photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Mac Crider finishes pouring a drink at John Brown's Underground on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026.

What will take home the Lawrence Cocktail Trail’s trophy this year? A corn and tomato margarita, an “entry-level” bitter drink with a fruity twist, a pistachio and pisco concoction, or something even wilder?

It might be up to you. These three and about a dozen others will be facing off from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday in a people’s choice contest, kicking off a week of local cocktail specials and raising money for Lawrence hospitality workers.

Cocktail Trail, a celebration of Lawrence bartending, has been going on for a few years, but this is just the second year for its people’s choice competition. Laura Klein, president of the Lawrence Restaurant Association and owner of Mass. Street Fish House, said it works kind of like “a boozy farmers market.”

The participating bars and restaurants will set up tables in the parking lot of Culinaria, 512 E. Ninth St., and they’ll be pouring 1- to 2-ounce samples for guests to try. Then, the guests vote on their favorites – and, if you really like a drink and want it to win, you can buy extra votes with extra donations to the Lawrence Hospitality Workers Relief Fund.

The relief fund, which began during COVID, has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in assistance to workers in the local hospitality industry, helping them pay for health care, child care, rent assistance and more. A $20 donation to the fund gets you admission, all the cocktail samples, some appetizers and 10 voting tickets, Klein said.

Expect “a really relaxed, fun, friendly competition sort of environment,” she said, “which I feel kind of really reflects Lawrence. It’s like a laid-back vibe.”

If you can’t make it, you can still support the hospitality fund and try some unique drinks. Cocktail Trail lasts through Sept. 20, and $1 from each drink special at participating restaurants and bars goes to the fund. Klein said it’s kind of like the Lawrence Restaurant Week that happens each winter, but just for drinks.

You can find the full list of contestants in Thursday’s contest on Lawrence Restaurant Week’s social media pages. To get a preview of the creative ideas that will be on display, the Journal-World asked cocktail creators from a few of the establishments what their approaches are: Leah Shinkle and Elliot Yochim from 715, Dante Colombo and Mac Crider from John Brown’s Underground, and Gracie Brush and Kal Tarm from Limestone:

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Bartenders Leah Shinkle, left, and Elliot Yochim are pictured at 715 on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026.

The cocktail philosophy in a nutshell:

715:

There’s an “ethos of simplicity” at 715, Yochim said, and they like to pay respect to the classics.

For example, the restaurant has its own martini variation, and Shinkle loves tweaking the formula for it. It’s still a true martini – built around gin and a fortified wine, not like a lemon drop or other sweet drink served in a martini glass. But every element is a little bit different than the normal London dry gin.

“What if we changed what the infusion is?” Shinkle says “… What we’ve been doing is like a snap pea and carrot gin and doing it with a sherry and Porto split, which has been a really fun and different take on that.”

They also view recipes as a team endeavor. “We love to let our staff collab on if they have drink ideas, so it’s not just Elliot and I making the decisions for what cocktails are going into this,” Shinkle says.

JBUG:

Colombo and Crider say JBUG is a bit like a gallery space for drinks. The menu changes frequently, and Colombo describes every new one as “a project.”

“Our menus aren’t there to support a restaurant, they’re not there to support coffee, whatever it might be,” Colombo says. “They’re kind of their own entity, and there’s an era that comes about with every single menu that we kind of enter into.”

Menus here often have a concept, like their newest menu that plays on stereotypes of dive bars. One of them is a Black Manhattan that’s disguised as a miniature glass of Guinness, complete with a salted marshmallow foam on top.

But, apart from just encouraging creativity, there’s no constant aesthetic here: “I feel like we just try to make bangers,” Crider says.

Limestone:

Limestone as a whole likes to make things from scratch, Brush said, and “we definitely try to use local ingredients as much as we can and try to pull from local flavors.”

Because of that, the menu is mostly seasonal here. “It changes every three months, basically on the dot,” Tarm said. They’ll use what’s fresh, and they’re also big on getting spices into the drink in a lot of different ways. Brush, for example, has created a riff on the tropical Mai Tai that infuses one of its rums with hibiscus and ginger.

Because Limestone’s kitchen and bar are right next to each other, it’s also easy for the bartenders to collaborate with the cooks. Sometimes they’ll share ingredients or ideas. “They take from us, too,” Tarm said, like when the kitchen created a dessert based on the bar’s gingersnap-themed drink last winter.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Bartenders Dante Colombo, left, and Mac Crider are pictured at John Brown’s Underground on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026.

What they’re planning for Thursday’s contest, and what they think will help them stand out:

715:

A simple drink that uses pistachio and coffee along with pisco, a South American unaged brandy. Yochim said they let another bartender, Jewelly, who’s “just kind of a genius in general,” take the lead on this one. Her style isn’t “flair bartending,” he said: “She’s not using, like, centrifuges or crazy dilution processes or other weird ingredients.”

But that simple approach leads to “really solid – mind-blowing, often – flavor combinations in a really simple production,” he said.

JBUG:

They were still working on it earlier this week, but it will probably be a nectarine and black cherry variation on the Paper Plane. That drink normally has bourbon, lemon juice and two Italian bitter liqueurs. The idea for JBUG is “using a fruity component on a drink that is typically kind of like this entry-level bitter whiskey sour,” Colombo said.

They also wanted to be thrifty: “Bars are really wasteful establishments in general,” Crider said, but JBUG is big on recycling. They made a black cherry acidified gomme syrup for something else – basically, tarter than a normal syrup and thickened with velvety gum arabic – and thought, “Oh, we should like try to build out on that,” he said.

Limestone:

“Simply put, it’s like a roasted corn margarita,” Brush explains.

The recipe is inspired by the restaurant’s seasonal summer pizza, which is topped with local corn and cherry tomatoes. It might be “the most Kansas pizza,” Tarm says, and since it’s rotating off of the menu next week, Brush wanted to “say goodbye to it a little bit.”

The kitchen roasted the corn, she said, and then she infused the tequila with it. For the tomatoes, she made a cherry tomato water and acidified it, and it will stand in for the margarita’s usual lime juice.

photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

Bartenders Kal Tarm, left, and Gracie Brush are pictured at Limestone on Sept. 9, 2026.

And, if they were on a desert island, what three bottles would they bring?

715:

Shinkle: Nikka Coffey Gin, a Japanese import and one of the first gins she enjoyed on its own, unmixed. Rhum JM Terroir Volcanique, an aged rum from Martinique. And the intensely bitter Fernet-Branca – something where you can say, “Nobody wants mine, but I’ll take it.”

Yochim: Green Chartreuse, the famed herbal liqueur made by Carthusian monks that’s gotten much harder to find recently. A nice whiskey of some sort. And Rivers Grenadian rum, bottled at an extremely strong 69% ABV.

JBUG:

Colombo: Probitas white rum, a blend of rums from Barbados and Jamaica. Green Chartreuse. And Velvet Falernum, a syrupy, spiced Caribbean liqueur that JBUG’s bartenders jokingly say is an essential part of a JBUG drink.

Crider: Green Chartreuse, again! “I will never get tired of Chartreuse.” And a couple of rare rums that he admits are “kind of ritzy:” Rolling Fork Fiji 14 year, and Foursquare Limited Edition from Barbados.

Limestone:

“Definitely Campari,” Brush jokes. “I was gonna say,” says Tarm, “that’s my first one, too!” They might take sweet vermouth and gin, too. “You can make one drink,” Tarm says – the classic Negroni.

If they’re picking for what the individual bottles can do, they’ll still both take the red, bitter Campari. Here’s their other picks:

Tarm: A good reposado tequila, and either Suze, an earthy liqueur made from gentian roots, or Lillet Blanc, an aromatic aperitif wine. (Even with this, you might still be able to make a Negroni variation, he says. “It’s all Negroni-based.”)

Brush: A nice bottle of wine, and a vodka – “It’s so versatile; you can do anything with it.”