On International Women's Day this Sunday, March 8, women from Atlanta's food scene will gather to celebrate each other at Monday Night Garage in an event called Lady Locavores. Awards will be presented, bites from some of Atlanta's best restaurants will be eaten and cocktails will flow. Like any other nonprofit awards gala, a crowd will show up to celebrate, network and be seen. The difference with Lady Locavores is that nearly everyone involved is a woman, and the ideas they celebrate actually get done.
Exhibit A for getting stuff done is Keyatta Mincey-Parker, this year's winner of the Lady Locavores Bartender award and a bartender at Bon Ton in midtown. Earlier this year she won another award, taking home second place in the prestigious Most Imaginative Bartender contest presented by Bombay Sapphire. The competition started with a cocktail recipe submission, which Mincey-Parker said she begrudgingly sent. "I'd sent submissions the past two years and never heard anything, so I really didn't want to do it," she said. But her recipe was one of 300 around the country to be selected for further judging. Regional judges tried her cocktail at Bon Ton anonymously, and she advanced to an in-person competition against 11 other bartenders in Philadelphia last fall. She advanced again, and now the stakes were real - she was a finalist for a $10,000 prize and a $25,000 grant to put towards a creative cause.
At this point, Mincey-Parker had an idea, but it involved acquiring a plot of land inside the Perimeter, and she knew that $25,000 wasn’t going to cut it. So she turned to her network of other women collaborators in the city, one of whom is Katie Hayes, the executive director of the Community Farmers Markets.
Mincey-Parker told Hayes that she was in the process of developing a pitch to win a $25,000 grant for her concept: a community garden for bartenders. Her garden, called Sip of Paradise, would provide an inexpensive space for local bartenders to grow ingredients and garnishes for their cocktails. But it would also provide a therapeutic outlet: the polar opposite of the topsy-turvy world of bartending. Gardening is a quiet, nurturing, nourishing, slow-paced, outdoor activity, the kind that many working bartenders crave when they leave work in the wee hours of the morning.
The problem was, even if she won the $25,000 grant, how could she buy a garden plot in an area in town that would be able to serve local bartenders? She said that Hayes responded almost immediately with land that she could use.
"We had a garden plot by the East Atlanta Village Farmers Market, but we didn't have the resources to really use it," said Hayes. "It was kind of kismet that Keyatta reached out to us because we had been looking for someone who would do exactly what she was proposing."
In taking home second place overall in the Most Imaginative Bartender competition, Mincey-Parker did not win the grant money. But her idea is proceeding with the support of the Community Farmers Markets; Hayes and Mincey-Parker both said they hope to have the Sip of Paradise garden established by the beginning of the farmers market season in April. For $25 local bartenders can reserve an allotment in the garden for the entire growing season.
On Sunday Mincey-Parker will be recognized at the Lady Locavores event supported by other luminaries of the Atlanta food movement, including Tiffanie Barriere of The Drinking Coach, Tassili Ma'at of Tassili's Raw Reality, Mercedes O'Brien of Cold Beer ATL and Kellie Thorn of Hugh Acheson Restaurants. These women will celebrate each other on Sunday, but more importantly, they'll keep supporting each other getting things done.
Oh, and Mincey-Parker’s award-winning cocktail? It’s available at Bon Ton for a limited time. Her concoction that won the Botanicals Challenge is called “Root of All Evil, Not Gin,” and is made with Bombay Sapphire gin, ambrato, benedictine, raw sugar syrup, rooty tooty juice (yams, ginger, golden beets, and Anjelica root), garnished with slices of yam and golden beet topped with a dusting of turmeric powder. It’s not often you can try a cocktail that inspired an entire garden.
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