Cinco de Mayo | Hot Tamale 2018

Tonight is the night! We will be celebrating Cinco de Mayo tonight with Corona & Milagro Tequila specials.

What is Cinco de Mayo?

During the Civil War in the USA there was a shortage of cotton supply to Europe. The French came across to collect the debt from Mexico and they invaded & occupied Puebla in Mexico. The Mexican out numbered them and took back the city on the 5th of May! So we celebrate it with the best of Mexican culture in their beautifully created spirit Tequila!

To Celebrate, Hot Tamale will have from 6pm tonight ~

Loco Pinas $10 // milagro blanco. coconut cream fatwash. fresh pineapple juice.

Mandarin Milagro $10 // milagro blanco. mandarin sherbet. tonic.

Corona Buckets $20 // corona extra. corona ligera.

Milagro Tequila

Milagro Tequila is our featured Tequila for the week. Milagro is a modern and refined tequila that has a strong agave flavour.

Read the story below and watch the video to see their process.

It started in 1998 with two college friends, Danny Schneeweiss and Moy Guindi. Danny and Moy saw amazing things happening in the creative scene of Mexico City. All around them, they saw new expressions of international sophistication, youthful energy and passionate creativity. Everywhere except tequila. Tequilas had become one-dimensional caricatures of tradition, or calculated celebrity-driven business ventures, devoid of creativity and truth. Danny and Moy wanted a tequila that bridged two worlds — the deeply rooted integrity of traditional tequila, and the vibrant, creative culture of modern Mexico City.

Milagro
Blanco $9 | Reposado $9

Milagro Select Barrel
Blanco $13 | Reposado $17 | Anejo $20 | Flight $30 |

Watch their story & the process of creating Milagro Tequila in the video below.

Southern Comfort State Finals

Hot Tamale’s David Robinson & Anneliese Grazioli made it through to the Southern Comfort state finals and presented their drinks to National Training Manager for SouthTrade Gee David yesterday at Hot Tamale.

Wishing them the best of luck in the results to see if they will represent SA/NT in the National Finals in Brisbane. See their cocktails below!

Southern Comfort Cocktail Competition

David’s Southern Comfort Cocktail

Anneliese’s Entry for Southern Comfort

Best Tequila Bar Australia

Today, Australian Bartender Magazine has named Hot Tamale as a finalists for best tequila bar Australia, in the 2017 Phil Bayly Award for Tequila Bar of the Year.

“The award is named for industry legend Phil Bayly, who has been the standard-bearer for the category of tequila and mezcal in Australia for the best part of two decades and continues to promote the spirit he loves so much. Kudos to you, Phil Bayly.”

We are extremely excited and very humbled to again be a finalist in this prestigious award. I couldn’t be prouder of the team and their commitment and love of agave spirits.

We would love to send out a massive thank you to the Darwin bartending community, who have obviously supported us in making a finalist, as well as a massive thank you to the Darwin community for your growing love of the agave spirits.

To be eligible for this award, the bar must have a broad selection of tequila and/or mezcal and other agave distillates, highlight agave cocktails where cocktails are listed, and employ staff who are knowledgeable on the category.

Saludos!

David Robinson

https://australianbartender.com.au/2017/07/05/best-tequila-bars-in-australia/

AHANT Best Training Initiative Winner

We would love to thank the The Australian Hotels Association (NT Branch) & the NT Department of Trade, Business and Innovation for awarding us the Best Training Initiative at Aristocrat Technologies Awards for Excellence.

We are extremely proud and honoured to take out this award.

Our training program was developed due to the skills shortage, as well as our determination set the benchmark for training in restaurants. From day 1 we understood that we had a challenge having a venue delivering modern Mexican cuisine and an unrivalled of Agave Spirits. Our bar has over 300 agave spirits and this created significant challenges due to need to give our front of house team a huge amount of brand knowledge for the agave spirits we range.

Two years ago we put a plan in place and developed our training program, based around a certificate 3 in hospitality, as well as our own food safety and safe food handling programs. The program is a combination of online training and on the job training. Effectively we assume a team member comes in with no experience and assume zero prior knowledge.

We also added in senior training roles, for both front of house and back of house to continue the development of our team through their careers.

For our front of house team, we have also implemented a fortnightly service and tequila training session, where we discuss all things agave, brand processes, as well as service problems that have been encountered.

Our bartending team also has fortnight sessions where they work on new cocktails, discuss spirits and brands and again discuss problems encountered.

From this training we have seen the benefits of having our service improve and the knowledge and skills of all team members has shown significant improvement.

We are really proud of receiving this award as it is an area of our business that we have spent significant time and effort developing our program and we are only just seeing the rewards now.

Again thank you to AHA NT and NT Department of Trade, Business and Innovation

AHA NT Bartender of the Year

What an amazing few days for our bartending team. We are proud to announce Anneliese Grazioli took out top honour, AHA NT Bartender of the Year. Both Anneliese and Alex did an amazing job and we could not be prouder of the both of you.

To make the finalists for the AHA NT Bartender Of The Year competition, the competitors had to complete a blind tasting, written exam and classic cocktail challenge.

Once in the final the 6 finalists had to present their original signature cocktail in front of a large audience, highlighting the flavours of Jim Beam Black, Jim Beam Devils Cut or Jim Beam Double Oak.

Well done to all the competitors. All drinks were outstanding and is a credit to all venues and competitors.

Special thanks to the sponsors, Beam Suntory and the AHA NT for putting on such a wonderful event.

Hot Tamale bartender, Anneliese Grazioli, presenting her cocktail at AHA Bartender of the Year

Hot Tamale bartender, Alex Johnston, on Stage for the AHA Bartender of the Year

Jim Beam and Anneliese Grazioli

Anneliese Grazioli accepting the AHA NT Bartender of the Year award.

Savour Australia Awards for Excellence

Best Mexican Restaurant, Queensland and Northern Territory

It will be another huge night for Hot Tamale at the National, Savour Australia Awards for Excellence.

The Savour Australia Hostplus Awards for Excellence is a nationally recognised, independently judged awards program that recognises exceptional service and culinary talent across Australia.

We are extremely honoured to be judged against some of Australias leading restaurants, see a full list of the finalists on the following link FINALISTS.

In the PEOPLE, PRODUCE, PLACE TOURISM RESTAURANT, we are up against the likes of Bennelong in Sydney, Jellyfish in Brisbane & Sandalford Wines in Caversham to name a few. Just being named in this field is a great achievement.

We are also a finalist in the BEST SPECIALITY RESTAURANT, again we have really strong competition from Efendy in Balmain, Subsolo in Sydney, Hispanic Mechanic in Frewville and Pastuso in Melbourne.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank our hard working team for your efforts and commitment over the past 12 months. We would also like to thank all our wonderful customers, as without you, we would not be here.

Fingers are cross and tequila is ready.

You can follow the night on Twitter @savouraus

Awards for Excellence – National Finalist

And the amazing news keeps coming. We are pleased to announce that Hot Tamale has now progress to the National Awards for Excellence in two categories, the BEST SPECIALITY RESTAURANT & PEOPLE, PRODUCE, PLACE OURISM RESTAURANT. We would like to take the opportunity to thank our hard working team for your efforts and commitment over the past 12 months. We would also like to thankall our wonderful customers, as without you, we would not be here. The winners will be announced on the 24th October.