At best, New Orleans bartenders will tell you the bitter burn of Underberg is an acquired taste, one you learn to appreciate after years behind the bar. At worst?
“It tastes like the absence of your mother’s love,” Pal’s Lounge bartender Laura Walch said.
It was almost 10 years ago now that Walch and Flour Moon Bagels co-owner Jeff Hinson peeled the paper off two tiny brown bottles that a liquor rep left for them to try and tossed back the herbal alcoholic concoction inside. “Underberg,” the label read, something Hinson had at that point only seen in Brooklyn…