Our Opinion/Changes coming for the 2015 Cocktail Showdown

Editorial | October 7th, 2015

Annual battle for best local bartender & craft cocktail begins this week

It’s that time of the year again, the 2015 High Plains Reader Cocktail Showdown is upon us where local bartenders and mixologists get to showcase their talents and present a craft cocktail for the staff of HPR to judge. This week, your humble judges will begin their efforts to taste and decide who is the best local bartender and what is the best drink.

The art of mixology has blown up in recent years with bartenders taking very seriously the craft of perfecting the best and most unique drink at their establishment for their patrons. Many of them spend hours trying to come up with new ideas to tempt your taste buds. The judges this year will be Raul Gomez, Sabrina Hornung and myself. Of course it will all culminate early next year for the HPR Bartender’s battle where the qualifiers will be whittled down to the top tier who will vie for the title of best bartender of 2015.

The nightlife industry in Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo has been thriving in recent years. Every time you drive to a certain area of town you haven’t been in a while, there are new bars and restaurants popping up out of nowhere. Once they open up, they are usually full or near capacity for weeks as everyone rushes to try out the new place. It is really hard to have a bad time during a night on the town with so many wonderful options to choose from. And they wouldn’t be so wonderful without the amazing people who work so hard to staff them. A restaurant or bar is only as good as the staff who work them.

With anything as fun and exciting as the HPR Cocktail Showdown has been in the past, there’s always room for improvement and ways to make it better. We’ve always had an eclectic mix of participants everything from upscale restaurants and chain restaurants to dive bars and watering holes. One complaint we’ve heard from bartenders is that it is hard for a regular old dive bar to compete with high-end upscale establishments who have bottles of liquor and ingredients worth hundreds of dollars at their fingertips. Because of that we’ve added a extra category this year, neighborhood bar, where your local watering hole can get recognized and we can level the playing field a bit.

One of the main goals of the HPR Cocktail Showdown is get the public as excited about these craft cocktails as the people who make them for you. We want you to become involved in the contest and try these drinks too. So this year each participating establishment will have businesses cards on hand with a QR code on hand where you can get directed to a website to share your thoughts on the drink and your experience at the establishment. Your vote matters and we want to hear your thoughts on the creations these bars & restaurants are creating.

In next week’s issue, we will have our review of week number one’s first drinks. We look forward to another great year and contest of testing the fine drinks area establishments have to offer. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it. Stay up to date on the showdown by reading our reviews in each week’s issue or going to our hpr1.com and clicking on cocktail showdown. If you miss a week, you can always go to the website and catch up. These battles get heated but a lot of these bartenders are friends and many have mad respect for each other. May the best man or woman win. Bottom’s up!

Annual battle for best local bartender & craft cocktail begins this week

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