Ah, the margarita. There’s no libation quite like it, and almost no end to the variations on a theme good bartenders can concoct. Here’s where to find some of this country’s best:
A personal favorite of this reporter’s lives at Guaymas, the sublime Tiburon, Calif. restaurant with the knockout view of San Francisco across the bay. Guaymas’s Top Shelf Margarita starts with Miladro Reposado tequila and proceeds to add Cointreau, sweet and sour, lime juice and a float of Grand Marnier. Get an outside table, order one up and watch your woes slip into the afternoon fog rolling in across the water.
It gets hot in my hometown of Dallas, and Mariano Martinez came up with a great way to manage that heat back in 1971. That’s when he invented the world’s first frozen margarita machine, a device that was inducted into the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History a few years ago. Sample his bodacious creation at Mariano’s in Dallas. Order up a tableside guacamole while you quaff the frozen creation. It’s a nice contrast.
In San Antonio there’s a restaurant with a names that says it all: La Margarita. Located in the city’s Market Square, this is a very good Mexican restaurant in the heart of a city synonymous with the cuisine. People have been touting the benefits of pomegranates of late. To that end, there’s the Pomegranate Margarita. The ingredients: Cuervo Oranjo, Pama liqueur, Grand Marnier and fresh lime juice.
Out in Tucson, Mi Nidito (My Little Nest) has been a Mexican food Mecca since 1952, when the city really was just a sleepy little desert town. It gets hot in Tucson too, hotter (yet drier) than Dallas. That favors the frozen variety of the tequila-based drink. Locals like the Mango Margarita. You should too, especially come August.
Story by Jerry Chandler
(Image: chickflick1900)
