“So,” I asked, “Do you suppose I could get under the Carousel Bar to see what makes it turn?”
So it was that a most accommodating member of the Monteleone’s engineering crew led me on a sort of spelunking expedition, that involved crawling—at times on hands and knees—through tunnels filled with the miles of pipework and electrical conduit that keep the hotel above humming—until at last we reached a spot directly beneath the bar. There, a vintage one-quarter-horsepower motor hummed, turning the twenty-five seats above it on the only revolving bar in New Orleans. Riding on two thousand large steel rollers, the Carousel Bar turns at a constant rate of one revolution every fifteen minutes. A turn it’s been making, I was about to discover, for almost sixty-three years.
“From what I understand it’s the same motor that was first put in, in 1949,” explains Marvin Allen, the Carousel’s lead bartender. For the last decade Allen has been hopping that bar to come to work.
“There’s no other way in,” explains Allen of the unbroken circle that defines his workspace, “You hop in and hop out. It makes it interesting at shift change. It’s almost like the changing of the guards in Great Britain." And he adds, “When you can’t get over anymore that’s when it’s time to retire."
But once in, it would seem, it’s well worth the effort.
“There’s two things about this job,” Allen tells his bar patrons, “One: The world revolves around me. And two: I’m the center of the universe.”
“But only while I’m behind the bar,” he adds with a chuckle, noting that the illusion quickly vanishes on the other side of the bar.
Allen explains that keeping track of patrons who move continuously around you is really no more difficult than in a stationary bar, where customers move around on their own. Among those who’ve enjoyed the gentle ride at the bar are the authors noted earlier, including Eudora Welty, in honor of which Allen invented a drink for the hotel’s celebration of the 101st anniversary of her birth.
Its name is an homage for her short story “The Purple Hat,” the setting for which was inspired by the Carousel. And Allen was kind enough to share the recipe, noting: “It’s got a nice deep purplish color and some of my favorite flavors—the combination of lemon and raspberry.
The Purple Hat
2 oz. citrus vodka (Ketel One Citron) 1 oz. black raspberry liqueur (Chambord works well) 1/2 oz. of crème violet 2 oz. fresh lemon juice 1/2 to 1 oz of simple syrup 1 egg white
Place all ingredients in a Boston shaker and shake until frothy and light. Then shake again with ice till chilled, and strain into a martini glass. Candy violets work well on top.
