The Art of Competitive Bartending with OAK’s Scott Ruggiero
Scott Ruggiero — lead bartender at Boulder fine-dining establishment OAK at Fourteenth — has spent honing his craft. The East Coast native moved into Boulder 10 years ago to attend the University of Colorado Boulder where he studied structure. While he’s always had a fascination with restaurants and hospitality his uncle owned a restaurant at Steamboat and his father has forever taken cooking critically — it was only after beginning his tenure at OAK that his interest in cocktails really started to take off. Since then he’s devoted enormous time and energy into mastering the screenplay, creating beverages for the restaurant’s menu and taking his imagination to new heights in the domain of bartending.
When folks hear aggressive bartending the first thing that comes to mind is the craft’s sport end — that the Coyote Ugly crap where bartenders twist bottles, juggle liquors, incorporate pyrotechnics and do pours from greater and greater distances. While this type of pageantry surely has its own time and location, the contests Ruggiero has set his sights are nothing of the kind. While the demonstration is a key factor, these occasions are designed to push bartenders to come up with interesting, highly private beverages to be judged equally by a board of experts and a favorite assessment. Gatherings of the kind are getting increasingly more commonplace at Denver — in part stemming from the liquor community’s recognition of town as a significant destination following Williams & Graham was named the pub in America at the 2015 Spirited Awards.
Contenders input the competitions with a classic cocktail idea and so are judged on taste, appearance, originality, technique, style and narrative. As craft cocktails become more and more in fashion, the capacity to make something innovative has gotten increasingly more difficult. It’s here that the narrative aspect comes in to play the most — bartenders are requested to give a presentation describing the cocktail matters past the way it can intoxicate at a way and detailing their inspiration. At this past year’s Bombay Sapphire regional contest is San Francisco Ruggiero presented the SEA or South East Asia — a mixture he’d taken into Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Myanmar.
A component was used by the beverage from each of these countries. Mixing gin, tamarind-almond syrup, adjusted orange juice in which citric acid is added to make a lemon-like punch — along with coconut-ginger and garnishing with basil, mint and the absinthe spritz, Ruggiero served as the beverage in teacups atop a basket of “edible sand” — a homemade blend of dried coconut, ginger, citric acid and sugar. Presentations that are highly ornate are fundamental to the competitions where beverages can vary from traditional-leaning and sophisticated to eccentric. For this year’s Tequila Herradura rivalry in Denver, Ruggiero plans to earn a grilled cheese and tomato soup margarita.
Since gaining an interest in the world of bartending Ruggiero was involved in three different local and two national occasions. After only four months at work, he won the local Movers and Shakers contest where he paired his cocktail using OAK’s food. Since that time he’s taken second place at the Bitter Truth occasion at Finn’s Manor, won Herradura’s regional contest at Denver, was flown to the new ’s hacienda in Mexico to its finals, won the native Bombay Sapphire contest in Denver and was among 10 of those 1,500 candidates to be accepted to Bombay’s regional contest at San Francisco. Very bad for a couple of brief years in the game.
Ruggiero’s devotion though one, specifically, seems to be the backbone stems from an assortment of sources. Even the bartender has dreams of opening his own restaurant, the international street food destination which remains conceptually loose. Fueled by his nature, the guy wants to be the most appropriate for its own sake but also. Some of the larger competitions have cash prizes ranging from $10,000 – $100,000 — a nest egg to get a potential restaurateur. His imaginative cocktails are consistently inspired by food, traveling and family. “I think being together drew me in a sense.
