Chris Mohney
November 05, 2009
Bryan Batt plays creative director Salvatore Romano on AMC's Mad Men, and he's emerged as one of the show's most unambiguously sympathetic characters. A talented and expressive professional, he's also a deeply closeted gay man in an era and culture that keeps him very much on the down low -- even to himself. Fans were shocked when Sal was abruptly fired from ad agency Sterling Cooper after rejecting the advances of an amorous client, and his future on the show remains cloudy. Batt's prospects, however, have rarely looked rosier, as he enjoys both critical acclaim and domestic success with his New Orleans decor boutique, Hazelnut (co-owned with Batt's partner of many years Tom Cianfichi). Batt talks with us about his ideal return to Mad Men, hunky National Guardsmen making the best of Hurricane Katrina, and getting dressed to the nines.


Jazz Fest. Just those two words alone make my brain sweat. It's been a few years, but I recall there being an ongoing debate over which of the two weekends is better at the
My grandfather chased his bourbon with it, my father stocked his fraternity house with it, and it was my first stolen sip of beer as a kid. I can still remember the green and white label looking up at me from the bottom of an ice chest at a barbecue when I was twelve—magnified by a foot of water and the lure of the forbidden, promising Southern manhood by the ounce. Even at twelve, I’d heard the name enough to know that Dixie beer had a cultural significance in Louisiana on par with LSU football, gumbo, and humidity. Even Walker Percy gave it due reverence when he wrote that one can “eat crawfish and drink Dixie beer and feel as good as it is possible to feel in this awfully interesting century.” Dixie beer has been washing down Gulf oysters and boiled crawfish since 1907, but has been on a hurricane hiatus for the past two years since the brewery was flooded by Katrina and then dismantled by looters.