A Toast to the Host at Brennan’s: Christian Pendleton
Christian Pendleton, Brennan's General Manager
August 2024Raise a glass to – and with – Christian Pendleton, Brennan’s general manager and master of the restaurant's legendary champagne saberings.
– by Doug Brantley
photos by Ellis Anderson“In terms of the act itself, it is incredibly simple,” says Christian Pendleton to the group gathered in the courtyard at Brennan’s, a bottle of champagne in one hand, a ceremonial sword in the other. “But there are a few things you should know when you do it at home. First…the bottle has to cost at least five dollars.”
It’s a ritual performed every Friday at 5 pm, just outside the restaurant’s popular Roost Bar, with roots reaching back to the early 1800s and Barbe Nicole Clicqout Ponsardin—yes, that Clicquot, as in Veuve, the iconic yellow-label brand. Following the death of her husband, “la grande dame of Champagne” would gift members of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard a bottle of her namesake bubbly, in thanks for helping protect her land.
“Not that I can tell you firsthand,” notes Pendleton, Brennan’s “maître saber” and general manager, “but I would imagine riding horseback and ‘properly’ opening champagne is a little difficult. So, they would simply draw their sabers and sheer off the top of the bottle, and off they would ride.”
A member of the Confrérie du Sabre d’Or (aka the Conference of the Golden Saber), Pendleton serves as the French society’s ambassador to Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and is a certified instructor in teaching the art of sabering to others. In addition to his weekly demos, he conducts full-on, how-do courses on International Champagne Day, which this year falls on Oct. 25.
“It’s the Friday of Taylor Swift weekend,” he points out. “It’s Halloween weekend, International Champagne Day, and Taylor Swift weekend. And, if you don’t know, one of her most famous songs is ‘Champagne Problems.’ So, you might have just learned what the theme for International Champagne Day is going to be.”
Pendleton’s afternoon sabering show is just one of many festive flourishes Brennan’s has become famous for since its founding in 1946, from Bananas Foster flambéed tableside to its early morning “eye opener” cocktails to the towering pink cotton candy presented to birthday celebrants to its daily champagne happy hour.
“I want our guests to have fun,” he says. “That is so important to me. People come to Brennan’s for their celebrations. Five years from now, you are going to remember who you dined with and the stories and the laughter more so than any one particular dish. You’re most likely not going to remember your waiter, but you are going to remember how we made you feel.”
It's a passion the 52-year-old former Army special operations officer, who enlisted for duty at Brennan’s in 2014 following stints at restaurants in New York, Washington, D.C., and Florida, instills in his 186-member team.
“Twice a year I do an all-staff meeting to go back over basics and fundamentals,” Pendleton says, “and I remind everyone that their number one job is to be nice. Everything else, we can figure it out. But if you are just not nice, that’s almost an impossible problem to fix. Coming to Brennan’s is a fantasy, and we need to do everything we can to live up to and exceed those expectations.”
In the kitchen between the breakfast and lunch rush
That’s reflected in the 200,000-plus guests and 1,800 special events the venerable restaurant hosted last year, as well as in Pendleton’s side work as a volunteer board member of the French Quarter Management District over the past seven years.
“When I first got here, I didn’t understand how much of a neighborhood the French Quarter was,” he admits. “I thought of it as this business district, if you will. But one of the phrases I have learned being on the board is ‘the French Quarter is America’s front porch.’
“That has really changed the entire way I see the Quarter and how I ask my staff to view it. We always want to be a good neighbor, but eight years ago I would have told you being a good neighbor is two blocks in every way of Brennan’s. To me, a good neighbor now means the entirety of the French Quarter.”
Upstairs at Brennan's
A cozy club room upstairs at Brennan's
And it’s the French Quarter’s baked-in joie de vivre Pendleton credits with helping keep Brennan’s good-times atmosphere going.
“It’s a lot easier to throw a party when you’re all but walking in from one,” he says with a laugh. “Like the Friday before Halloween or Mardi Gras—people are walking down street, and everyone is in some sort of costume with a go-cup in hand, whether it’s 8 in the morning or 8 at night. They’re laughing, there’s music everywhere, they’re toasting people passing by.
“So, it’s much easier to create that environment when they are coming from the environment. The Quarter, the houses, the decorations, the neighbors, the people sitting on their porch or balcony—that makes it all the more easy.”
After the sabering
The tens of thousands of bottles of bubbly poured at Brennan’s each year—which have earned it the title “Champagne House of the South”—don’t hurt either. Nor does the colorful character of its genial GM, who has been known to dress as sabering Santa or Peter Rabbit during the holidays (“I am very comfortable making an ass out of myself for other people’s enjoyment”) and has a penchant for fancy footwear.
“I tend not to spend a lot of money on suits or sport coats,” Pendleton confides, “because the likelihood of getting Bananas Foster sauce or Steak Diane grease or something like that on them is very high. So—this is one of those things that goes back to my time in the military—if I’m going to spend money on my clothes, it’s almost all in my shoes, because I’m on my feet so much. I’m very particular about my shoes.”
Evidence the two-toned, pink-and-white oxford wingtips he sports on occasion, a nod to Brennan’s signature facade.
“Allen Edmonds custom-made them for me,” he says. “I kept going in seeing the store manager—pink and white, pink and white, pink and white—and she kept sending requests up, and they were like, ‘Yeah, no, we’re not doing pink and white.’ Then one day she sent me a note that said, ‘You’re not going to believe it—they’re going to do pink and white!’ We ended up ordering 12 pairs.”
Back in the courtyard, Pendleton, today wearing low-key loafers with bright-hued argyle socks, continues his sabering ceremony.
“Arguably, the most important thing is that the bottle has to be cold,” he instructs assembled guests, their glasses at the ready. “If not, it will not work. Before loosening the cage, I’m going to look for the seam on the bottle. Every bottle has a seam that runs from the bottom to the top. That is the weakest part of the bottle and where I’m going to run the edge of my saber to help with this exercise in physics. If there is a lot of condensation, you can feel the seam with the pad of one of your fingers.”
“Last thing: You do not need a saber. If you have one, by all means, use it. But I have done this with a soup spoon, a butter knife, the heel of a shoe, the foot of a glass; you just need an edge. Now, whenever you use this motion [moving the saber straight up and down, as if chopping], it means we’re going to Urgent Care. This motion [gliding along the bottle at an angle] means we’re drinking champagne.
“So, I’m going to turn away from you all, open the cage, and without further ado—one, two…” [he swiftly slides the saber up the side of the bottle, shearing off the top, and a gentle foam flows forth]. Welcome to Brennan’s, ladies and gentlemen!”
"Welcome to Brennan's, ladies and gentlemen!"
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