San Antonio will gain a five-day cocktail summit this January. But don't call it a comeback.
It'd be impossible not to spot similarities between the inaugural Third Coast Cocktail Summit, being organized by local industry insiders along with Culinaria, a nonprofit that promotes the Alamo City as a food destination, and the San Antonio Cocktail Conference. The latter racked up a 10-year run before it quietly faded amid the pandemic.
However, those behind the new summit insist that it will offer different perks, have a different approach to education and lean more on local talent to lead the charge.
"Of course, there are consumer events, lots of them. But we wanted to make this summit very impactful for our industry community, especially from an educational standpoint," said Dashi Sichuan Kitchen and Bar chef-owner Kristina Zhao, one of the organizers. "Team Dashi is overseeing the logistical side. I'm the liaison for all of the culinary activations, [Bar Loretta Beverage Director Michael] Neff is the liaison for the bar side of things."
The Third Coast Cocktail Summit will run Tuesday, Jan. 10 through Saturday, Jan. 14, offering attendees an array of seminars, happy hours, pop-ups and special dinners. Details are available at culinariasa.org/thirdcoastcocktailsummit.
Liquid inspiration
The idea for the Summit all started with a humble daiquiri, according to Dashi Managing Partner Brandon LaLanne.
As it turns out, striking the classic rum cocktail's ideal balance of sweet, sour and boozy is considered a key bartending skill set, and many bartenders are judged by peers based on their take, he explained.
"Having a stellar daiquiri on the menu really meant something to our bar team, and that pushed us to try to discover why that is," LaLanne said. "We talked to several bar programs in San Antonio, interviewing the bar managers and the bartenders, and we found out that this kind of goes back even further than we had even imagined. There's an educational side to it, teaching young leaders in the cocktail industry how to start a bar, what the fundamentals of a bar program really are."
The idea that a single cocktail could be used as a universal teaching tool struck a chord with both La Lanne and Zhao. So much so that they reached out to Neff for help with securing like-minded bar pros to create a multi-day, education-focused event.
Resetting the Conversation
Neff is a 25-year veteran bartender who's helmed projects from Los Angeles to New York City. In addition to serving as bar director at Bar Loretta, which opened last summer, he operates Houston's Cottonmouth Club. Additionally, he works with large-scale trade conference Tales of the Cocktail, which offers anything from seminars to cocktail tastings.
"Many of the things that we need to discuss as a community are just inherently very difficult to talk about," he said. "COVID, the general state of the industry, sexual harassment, the labor crisis ... so we wanted to use this opportunity to reset those conversations. We want the seminars to be directly useful to bartenders, so they walk out with tools that can help them form a better career."
That's not to say that the presentations and seminars will skip over booze in favor of tackling industry issues. Members of the Third Coast team said they're crafting deep-dive programming on spirits and cocktails as well as other products of interest in the beverage space. Organizers are also mulling how to include discussions surrounding coffee, beer and wine.
Culinaria, known for events including the Tasting Texas Wine + Food Festival and the twice-a-year Restaurant Weeks promotion, was a natural partner for the project, Neff said. He also said the group's involvement helped the organizers decide to funnel proceeds back into the local community.
"We decided we had to follow in Culinaria's footsteps with donating proceeds to charities that serve beverage and hospitality professionals," he said. "We want to highlight establishments that have done or are doing a fair share of giving back to the community, and luckily there's a lot of that already happening here."
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