Standing with his head down and his fingers pressed to his lips, Jonathan Franco isn’t nervous; he’s just focused. He’s got 20 minutes to come up with a new cocktail on the spot using a surprise secret ingredient: yuzu juice. And he’s got to shake up 80 of them.
When the timer starts, he rushes to a table to get his ingredients, Terror Squad’s “Lean Back” playing in the packed bar. To his left, his competitor Roni Hickerson, dressed in a stock mixologist outfit of smart vest and clean muttonchops, calls for help from the audience, because it’s going to take a lot of shaking and the clock is ticking down.
Welcome to the world of competitive bartending. In late May, Franco and Hickerson faced off in the finals of the Uptown Battle of the Bars at Harlem Tavern, part of a growing local scene of bartender-on-bartender smackdowns across New York City. The contests are typically held in bars or music venues and vary in form — some measure bartender speed in accurately creating a set of cocktails; some are about creativity and flexibility. Local celebrities and liquor company reps typically serve as judges, and prizes vary from free liquor to cash and, of course, bragging rights. The fast-paced competitions keep audience members sitting on the edge of their bar stools.
“You never know what to expect,” says Karl Franz Williams, who hosted the Uptown Battle of the Bars. “Bartenders are personalities, and you see their personality come out when they’re making cocktails.”
While bartending competitions have been around for decades — T.G.I. Friday’s launched the World Bartender Championship 23 years ago — the local matchups are rougher and rowdier and often impromptu.
“People make a big mess,” says Steve Schneider-Hadzismajlovic, a 30-year-old who tends bar at Employees Only and emcees an especially chaotic underground bar battle called It’s a Rematch!!! Beeyatch!!! “It’s the closest thing we get to a WWE professional wrestling competition.”
But the scene isn’t all macho. Lynnette Marrero started Speed Rack, a ladies-only speed bartending competition, in 2011. She calls the event the “roller derby of cocktail competitions.”
“There is this theatricality of this kind of bartending,” says Speed Rack co-founder Ivy Mix, who tends bar at Brooklyn’s Clover Club. “There is a bunch of steps, a bunch of moves. It is fun to watch.”
Back at Harlem Tavern, Franco makes a few false moves before finding a winner. He tries one cocktail recipe with egg whites, but it doesn’t mix well with yuzu. He tries another with raspberry before settling on something more basic to mix with the yuzu: honey, Hennessy and a lemon twist.
“I just went for an old classic cocktail,” says Franco, 24, who usually slings drinks at Harlem’s La Bodega 47. “Simpler is better.”
He calls up a fellow bartender and they both grab cocktail shakers in each hand and rattle them simultaneously; it’s hard to tell if they’re doing it to save time or to show off to the crowd a little. Either way, the boozy patrons love it, watching Franco as if he were an elite athlete competing for a title. He’s crowned the winner.
“Bartenders are crushing it now,” says Schneider-Hadzismajlovic. “They’re not nerdy people; they’re badass bartenders that we all kind of respect.”