Word emerged this morning that Milwaukee's Mathias Simonis -- who I wrote about a couple months ago -- has nabbed the $15,000 first-place prize at the Nightclub & Bar Show Convention's "Shake It Up! 2011: Creative Cocktail Challenge" in Las Vegas.
Simonis, who is a mixologist at Distil, 722 N. Milwaukee St., which I wrote about on Monday, edged out more than two dozen other contestants from around the country.
The contestants were chosen for the competition by a committee that rated them on their cocktail recipes.
"The winning drinks were the Aztec apricot sour off the Distil menu -- that's what Mathias submitted to get out there -- (and in the) final round of the top five was a 'mystery ingredient round'," says Distil spokeswoman Allie Schuelke. "The mystery ingredient was any flavor of the Lindeman's Lambic beers. Mathias did a play on a New York sour."
You can celebrate with Simonis tomorrow at 8 p.m. when Distil welcomes him home with a congratulatory party with live music and drink specials.
Simonis will reportedly also talk about the cocktails that earned him the victory.
Congratulations to Simonis and to Distil!
If you want to see a bit more about the event, check out the Web site.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
