New Orleans’ most decorated cocktail team is about to take over one of Decatur Street’s most storied storefronts. Jewel of the South plans to open The Cocktail Hour, a limited-run bar residency, on October 29 at 1104 Decatur St., the longtime home of Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, with a 30-week run built around theatrical, immersive production design and a rotating cast of guest bartenders.
The residency, first reported by Axios, will split the first floor of the building between The Cocktail Hour and And the Wolf, a spinoff restaurant from the Turkey and the Wolf team. The Cocktail Hour itself will spread across full bars on both the first and second levels, plus a courtyard, an expansive upstairs balcony, and live music. Axios reports that co-founder John Stubbs said the team has spent time considering how to improve the guest-shift experience for visiting bartenders, and that the project aims to create a cultural exchange centered on New Orleans cocktail culture.
A Building With Decades of French Quarter History
The Decatur Street address carries its own layered history. The building housed Margaritaville for 22 years before it closed in June 2015 to make way for B.B. King’s Blues Club, according to OffBeat Magazine, cementing the lower Decatur corridor as a long-running anchor for live music and dining in the French Quarter.
Per Axios, Jewel of the South started The Cocktail Hour as pandemic-era pop-ups before scaling it into this current residency. The team now holds the Decatur Street space for one year, with options to renew, the same report notes.
Guest Bartenders From Around The World
The scale of the program is what sets it apart from a typical pop-up. The Cocktail Hour will host guest shifts with bartenders from about 30 bars. Axios describes the residency as a 30-week cultural exchange program. Visiting bartenders will spend the week experiencing New Orleans before working three nights behind The Cocktail Hour bar, and the Jewel of the South team will manage all three of the residency’s bars throughout, per the same account…