The hand grenade is—depending on who you ask—one of the most or least authentic New Orleans experiences, and one of the best or worst drinks you will ever taste.

Along the edge of the Gulf, Nathaniel 'Natty' Adams details the people, places, culture and moments that make New Orleans one of America's most colorful and vibrant cities. 

On a warm Saturday night in May a young man stands, red-faced and sweating, in the neon maelstrom of New Orleans’ Bourbon Street. In one hand he is holding a long, plutonium-green plastic cup and in the other a smartphone, into which he is shouting to be heard above the “Trop-Rock” music and crowd “Dude, I told you, I’m in front of Tropical Isle! There’s only one Tropical Isle!”

There are, in fact, five Tropical Isles on Bourbon Street. And yet, in a sense, there is only one Tropical Isle.

Tropical Isle began as Tropical Paradise, a drink stand built for the 1984 World’s Fair by Earl Bernhardt and staffed by Pam Fortner, who would eventually become his business partner.

What began as a humble frozen drink stand at the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans has since become a local empire, bolstered by marketing, merchandise, and the ubiquitous Bourbon Street drink no doubt contributing to the young man’s confusion: the Hand Grenade. It is—depending on who you ask—one of the most or least authentic New Orleans experiences, one of the best or worst drinks you will ever taste, and a symbol either of the city’s welcoming party atmosphere or the city’s wasteful enthrallment to tourism.

New Orleans is as famous for its cocktails as it is for its music and food, and it’s hard to think of a city with more claims on original drinks: the Sazerac, the French 75, the Brandy Crusta, The Ramos Gin Fizz, the Vieux Carré, the Grasshopper, the Hurricane. All of these have become legendary—now “classic”—cocktails in the long decades since their invention. And yet the drink you see far more than any other in the French Quarter is the Hand Grenade. That might partly be due to the high-visibility neon green cups, but the popularity of the drink is undeniable.

Tropical Isle began as Tropical Paradise, a drink stand built for the 1984 World’s Fair by Earl Bernhardt and staffed by Pam Fortner, who would eventually become his business partner at Tropical Isle. Alongside each bar’s low-key tiki-ish decor are small shrines to Mr. Bernhardt, his family, and “Miss Pam,” who became an honorary member of the extended Bernhardt clan: press clippings, celebrity visitors, faded photographs from vacations. 

Whether the typical Isle visitor is lucid enough to notice them among all the other stimuli is less important than the family legacy they represent; a story of locals making good and creating something famous of their own to add to the city’s history. This sense of continuity has spread to the staff, many of whom have been hurling Hand Grenades at Tropical Isle for years.

Russell Bills has been bartending at the original location on Bourbon and Toulouse for about 10 years. He works the four-day weekend shift, opening at 11 a.m. By noon on a Thursday he’s already sold twenty Hand Grenades—Tropical Isle won’t reveal exact sales figures but bartenders estimate that at each location they sell several hundred on weekdays, thousands on the weekend.

The ingredients of the Hand Grenade are supposedly a secret (the staff say they have signed non-disclosure agreements), but some elements of the concoction are obvious: The drink is very sweet and has as its dominant flavor melon with little citrus. Some, though by no means all, of the secret is revealed on the labels of empty boxes of bar mix left out for trash pickup in the morning: high fructose corn syrup and concentrated pineapple juice, along with various common artificial and natural colors, flavors, and preservatives.

For many visitors to the city there’s nothing more authentically New Orleans than a trip to tropical Isle for one or three Hand Grenades. 

At each bar, a thirty-gallon container in the keg cooler behind the scenes is continually refreshed with mix by a barback—sometimes two or three on weekends and special occasions—and combined with the most essential ingredient: some unspecified kind of grain alcohol. How much booze is in each drink is unclear (the bartenders don’t necessarily know themselves, because Hand Grenades are pre-mixed in the back and then poured from soda guns directly into the famous green cups), but it is enough that the Tropical Isle website advises against drinking more than four.

“I had a Russian guy come in here once,” Bills recalls. “He gave me that usual spiel: ‘I’m Russian, I drink vodka every day.’ Seven Hand Grenades later and next thing you know he’s under the lip of the bar saying, ‘Where’s my hotel at?’”

Jimmy Burgin, who has been tending bar for Tropical Isle since 1996, once drank seven hand grenades, too: “and that’s the last time I drank Hand Grenades. Most people drink two or three and take a nap.”

That potency, combined with its sweet smoothness, is key to the Hand Grenade’s appeal. Shannan and Ashley Bell, visiting New Orleans from the Bay Area for the first time, had seen a YouTube video about the drink and came to try it.

“It doesn’t even taste like alcohol,” Shannan remarks.

“That’s the problem,” Ashley said, dryly.

Melinda and Stephen Lautzenhiser, in town from Indiana, decided to head to Tropical Isle while their hotel room was being readied. Melinda had seen a TikTok video about Hand Grenades.

“I’m not big on alcohol,” Melinda says, “and I don’t even taste the alcohol! It’s like a frozen lemonade.”

Stephen, typically a bourbon drinker, concurred: “It’s a good mix. It’s strong but it goes down smooth.”

A common criticism is that the drink is too sweet, but Tropical Isle has an answer for that: a “Skinny” Hand Grenade with less sugar. There’s also a frozen version for hot days and a Hand Grenade “Martini” which includes an added shot of vodka and is garnished with a neon-green maraschino cherry soaked in grain alcohol. Such market diversification is key to Tropical Isle’s tremendous success, as is its arsenal of ancillary Hand Grenade-related merchandise featuring the bar’s anthropomorphic Hand Grenade mascot: spiced nuts, home drink mixes, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, light up Mardi Gras beads, rain ponchos, playing cards, bumper stickers, koozies, fridge magnets, plush dolls, and T-Shirts. There are even Hand Grenade-flavored condoms bearing a drawing of a male Hand Grenade with a visible erection chasing a giggling female Hand Grenade across the packaging while himself drinking a Hand Grenade in an apparent act of cannibalism. The label challenges the reader’s masculinity: “Real Men Use Hand Grenade Flavored Condoms.”

There is an arsenal of ancillary Hand Grenade-related merchandise featuring the bar’s anthropomorphic Hand Grenade mascot.

Russell Bills, the bartender, points out that—condoms aside—all sorts of people drink Hand Grenades, not just so-called Real Men. “You see old, young, men, women, gay, straight,” he says, “all races, people from all over the world.”

Bills concedes that locals don’t often drink Hand Grenades themselves unless they have friends in town, but all the Tropical Isle bars do have plenty of local regulars. They just tend to order other drinks from the full bar, especially during the weekday Happy Hours which take up a full half of the bars’ operating hours and which involve something like a three-times heavier pour in each well drink.

To some locals, the Hand Grenade is primarily a symbol of cheesy Bourbon Street excess: cheap, plastic, sugary, gaudy, often found semi-digested on their doorsteps. The popular New Orleans Instagram meme account @drdaddyzwhodat regularly features satirical Hand Grenade posts, including an ironic “Thin Green Line” flag featuring the drink. 

To some locals, the Hand Grenade is primarily a symbol of cheesy Bourbon Street excess: cheap, plastic, sugary, gaudy, often found semi-digested on their doorsteps.

Konrad Kantor tends bar at Manolito, a Cuban bar in the French quarter where the top-shelf liquors and fresh juices used in their famous frozen drinks are a point of pride rather than a secret. He believes the success of the neighborhood’s ubiquitous green drink has little to do with its flavor:

“Hand Grenades have become iconic because of the logo and marketing—most people only order them because they believe it’s the thing to do—but the sweetness levels of the drink go far above what the vast majority of people are looking for in a cocktail,” he says. “It’s very much a part of New Orleans cocktail history, but there are better ways to get hammered in the French Quarter.” 

And yet New Orleans has always been so reliant on tourism that the consensus of locals is never the final word. For many visitors to the city, there’s nothing more authentically New Orleans than a trip to tropical Isle for one or three Hand Grenades.

Jose Vasquez, visiting New Orleans from Orlando for the second time, was showing two of his friends the city for their first time. Tropical Isle was the first bar they visited.

“You have to try a hand grenade,” he says. “It’s like a signature New Orleans thing—like getting crawfish or a beignet. If you don’t do it you don’t get the full experience.”

His friends sip the drink and wince.

Behind the bar Russell Bills smiles.

“Even if you don’t want a Hand Grenade,” he says, “you’re going to come try it.”

Correction: Pam Fortner was Earl Bernhardt's business partner. A previous version of this story stated that the two were married. 

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