Cocktail of the Day: Saloon in the Sky

Also from Commander’s Palace, and taken from Ti Martin and Lally Brennan’s (a.k.a., The Cocktail Chicks’) book, In the Land of Cocktails: Recipes and Adventures from the Cocktail Chicks.

I’m not sure if this drink was created by or created for Miss Ella Brennan — matriarch of the Brennan family and its restaurants, the flagship being Commander’s — and it’s named after her vision of the afterlife, in which “[t]he bar looks like the one she and her siblings ran in the 1950s, the Old Absinthe House on Bourbon and Bienville in the French Quarter. Fats Pichon is playing. Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald are singing. The food is great, the drinks are better, and the company perfect.”

The Cocktail Chicks recommend Maker’s Mark, but we like Buffalo Trace.

Saloon in the Sky

1-1/2 ounces Bourbon.
3/4 ounce Laird’s straight apple brandy.
3/4 ounce Grand Marnier.

Combine ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker and shake until chilled. Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice.

When it’s my time, I think I want to go to Miss Ella’s heaven.