Buss Stop voted best for second year

By James Card

The Buss Stop was voted as having the area’s best bloody mary.

It is the second year in a row they have taken first place. The Gala Resort took second and the Bridge Bar and Restaurant took third.

For the month of October, the Fremont Chamber of Commerce organized the Fremont Bloody Mary Trail.

It works like this: sample a bloody mary at all of the local establishments, get a stamp on a card and turn the card in with a vote of the best tasting bloody mary. The contest was sponsored by Tito’s Handmade Vodka and also included prize drawings for the participants.

“I would love to tell you the recipe but I’d like to keep my job,” said Ashli Magolski, a bartender at The Buss Stop. She has worked there for 7 1/2 years.

Although she did not provide the recipe, here are the basics of the award-winning bloody mary. Magolski builds the cocktail with a pint glass loaded with ice. Over the ice she pours a couple robust glugs of vodka and adds a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce and Frank’s Red Hot sauce. She then adds a few shakes of an unidentified spice and a few splashes of an unidentified liquid contained in a small bottle. Topping this is a tomato juice-based mix.

The cocktail is shaken, not stirred. Magolski spears a pickled Brussels sprout, a pickled asparagus shoot and a pickled mushroom and drops them into the glass. She slides in a pickle, a cherry pepper and an olive in the room that is left. The cocktail is topped with string cheese and a sausage stick.

On a shelf above the bar’s cash register is last year’s trophy. It is a plastic model of a bloody mary in a tulip glass and adorned with a celery stick, a shrimp and a lemon wedge.

“I never put a lemon in a bloody unless someone asks for it,” said Magolski.