The Avenue Pub
Polly Watts is one of about sixty publicans in the world Cantillon sends a Zwanze keg to, and she pours it on the day they say.2
Why go
The sign over the copper bar reads No orange slices, No muddling.
2 Watts came back to New Orleans after Katrina to help her father run the place and then rebuilt what it sold, going after small European breweries because American ones would not ship to Louisiana.2 A high-tech draught system blends carbon dioxide with nitrogen to optimize the flavor of each beer on the rotating list.2 The pub counts over forty of them today; Country Roads counted fifty-plus.1 The kitchen is not an afterthought either, with Nathanial Zimet of Boucherie consulting on a menu that runs to chicken confit and toast aux champignons.2 In May she shut the bar for twelve days and took the staff to Belgium, to farmhouse breweries that do not run public tours.2 The building had no locks on the doors.2
Order this / avoid
- Order: whatever is newest on the board. Watts:
I am lucky my customer base shares my sense of adventure and wants to try different things all the time.
2 - Order: anything Cantillon, if the day lines up. Zwanze Day is a tapping the brewery times across every participating bar at once.2
- Avoid: arriving at four in the morning on the pub's old reputation. It publishes finite hours now.1
What locals & experts say
- Polly Watts, in Country Roads Magazine:
You get to know these people on a personal level and not just a blind-tasting level. It really changes your perspective on what you're selling and what you're doing.
2 - Vickie Robinson, the pub's general manager, thirty years in, on the Belgium trip:
You feel more vested in it and are able to talk about it with much more zeal. Every day was an exclusive experience.
2 - Scott Wood of Courtyard Brewery, to Good Beer Hunting, 2017, asked where the beer geeks in New Orleans go:
It's Avenue Pub and us.
3
Good to know
- Timing: Monday to Thursday 11am to midnight, Friday 11am to 1am, Saturday 9am to 1am, Sunday 9am to midnight. The kitchen runs 11am to 11pm, and 9am to 11pm Friday and Saturday.1
- Booking: walk in.
- The age of it. The pub's own site says
since 1987.
1 - Hygiene: not established. New Orleans publishes no inspection register this project reads.
Verdict
should-visit — Polly Watts buys from small European breweries that most American bars cannot get, and Brasserie Cantillon puts her on a list of roughly sixty bars worldwide that receive a Zwanze keg, which is a supply relationship rather than a prize. The forty-odd taps run through a system that mixes carbon dioxide and nitrogen per beer, and the staff have been to the farmhouse breweries in Belgium to meet the people making it. Scott Wood, who brews across town, names this pub and his own brewery as the two places beer geeks go. Nathanial Zimet of Boucherie consults on the food, which is more than most beer bars can say. The rung stops short of the top because no bylined critic has judged that kitchen, and the pub's food is half the reason people sit down.