“What sort of Margaritas do you’ve?”
This can be a widespread query at Leyenda, the Brooklyn bar that’s arguably town’s best-known cocktail den to emphasise Latin American spirits. Proprietor Ivy Combine has a solution, however it’s often not the type the shopper is searching for.
“I say, ‘Simply the one,’” she says. “Effectively, two, technically: tequila or mezcal.”
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Typically the shopper will persist and look at the drinks menu. They’ll level to a drink that bears some Margarita-esque qualities and say, “Effectively, that’s a Margarita!” And Combine will reply, “No, that’s a cocktail.”
Combine is a Margarita purist. The drink, to her thoughts, is a Daisy that includes tequila, lime juice, and orange liqueur. However her variety-loving clientele can hardly be faulted for anticipating a couple of model of the most well-liked cocktail in America. That’s as a result of for each new cocktail bar that sticks to its weapons, Margarita-wise, there are 5 that now comply with an anything-goes method.
Take Hellbender Nighttime Café, which opened not too long ago within the Ridgewood neighborhood of Queens and calls itself a “Margarita bar” — with good motive. The drinks menu has 5 completely different “Margaritas” on it and none of them are normal Margaritas, strictly talking. There’s a Tommy’s Margarita, the fashionable interpretation that eschews orange liqueur. There’s a Margarita & Soda, which reinvents the drink as a highball. A 3rd has pineapple in it; one other strawberry liqueur; and one other sports activities rhum agricole and Chartreuse, of all issues.
“To be a Margarita bar, it’s a must to have a variety of Margarita choices,” explains Ben Howell, Hellbender’s director of operations. “There’s a variety of room to play within the Margarita sandbox. There are a selection of Margaritas that individuals suppose are traditional. However that has modified as occasions have modified.”
Simply as we now dwell in a second “’tini” age, wherein the definition of what can qualify as a Martini has turn out to be increasingly elastic, we’re concurrently witnessing the daybreak of a brand new “rita” period.
“I believe that the factor that occurred to Margaritas is identical factor that occurred to Martinis within the late Nineties and aughts, the place every part was a something-Martini,” says Combine. “The Apple Martini, the Espresso Martini. Why did we name {that a} Martini? I don’t know. And now now we have Margaritas, as a result of tequila is the fad, not vodka. And something that has citrus and any agave product in it appears to be known as a Margarita.”
Margarita menus are nothing new. Mexican restaurant chains have for years provided Margaritas in innumerable colours and fruit flavors. However in the present day’s variations on the drink have advanced alongside the cocktail revival of the previous couple of a long time. Riffs now embrace uncommon substances, infusions, and syrups that take the drink properly past the sugary strawberry Margaritas of yesteryear.
“I wished to enter a little bit creaminess into the Margarita to chop again on the citrus side. It was a really wild swing. I didn’t know if we had been going to have the ability to pull it off.”
Superbueno, probably the most high-profile new cocktail bar within the nation to spotlight Mexican tradition, has as its home drink one thing known as the Mushroom Margarita. The mezcal in it’s infused with an earthy fungus known as huitlacoche, which is taken into account a delicacy in Mexico. Proprietor Ignacio Jimenez can be engaged on one other drink he plans to name the Breakfast Margarita. It will likely be a cross between a regular Marg and the Breakfast Martini, a contemporary traditional cocktail using marmalade that was invented by London bartender Salvatore Calabrese within the Nineties.
“My persona is at all times to create,” says Jimenez, “so I believe each cocktail may be represented in many various methods. I’m not a purist. I at all times prefer to mess around with a cocktail to herald some new flavors that you’d by no means see.”
At Clavel, the celebrated Mexican restaurant in Baltimore, proprietor Lane Harlan affords three variations on the usual home Margarita: a spicy one, which provides a home chili shrub; a bitter model, which features a home amaro; and a cilantro-honey-flavored Margarita.
At The Cupboard, the East Village bar that boasts the widest number of mezcal in New York Metropolis, head bartender Diego Rivera has two Margaritas on the menu. One is preceded by the adjective “lemongrass” and the opposite “cinnamon.” The latter is spiked with a cinnamon tincture; the previous options the lemongrass-flavored agave spirit Mal Bien Zacate Limón, lemongrass-infused soju, St Germain elderflower liqueur, and yuzu juice. Rivera calls his Marg-building course of “taking a traditional again to its base, however then breaking it down in levels.”
When Evan Hawkins opened Romeo’s — additionally within the East Village, which has a declare to being alt-Marg central proper now — he wished each drink on the menu to be acquainted, but nonetheless seize the shopper’s consideration by way of an uncommon twist. And so his home Margarita couldn’t be the usual tequila sort and even the extra edgy mezcal type. It needed to be the Spicy Avocado Margarita.
“I by no means understood why you’ll add a white sugar–laden industrial product to an agave-based cocktail. It doesn’t enhance the drink.”
“I wished to enter a little bit creaminess into the Margarita to chop again on the citrus side,” he explains. Hawkins discovered a approach to incorporate blended avocado right into a syrup, which he mixes with the same old agave spirit, curaçao, and lime juice. “It was a really wild swing,” he admits. “I didn’t know if we had been going to have the ability to pull it off.”
Maybe no one has created extra trendy Margarita variations than Christine Wiseman, the beverage director of the Bar Lab Hospitality Group. Each menu Wiseman devises options not less than one cocktail known as a Margarita. She says she has invented not less than 50 completely different spins on the drink. The latest, which is presently on the menu at Lillistar, a rooftop bar in Williamsburg’s Moxy Resort, is named the Jazzy Jerk Margarita. It consists of Sorel liqueur and Jamaican jerk bitters.
“To be sincere, I simply suppose individuals need to see the phrase ‘Margarita,’” says Wiseman. “That’s why it’s known as Jazzy Jerk Margarita. I might f*cking identify every part on a menu ‘Margarita’ they usually’d all be No. 1 sellers. It’s the phrase.”
You may rapidly assess how a lot issues have modified in Margaritaville by asking bartenders and bar homeowners what the naked minimal is for a cocktail to earn the identify Margarita. No one offers you the identical reply.
For Hellbender’s Howell, the drink want solely have an agave spirit and citrus juice, and have to be “vivid.” Jimenez echoes that concept however provides salt to the ingredient combine. Wiseman says it should have “lime juice and agave spirit and the phrase ‘Margarita,’ and that’s about it.” Combine insists the drink should embrace triple sec as properly or it will possibly’t be thought-about a Margarita. She even goes as far as to say the liqueur is crucial a part of the cocktail. Harlan, in the meantime, doesn’t suppose triple sec has any enterprise in a Margarita. “I by no means understood why you’ll add a white sugar–laden industrial product to an agave-based cocktail,” she says. “It doesn’t enhance the drink.”
“It feels just like the individuals’s drink.”
The wealth of variations inside the Margarita style extends to the so-called Spicy Margarita, which is to the drink what the Soiled Martini is to the Martini: an off-menu merchandise that’s consistently ordered and might by no means be sensory sufficient. Up to now, bars answered this demand by merely swapping some jalapeño-infused tequila for the common stuff. However in the present day, issues have gotten extra inventive. Clavel makes use of a house-made chili shrub. Superbueno makes use of a chili tincture, as does Cupboard and Leyenda. Hawkins makes use of a particular spicy salt.
The Margarita-verse will in all probability proceed increasing, partly as a result of Marg drinkers — like their Martini-loving counterparts — really feel an innate possession of the drink. “It feels just like the individuals’s drink,” says Molly McClintock, a cocktail advisor who not too long ago labored with NYC Japanese restaurant Nami Nori to create the Matcharita 2.0, a Marg with matcha, yuzu, rice wine, and egg white. “My dad and mom didn’t know the way to make cocktails, however they knew the way to make a Margarita. It’s a drink which you can put your spin on,” she provides. “What individuals like about Margaritas is you’ll be able to select your individual journey.”
