Story of the Zanzibar Boogie

At the bar, Roch’s Reprieve, we’ve added a new frozen tiki style drink the Zanzibar Boogie. The sign we have up in the market says an “Arabi Inspired Cocktail” This was a fun one for me to do because It’s based on a story my grandfather, John Larmann told me. He has passed away now, but we did a Coffee with Kevin episode before he died 6 years ago you may have seen. Here we talk about his recollections of St. Roch Market and the neighborhood around here when he was growing up.

We were talking about cocktails one day and he told me about how the Zombie was a popular drink around New Orleans in the late 30s. He, however, was underage at the time and wasn’t able to get a drink too easy. There was a bar in Arabi that would serve underage kids that they knew of. He was living on Louisa street at the time and he and his friends would take their bikes to to Arabi and drink at this bar.

This bar didn’t have the ingredients to make a proper zombie, but the bartender there said he could make a Zanzibar Boogie. So they’d take their bikes there to drink and to them the Zanzibar Boogie was as popular and as famous as a drink as the Zombie was.

When he and I were talking about it though I of course googled it and found nothing. As it turns out it’s not a real drink that I could find. He and I played around with various tiki style drinks and I was trying to get him to remember what it was. We landed on a drink that’s pretty much like the zombie. But unlike the zombie it had a lot of Orange Juice. (maybe even satsuma juice actually which would have made sense for down the road)

I’ve got the frozen machine at Roch’s Reprieve these days. I put one there because I really wanted to play around with frozen drinks that aren’t all corn syrup like most frozen daquiri drinks are. I’ve learned something about how difficult it is to do a frozen drinks from scratch. You’ve got to have the right amount of liquor, to sugar, to water ratio so it creates the slushy. Don’t get it just right, it falls apart. The frozen drink is such a part of New Orleans I accepted the challenge because I really wanted to do some great frozens.

So… enter… the Zanzibar Boogie. I got to make my own, based on everything I’ve been told about it, now at Roch’s Reprieve! Come by and try a great new frozen tiki style frozen cocktail made totally unique that’s based on a cocktail from Arabi in the 1930s. No better way to beat the heat this spring and early summer than with a Zanzibar Boogie at the St. Roch Market.

Meet me at St. Roch,

Kevin Pedeaux