The Liquid Muse

Calling Los Angeles Bartenders!

L.A. Downtown District Cocktail Contest

New York has cocktails named for its neighborhoods and boroughs: The Manhattan, The Brooklyn, and The Bronx. Recently, a couple of bartenders from New York got together and decided to finish naming cocktails after their beloved neighborhoods: The Bensonhurst, Greenpoint, and Little Italy.

Now its your opportunity to create a drink for parts of the City of Angels. Marcos Tello, who heads up our L.A. bartender group called The Sporting Life, is a native Angeleno and leading this competition. Apparently, our downtown is is trying desperately to become a recognized city – like Santa Monica or Beverly Hills, and Marcos’ idea is to create and name cocktails after the 17 Sub-districts in Downtown Los Angeles. Here's how it breaks down:

Eligibility: Bartenders who reside in Los Angeles or the LA area, and native Angelenos who now tend bar elsewhere. (L.A. based enthusiasts are invited to participate, too.)

The Rules: The drink must be a stirred cocktail using a base spirit, modifying vermouth, liqueur (ie. benedictine, curacao, etc.) or sweetening agent, and some type of bitter. No citrus. Ingredients must be readily available, meaning no homemade ingredients or extremely obscure, hard to find ingredients. These need to be made on a regular basis and promoted around the city.

Competition: These cocktails will be presented at January’s The Sporting Life gathering in front of the judge, L.A.’s resident cocktail guru, Ted Haigh. Please do your homework on cocktails that have already been invented as we will discard cocktails too similar to already-established recipes.

Leo Rivas, who works at Seven Grand, inspired this idea with his Arts District Cocktail, so that one is already done. You can choose to honor one of the following districts and submit your recipe to Marcos by December 31:

• Spring Street
• Broadway Theater District
• Civic Center
• Gallery Row
• Fashion District
• Financial District
• Flower District
• Toy District
• Jewelry District
• Bunker Hill
• Chinatown
• South Park
• Old Bank District
• Historic Core
• Skid Row
• Central City West
• Little Tokyo

Good luck – and give L.A. a little love!