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At Bar La Bohemia in San José, Costa Rica, the backbar is cluttered with dusty outdated bottles—classic wines drunk way back and obscure liqueurs like Cherry Bestle, a defunct Danish model. On the twisting wood bar, the proprietor Jorge Motta, who goes by Don Giorgio, pushes over the drink I’ve ordered: chiliguaro, a spicy, tomato-based cocktail in a shot glass with Tajín on the rim. It appears timeless, prefer it may have been served on the bar’s opening within the Thirties. There aren’t any frills, no skewers with pickles and bacon. The flavour is balanced, with simply the correct quantity of acidity and alcohol. The spice is noticeable, however not overwhelming.
“It’s the standard of the salsa,” says my pal Pablo Bonilla, chef of the restaurant Sikwa, who frequents the bar. That’s the key.
When Motta first began serving the chiliguaro, a few decade in the past, he simply combined some tomato juice with lime, salt and sizzling sauce, then added guaro, an unaged sugarcane spirit, Costa Rica’s firewater. That’s how most bars across the nation serve it in the present day. Just a few years in the past, nonetheless, a pal introduced in a home made combine, a sangrita made with a proprietary mix of citrus and spice. He has been utilizing it ever since.
“He received’t give me the precise recipe,” says Motta. “However from my conversations with him, I feel he makes use of a mixture of tomato juice and sizzling sauce from the Monoloco model, which is superb and has totally different ranges of spice. I feel he additionally provides lime, some soda and a contact of ketchup.”
Whereas the chiliguaro suits proper in at San José’s historic cantinas, the drink isn’t all that outdated. Motta solely launched it after it instantly turned a frequent request at bars across the nation. Some say it was created at a now-closed bar known as Lizard Lounge in Playas del Coco on the seashores of Guanacaste. Others pinpoint its origin to a college bar known as Rafa’s in San José’s Barrio La California. The story that has gained essentially the most traction, nonetheless, factors to Bahamas Bar, a dive bar a pair blocks away from Rafa’s.
In response to Mauricio Azofeifa, a former proprietor of Bahamas, it began on December 27, 2011. It was the evening of El Tope, the nationwide equestrian parade. “My associate, Luis Pablo Ayala, and I had the bar stuffed with horsemen,” Azofeifa instructed me. “At one second, a lady approached the bar and requested for a shot of guaro with spicy chile. We began promoting it to the folks within the bar, nevertheless it was very concho—too robust for the abdomen and style.”
After that, Azofeifa began experimenting with the recipe, making it extra like a Costa Rican riff on a Bloody Mary. He added tomato juice, lime, salt and no matter spices that they had within the bar. They made their very own sizzling sauce from Tabasco and different chiles. In a matter of years, each cantina and seaside bar across the nation was serving a model modeled after the one at Bar Bahamas, and huge manufacturers even tried to commercialize it. Azofeifa trademarked the identify “chiliguaro” in 2013, however was tied up in courtroom circumstances defending the mental property for years as company manufacturers continued to reap the benefits of its recognition. In 2023, lengthy after he offered his stake within the bar, he launched his personal premade combine, which is now accessible at Walmart and different supermarkets within the nation.
Just like the Bloody Mary within the States, each bar in Costa Rica has its personal recipe for chiliguaro. Probably the most fundamental variations simply combine Tabasco with guaro, with a lime wedge on the aspect. Others are extra artistic, mixing in mango or different fruits, or go for sauces constituted of chile panameño, or Salsa Lizano, a Worcestershire sauce–like industrial seasoning. For higher or worse, the guaro has largely remained fixed.
Because the 1850s, there was solely a single legally produced guaro model, known as Cacique, distilled by the Fábrica Nacional de Licores. Created from sugarcane, it’s sometimes bottled at 60- and 80-proof expressions. However it’s not unusual to seek out bootleg variations of the spirit, although they’re not at all times secure. Due to its moonshine-like fame, it has lengthy had a stigma connected to it, and was regularly being displaced by overseas spirits. The chiliguaro’s recognition, nonetheless, has helped deliver the drink’s requisite spirit again into the mainstream. In a few of the extra progressive bars and eating places across the nation, guaro is now featured in sours, or as the bottom for fruit infusions for use in a wide range of different cocktail codecs. However the chiliguaro stays the preferred guaro drink in Costa Rica.
In Barrio Escalante at La Buenos Aires, a San José bar that dates to 1905, the sangrita is constituted of a mixture of Clamato and tomato juice, plus mandarin lime and Tabasco, then seasoned with salt and pepper. It’s served alongside Costa Rican bar snacks known as bocas, like beef tongue and fried yuca.
At Cata, a second-floor agave bar that overlooks the seaside in Tamarindo, proprietor Liz Furlong’s chiliguaros are legendary. She cooks down recent tomatoes with cumin and black pepper, then provides Salsa Lizano and vinegar to kick up the acidity. “I prefer to preserve it on the vinegary aspect,” she says. “We do home made chile panameño salsa to spice it up and we now have a culantro coyote–infused Cacique for it.”
Furlong coats the rim of the glass in high-quality sea salt and chile de árbol, and serves the drink with a skewer of snacks. The place others sometimes use pickled greens and olives, she makes use of pickled fruit, like cas and uchuvas (bitter guavas and floor cherries), that change with the season.
“Something brined and salty goes nice,” she says. “It doesn’t need to be fancy to be good. Just a bit salt, lime, sizzling sauce, and a splash of tomato might be sufficient.”
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