focused on the drink that seemed to dissolve the heat: the Sazerac. I spent the next three days, six meals and three cocktail hours in New Orleans split between ordering a Sazerac and the local version of the Pimm’s Cup. I usually just got both.

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