Hot Tamale has won the Best Mexican NT/QLD category at the 2019 QLD & NT Savour Australia Restaurant & Catering Hostplus Awards for Excellence.

More than 130 local restaurants, cafes and catering businesses gathered to celebrate the achievements of their peers who were judged in over 40 categories, with the winners announced at the Awards for Excellence ceremony held at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre.

The Awards for Excellence is a nationally recognised, independently judged awards program that celebrates exceptional service and culinary talent across the state. The Awards for Excellence is the only program in Australia where the judging criteria is determined by consumers who rank what is important to them in the dining experience.

The Awards are judged by an independent team of trained judges who anonymously visit the venues to determine the restaurant/café winners. The scores are based on the entire dining experience from food to the customer service experienced when the judges anonymously dine.

R&CA CEO Wes Lambert says, “Hot Tamale should be proud of their achievements. Running a hospitality business isn’t easy – there’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears that goes into to making it work. But when you get the right mix of staff, produce and service, the results can be extraordinary.”

Hot Tamale may compete with other finalists at the National Savour Australia Restaurant & Catering Hostplus Awards for Excellence to be held at Howard Smith Wharves in Brisbane on Monday 28^th October 2019. Finalists will be advised of their status by late September.

R&CA is the industry association representing thousands of restaurant and catering businesses across Australia. To view the full list of category winners in the 2019 Savour Australia Restaurant & Catering Hostplus Awards for Excellence, visit the R&CA website at www.restaurantcater.asn.au.

Congratulations to Anneliese Grazioli & David Robinson who have been named on this year’s Most Influential List!!

The top 10 will be announced in August! Click HERE to see the list.

Want to read more about our achievements? CLICK HERE!

Congratulations to Anneliese Grazioli & David Robinson for making the De Kuyper State Finals!

They will be heading down to Adelaide in August to compete at the NT/SA Finals and will be meeting Salvatore Calabrese who invented the Breakfast Martini.

From Dusk to Dawn by David Robinson

30ml De Kuyper Watermelon
15ml Fresh Lime
30ml Patron Blanco
15ml Martini Bitters
10ml Del Maguey Vida Mezcal
10ml Orange Oleo Saccharum
Egg White

INSTAGRAM: @drinksbyrobbo

Diminuendo by Anneliese Grazioli

30ml De Kuyper Creme de Bananes
30ml De Kuyper Creme de Cafe
15ml Fernet Branca

INSTAGRAM: @agrazioli

CLICK HERE to see our other successes in cocktail competitions!

The 18th Amendment

David & his cocktail The 18th Amendment have been announced as the Bacardi Legacy Top 3 Most Promising!

Bacardi Legacy is an annual International Competition that sees bartenders from all over the world compete in creating a new ‘Classic’ cocktail. Classic cocktails go through the ages, margarita anyone? Bacardi sets a journey every year to challenge the worlds best bartenders to create a new classic. Each country chooses their best pick to go head to head with the rest of the world’s finest bartenders. To get chosen as the best in Australia there is a couple of rounds to get through first.

1. Enter the Competition

Once the competition has begun, you must create an original cocktail and enter a photo & recipe to Bacardi Legacy.

2. Top 30

The top of the Bacardi Ambassadors spend days going through the hundreds of entries, judging on which cocktails look and sound the most delicious and balanced as well as the replicability of recreating the cocktail in another bar. This is how they choose the Top 30. 

3. Top 8

The Top 30 then create a 5 minute video of themselves creating their drink with their inspirations & stories. The Ambassadors then recreate their cocktail to taste from their instructions and judge it again. From these videos, they choose the Top 8.

4. Top 3 Most Promising

The Top 8 are flown to Brisbane to create their cocktails for some very skilled & knowledgeable judges as well as making them a classic Bacardi Daiquiri. The judges spend the day picking the Top 3 Most Promising.

5. Australian Winner

The Top 3 then go into the fundamentally important promotional phase, in which bartenders are challenged to demonstrate that their drink has the potential to become established in the drinks industry as a true classic by securing trial, consumer and trade awareness and distribution.

The Australian Winner is chosen from whoever is able to do this to the highest extent. The Australian Winner will be heading to Amsterdam in March to represent Australia & hopefully bring us a win!

What now for David?

David’s cocktail, The 18th Amendment will be popping up at bars near you soon! We will update you with venues that have it available as they come through. Though you will definitely find it at Hot Tamale! See you soon for The 18th Amendment.

CLICK HERE to read more about Hot Tamale’s successes in competitions

Bacardi Legacy Top 8

Well folks, he has done it again! On the back of his return from the National Finals for Patron Perfectionist, he has received the news that he is Bacardi Legacy TOP OCHO (eight)!!

David Robinson has smashed through the Top 30 and come into the Top 8 strong. His Legacy Cocktail inspired by a trip to New Orleans and what effect America’s Prohibition had on the cocktail culture. The Top 8 will take him to Brisbane on the 29th of October to battle it out for the Top 3 Most Promising Spot. Whomever takes the top spot at number one will be heading to Amsterdam in March 2019 to represent Australia.

READ MORE about Bacardi Legacy here.

We are super proud of David and wish him all the best!

When can you come in and try his cocktail!? NOW. Come and try one of the Top 8 Bacardi Cocktails in Australia!

David Robinson

David Robinson is the owner operator of Hot Tamale, his passion for all things Agave & Mexican Cuisine saw him open the venue in 2012. It has seen him and the venue continuously succeed from there. His chef background gives him an understanding of mixing flavours so when his passion cocktails began, you would find him in the bar inspired by a time or place in his life with a great cocktail to match.

18th Amendment

bacardi ocho. creme de cacao. creme de menthe. branca menta.

For Bacardi Legacy this year I really challenged myself to create a cocktail the is most importantly delicious, creative, unique, original and easy to make. I wanted to create a drink that had the possibility of being a bartenders favourite, as well as the general public.

 My cocktail came about from a family/boozy trip to New Orleans in 2016, where I had the pleasure of drinking a grasshopper at Tujague’s bar, the original home of the Grasshopper.  I had had grasshopper before, but it always really special to have a drink at its spiritual home.  The history of New Orleans really has you thinking about significant moments in history.

An amazing thing with Tujaque’s is that during prohibition, they were about to trade, as if there was no 18th Amendment.  The only significant change was Cuban rum was widely mixed due to its availability, thanks to the rum runners, at the time.  Another product that enjoyed prohibition was Fernet Branca, which was classified as medicinal.

The 18^th Amendment is created to be a delicious cocktail, inspired by the grasshopper and the influence of prohibition.  I hope you enjoy what I hope to become my legacy.

CLICK HERE to read more about competitions & awards