The Sazerac Bar

Where it is

The Sazerac Bar is on the ground floor of The Roosevelt New Orleans, a Waldorf Astoria hotel at 130 Roosevelt Way. Bar guides such as Punch list the bar at 123 Baronne Street. That number belonged to the original hotel building, which faced Baronne; the hotel’s current address is the Roosevelt Way one.

The hotel

Louis Grunewald’s 200-room hotel opened in December 1893 as the Hotel Grunewald. It was renamed the Roosevelt on October 31, 1923, after Theodore Roosevelt. Benjamin and Richard Swig bought it on November 19, 1965, and it became the Fairmont Roosevelt, later the Fairmont Hotel New Orleans (Wikipedia).

Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005, and the hotel closed indefinitely. It reopened on July 1, 2009, as The Roosevelt under Waldorf Astoria management, and the Sazerac Bar was restored to its look of the 1940s (Wikipedia). A New Orleans Magazine column recalls a party for Huey Long‘s birthday at the bar on August 25, 2005, days before the storm.

Seymour Weiss, Huey Long, and the fizz

Seymour Weiss started as the Grunewald’s barbershop manager in 1923, became hotel manager in 1928, and from 1931 to 1965 was principal owner and managing director. He met Long, then running for governor, in the 1928 campaign and became one of his closest friends. Long made the Roosevelt his New Orleans headquarters, and was assassinated in 1935.

The Ramos Gin Fizz is older than the hotel. Henry C. Ramos invented it in 1888 at his Imperial Cabinet Saloon on Gravier Street. The Roosevelt helped popularize it, aided by Long’s fondness for it. Wikipedia says that in July 1935 Long brought the Roosevelt’s bartender, Sam Guarino, to the New Yorker Hotel in New York City to teach its staff to make one, and that the Roosevelt’s group trademarked the drink’s name that year. The Sazerac House tells that trip as a publicity stunt: campaigning against Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Long used the Hotel New Yorker as a backdrop, and while the Roosevelt’s head bartender mixed his fizz in front of journalists and friends, Long called the President “no good” and a “faker.” Difford’s Guide says instead that the hotel acquired the Ramos rights in 1949. The sources do not agree on the date. The drink has its own page: Ramos Gin Fizz.

The storming

Before 1949, women could enter the bar only on Mardi Gras Day. On September 26, 1949, a group of women “entered the bar and demanded their rights to drinking equality.” The magazine adds: “An overwhelmed bartender saw to their needs.”

Writer Errol Laborde calls it a publicity stunt by Weiss and argues it answered the Carousel Bar opening at Hotel Monteleone about three weeks earlier. That is his reading, not a documented fact. The hotel still marks the date with a ladies’ luncheon and a second line into the bar. The 76th was held September 26, 2025, and the 2026 event was set for September 25.

The name

The bar borrows its name from a drink and a company, and the two stories do not line up cleanly. Wikipedia’s Sazerac entry says the cocktail is named for Sazerac de Forge et Fils cognac, and that Aaron Bird renamed his bar the Sazerac Coffee House. The Sazerac Company says the coffee house was named after the cocktail. The company also makes Peychaud’s Bitters and opened its Sazerac House museum and distillery in New Orleans in October 2019.

On the hotel side, the Roosevelt’s Main Bar opened August 1, 1938, and in 1949 Weiss bought the right to call it the Sazerac Bar from the Sazerac Company. Punch gives 1949 as the bar’s opening year instead. The drink’s own history is in The Sazerac.

The room

The walls are African walnut. The murals are by Paul Ninas, a painter who lived in New Orleans from 1932 until his death in 1964. New Orleans Magazine describes them as showing “street life in New Orleans.”Punch describes well-dressed socialites, and Difford’s mentions cotton pickers. No source here says which panel shows what.

What to drink

The hotel’s online menu, as of November 2026, lists the Sazerac at $22 as “Our House Cocktail, Traditional Recipe” (Sazerac Rye, Peychaud’s Bitters, Herbsaint), a Coffee House Sazerac at $23, and a Cognac Sazerac at $24. The Ramos Gin Fizz is $26. Seasonal drinks rotate. Matt Schulte, an assistant food and beverage director, told FSR Magazine in October 2026: “When a classic is already extraordinary, we leave it alone and focus on executing it exceptionally well.”

Before you go

As of November 2026, the hotel’s dining page lists hours of 11 a.m. to midnight Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday. It lists no reservation or dress code information for the bar. USA Today’s 10Best readers named it Best Hotel Bar in America for a sixth straight year in 2023.