V took stock of the tools in front of her. Two cocktail glasses. One stirrer. A shaker and a jigger. She set the glasses and stirrer to her right, the shaker in front of her, jigger to her left. She closed her eyes and reached out and touched each of them, confirming their position.
A breath. A moment to practice before the real thing. She closed her eyes.
V grabbed both parts of the shaker and combined them, held them as one with her left hand and found the stirrer with her right, no peeking. The shaker, holding no liquid, was overly light. She fumbled it. Eyes open.
She tried again. Shake with the left hand, stir with the right. Rub your belly and pat your head. She nodded to herself as she did the motion. She had it. This might work.
It was the penultimate round of finals in Fastest Hands in the High West, the distiller’s speed cocktail contest that culminated Wednesday at the High West Saloon. Eight contestants from across the country had proven themselves at regionals during the summer. On a rainy August evening, they saw who among them could make the best cocktails the fastest, netting a $5,000 prize and another $5,000 to their charity of choice.
And they were about to do it blindfolded.
V, whose full name is Kelsey Vartsana Chanthraboutda, came from Atlanta. Her bar manager — her brother — entered her into the contest without telling her. She had never been in a speed competition before, but she’s a volume bartender through and through, she said.
“I just push. I crank it out,” V said. “But I also really value consistency. I want every cocktail that comes out to taste the same as one that you got, whether it’s from me or from somebody else. Those are things I pride myself in.”
Here she was, 1,800 miles from Georgia, steeling nerves and making a mental map of her utensils. She had dispatched her first opponent, Dusty Grilli from Chicago, with three cocktails made in just over a minute and 11 seconds. But now she faced Billy Griggs from Philadelphia.
Billy from Philly, a placid 27-year-old with an ’80s mullet and mustache, is originally from Jersey. He’d won his first round with three cocktails in an impossibly fast 0:39.34, the time to beat.
Each of them would now have to use High West Double Rye to make an Old Fashioned and a New York Sour faster and better than the other to make it to the final round.
The saloon was packed. It was the event’s second year, and High West had seemed to learn some lessons about how to put it on: Instead of facing off at the saloon’s regular bar, the contestants took to a stage with dueling makeshift bars and cameras propped above, which spit out a feed of both workstations to the TV behind them. No matter where someone was in the crowd, they could see every daring trick, pour and high-speed flub.
The emcee handed V and Griggs blackout ski goggles. Griggs slipped them over his mullet. V took off her hat, strapped the goggles on and put the hat on backwards. They were ready.
“One, two, three, bartend!” the emcee shouted.
V reached for a bottle of double rye and poured it into a shaker. When she sat it down to pour another, it landed on the edge of her strainer and tipped behind the bar. Neither officiant noticed at first. They were watching Griggs, who in five seconds had grabbed his egg and separated the yolk from the white with his own strainer. He moved methodically, grabbed three bottles at once and poured them into one shaker.
“Three bottles up from a blindfolded bartender. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before,” the emcee said.
Every motion V made after that first muff was confused as she felt around for something that wasn’t there. She grabbed her egg and touched the other shaker half, the glasses, the jigger, her strainer. Where was the first shaker? She exhausted the logical places and began grasping at illogical ones. She searched the ice trough. Nothing. She held her hands up in exasperation: 36 seconds.
An audience member who had seen the mishap pointed at the emcee, then motioned behind the bar. The officiant looked to the emcee. Was he allowed to help?
Then her hands found it. She pushed on, cracked the egg, poured the lemon juice and added the rye. She shook it up with one hand and stirred the beginning of her old-fashioned with the other, the move she’d practiced earlier. That’s when Griggs hit his buzzer. 0:54.70.
Over a minute later, V hit hers and clocked in at 2:00.71. “All-Star” by Smash Mouth played as the crowd cheered. V doubled over and then threw her head back, fists clenched, grinning as she examined her half-full sour and old-fashioned.
“How was that, V?” the emcee asked.
“Terrible,” she said. The crowd laughed.
“What about you, Billy? Was it as bad as you thought it’d be?”
“Yeah,” Griggs said, nodding matter of factly.
“OK,” the emcee said. “Man of few words. We love that.”
Next up was a rematch between Mikayla Orrson from Los Angeles and Shaina Floyd from Salt Lake City.
Orrson’s timer stuttered for three seconds during the original bout, which meant her time was basically the same as Floyd’s. The two had a three-cocktail race sans blindfold to tie. Floyd won with 0:52.19 to Orrson’s 0:55.38.
“It was kind of funny because me and Mikayla hit it off,” Floyd said. “We were like, this is ‘Survivor,’ and we’re forming an alliance.”
Floyd works at The Pearl, a Vietnamese restaurant and bar in Salt Lake. She cut her teeth pouring hot chocolate spiked with crème de menthe on glacier boat tours, working as a second mate on an Alaskan adventure cruise boat. She realized how much she loved bartending while pursuing a mechanical engineering degree in Utah and came up at Quarters Arcade Bar.
Her round one time was 0:47.01. Now she was in the finals facing Griggs, “a killer,” Floyd said.
Billy from Philly had been here last year to support his best friend, Greg Bell, who won the inaugural Fastest Hands and was now here as a judge. They’d come early and gone hiking in Zion National Park after checking out Moab the year before. A boys’ trip, he said.
Griggs works at Philly Surf Club, a tropical-themed bar with “culinary-inspired cocktails,” he said. They don’t pump out drinks fast. It’s chill, laid back. But like V, he came up in high-volume bars, and he can turn it on when he needs to.
Did he enjoy the High West distillery tour earlier that day?
“I did,” he said. “Yeah.”
Floyd overheard. She couldn’t help but poke fun.
“Hell yeah. This is the most I’ve seen him talk,” she laughed. “Man of few words.”
The final round would be a five-cocktail sprint: a Manhattan, an Old Fashioned, a Paper Plane, a New York Sour, and a Gold Rush. Floyd and Griggs were ready. The DJ played “Thunderstruck.” The crowd rang cowbells. It was time.
First the ice, then the pours. Floyd double-fisted whiskey. Griggs gripped four bottles at once. Floyd balanced three. Griggs poured three. Then the modifiers and the mixers. Floyd grabbed two shakers and went to town, fine motor skills on a moment’s reprieve. Griggs shook his and flipped the lids in as a sluice. Two drinks down each. Fifty seconds.
Floyd’s last three came together fast. She filtered the egg white, shook with one hand and stirred with the other. Filter, pour, garnish. Buzzer. Five cocktails done in 1:11.24. Griggs was right behind, his final pour only slightly lagging, at 1:15.15.
Floyd popped off. Griggs looked at his work. Time isn’t everything, even in a competition of speed. The two shook hands heartily. The judges deliberated.
Floyd said she and her partner would put the $5,000 toward opening a new bar and venue. They’d find a way to keep them connected but separate so the venue could be all ages. She spent some time growing up in Utah and loved going to now-defunct all-ages venues like Lo-fi Cafe, Bricks and The Junction. There aren’t many places like that now, she said, and the ones that are here are dwindling. That kind of real estate is getting too expensive. The Beehive on State just shut down, for instance.
“We have Kilby, but the rest of it’s underground,” Floyd said. “I really want to help the music scene here, and I love the bar scene, so I just want to be a part of it.”
The prize money would help, but it wouldn’t make or break. That was good because, it turns out, Griggs had won.
“I’m pretty sure egg yolk went fully in (my) sour,” Floyd laughed. “So it made it a flip.”
A real cocktail, just not the right one. But she felt good, she said. She wanted to make her hometown proud, and really, she’d just wanted to give Griggs a scare.
“I’m going to be honest,” she said, “Billy all week was so stoic. He wasn’t drinking. He was very focused. He’s the killer. We all knew he was the killer.”
Griggs was handed two giant checks, one made out to Billy from Philly and one to the Wildland Firefighter Foundation, his charity of choice.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said into a mic, smiling. “Yeah. Cool.”
Everyone laughed, then cheered. Griggs and Floyd hugged. All the contestants rushed outside to embrace and pose with the novelty check. Though they hadn’t known each other long, the competition had made eight fast friends.
Outside, smoking a Camel Crush, Griggs said he was glad it was over. Floyd had definitely scared him, and he was so sure he’d lost. He’ll use the money to help cover debt he’d gotten into while helping a friend open a bar back in June. Tonight, he could cut loose. Tomorrow, he’d land back in Philly around midnight and miss his Thursday shift. He took a drag.
“I’m just glad I got to come here and spend time with my best friend and have a good time in Utah,” he said. “I’ll be back at work Friday, and it’ll be like nothing happened.”
