Jewel of the South adds a new French Quarter spot this fall. | The Cocktail Hour Just as some of the world’s biggest mixologists take on New Orleans for the Tales of the Cocktail this week, an ambitious new bar called the Cocktail Hour is currently brewing behind the scenes in the same cit y. The founders of NOLA’s James Beard Award-winning tavern Jewel of the South will bring some of the world’s best bars to life in the heart of the French Quarter, with one-week rotations. Helping spearhead the project is D.C. bartending vet Deke Dunne, who recently left his eight-year stint as beverage director at downtown’s hidden cocktail gem Allegory. The bar is up for the World’s Best Cocktail Menu — an award announced at the NOLA Fillmore on Thursday, July 23. Dunne joins two NOLA vets, John Stubbs and Chris Hannah, on the incoming bar. The Cocktail Hour marks a temporary move for Dunne to NOLA, he tells Eater, as he’ll be back in the spring to open his first-ever D.C. bar to call his own in Shaw. For each week-long residency, starting from mid-October through mid-June, the Cocktail Hour’s blank canvas will transform into a replica of each visiting bar – some 30 in all – down to the look, food, cocktails, music, programming, and hospitality each one is known for.  “We’re going to be redesigning, remodeling, and reworking the [space] for each world-class bar flying in,” Dunne tells Eater of the high-lift endeavor.  The inaugural list of pop-ups on tap includes Dead Rabbit (New York City), Panda Sons (Edinburgh), and Brujas (Mexico City). The Cocktail Hour’s exact address in the historic French Quarter will be announced in the coming weeks.  The maestros of the project are no strangers to accolades. Jewel of the South, named Outstanding Bar at the 2024 James Beard Foundation Awards, currently stands at No. 6 on North America’s 50 Best Bars list. During Dunne’s time at D.C.’s Allegory, the bar landed on the same Best Bars list (currently at No. 57); was named a James Beard Award semifinalist for Outstanding Bar; won multiple Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards; and became the first bar to win North America’s 50 Best Bars Best Menu Award twice. He just passed the beverage director torch to longtime Allegory mixologist Princess Johnson. Meanwhile, Allegory has been unable to serve food until its unaffiliated, lobby-level restaurant in the Eaton hotel deals with the carnage left by its chef, Matt Baker. The D.C. government seized French-influenced Michele’s there for unpaid taxes in January, which has kept another potential operator from coming in. A bankruptcy case, however, was just dismissed at Baker’s tasting room Gravitas in Ivy City, per a report from WBJ this week; the Michelin-starred restaurant is still listed as permanently closed. ...read more read less