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

Bar Awards 2016

We are really excited to announce that Hot Tamale has picked up an amazing 4 nominations in this year’s Australian Bar Awards.

I couldn’t be prouder of the hard working team at Hot Tamale, for what we do everyday & night.

Nomination are;

2016 Phil Bayly Award for Tequila Bar of the Year
2016 Rookie of the Year – Anneliese Grazioli
2016 Cocktail Bar of the Year NT
2016 Bar of the Year NT

The winners will be announced on September 20th at Daltone House, Sydney, and we will be there, flying the flag for Darwin.

Saludos! Bring on the Tequila.

http://australianbartender.com.au/…/2016-bar-awards-finali…/
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2016 Bar of the Year Finalist NT Hot Tamale

2016 Rookie of the Year Finalists Anneliese Grazioli

2016 Cocktail Bar of the Year NT