The Spirits #19: Tommy's Margarita

~ A Natural Sour ~ Happy Trouble ~ No Other Love ~ Ultrasonic Giggles ~

~ TOMMY’S MARGARITA ~

60ml tequila
30ml lime juice
15ml agave syrup

Pour everything into a shaker, add lots of ice, do the business, then fine-strain into a tumbler filled with more ice. Or serve it up, in a Margarita glass? I don’t mind!

Some Tommy’s pointers:

1) Tequila-wise, the best shout is the straw-coloured reposado style - reposado meaning ‘rested’ in barrels, to give it a hint of age. Blanco (clear, unaged) tequila works well too: it’s cleaner tasting though to my minds lacks the dusky complexity of reposado. Añejo (dark, fully aged) isn’t going to work so well but hey! Worth a try. Please be sure that you go for 100% Agave tequila though - this is the important thing.

2) Mezcal? Why the hell not. I wrote an intro to Mezcal a while back, which you might enjoy. Works extremely well in a Tommy’s.

3) You will note that my Margarita glass has a salt rim. This is by no means essential - I mean you can accompany your cocktail with a massive amount of tortilla chips and guacamole and it has a similar effect - but it’s sort of fun to do if you can bothered. Pour a little flaked sea salt on to a saucer, wet the lip of your cocktail glass with some lime, then dip it in to the sea salt saucer.

4) Hey loverboy, hey lovergirl, yeah I know, it’s Valentine’s Day real soon. 😍 There is nothing unromantic about a Tommy’s just as it is - but I suppose if you want to be a bit more on the nose you could always muddle a single strawberry in the shaker and maybe use another strawberry to garnish? Other amorous soft fruits will work fine too. The Rose is another good loving cocktail.

iHOLA! 

Some LURRRRVE SONGS to get you in the moooood. You will find instructions for making sugar syrup, grenadine, ice, etc here and my 10 RULES FOR MAKING COCKTAILS here. I have also assembled some bottle recommendations for a cabinet here - and this here is the full archive of weekly specials. Do please share the Spirits with anyone who might like it - and feel free to tag me with your creations on Instagram ou même Twitter!

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JULIO Bermejo didn’t set out to create a modern classic. All he wanted was a drink that would show off the charm and subtlety of his parents’ national spirit a little better than the low-grade triple-seccy Margaritas that were common in the US at the time. The time being 1988 or so.

The place being Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant in San Francisco, which his parents - Elmy and Tommy - opened in 1965. Tommy Bermejo had come over a farm labourer and fell into the food business by accident. His place was originally known as Tommy’s Barbecue and sold rotisserie chickens, steaks and fries - but he switched to enchillades and tamales from his home province of Yucutan due to popular demand. There’s a nice little history of the place here. It’s locally known as Tommy’s Enchiladas. I sometimes think that if I had to live on one nation’s cuisine for the rest of my life, it would be Mexico’s.

Anyway, a Margarita is usually tequila, orange liqueur and lime juice. Booze/sweet/sour. All young Julio did was to switch out the orange liqueur for agave syrup, a sweetener that is made from the same succulent as tequila itself. It didn’t just turn out to be an adequate subsititution. It was an instant classic and an all-round improvement on the drink for about five or six reasons which I will adnumbrate here:

a) Margaritas are just tastier like this. Tastiness being, believe it or not, the primary concern when making cocktails!
b) Tommy’s Margaritas are also cheaper, agave syrup being much less expensive than orange liqueur.
c) Agave is easier to handle than orange liqueur, too, since it’s just pure sweetness, whereas orange liqueurs have varying amounts of sugar, orange flavour and alcohol, which often ends up unbalancing a drink.
d) The Tommy’s is less alcoholic. (THAT’S A GOOD THING?)
e) It’s also better for you. Agave is notably low-GI for something so sweet.
f) It was invented by a Mexican in America, as opposed to an American in Mexico., and that feels a bit better.

But mostly (g), I just like the synchroniousness of the thing. The Tommy’s falls into a small subfamily of “Natural Sours”, in which the sweetener is made of the same stuff as the base spirit. The clever bartender Felix Cohen used to serve a whole set of these at his bar Every Cloud in Hackney, including the Daiquiri (sugar/sugar) and a Whiskey Sour made with corn whiskey and corn syrup. I have conducted successful experiments of my own on with a Brandy Sour sweetened with sweet riesling (grape/grape). But the Tommy’s feels the quintessential expression of the conceit, a drink so at-one-with-itself it is like drinking liquid nirvana.

For these reasons and more, the Tommy’s is a cocktail has eclipsed the original Margarita. At least among people that care about this sort of thing. OK, well at least in my mind. And actually:

h) According to Cleo Rocos, the glamorous force behind the excellent Aqua Riva tequila (and indeed agave syrup), it doesn’t give you a hangover. In fact, she calls this the No-Hangover Margarita. It was Cleo who first introduced me to the drink (the subject of one of my very first Spirits columns, mind the photo). Having sunk many Margaritas with her over the years, I can’t confirm this to be true. But it always yields happy results nonetheless. Which brings me to the final point in favour of the Tommy’s:

i) Tequila… or make that good tequila (i.e. not Jose Cuervo) - has a magical uplift, a heady, silly, floaty, happy-trouble, fall-off-a-chair-laughing quality that is very much what the world needs now.

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PLAYLIST

It’s VALENTINE’S DAY! (On Sunday). I am at heart incredibly soppy and so I have compiled a playlist of swoonsome, romantic, steamy lovejams so you can slow-dance around your kitchen with your dear heart, even if that dear heart is your own.

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WHAT I’VE BEEN READING

I thought this was a really excellent introduction to TikTok, Gen Z and why everyone hates Millennials. (Walrus).

Patricia Lockwood on Elena Ferrante. (LRB)

Alicia Kennedy on Peanut Butter, which I eat KILOS of and will now look at a bit differently. (Substack)

WHAT I’VE BEEN WRITING

Rats! (Observer)

A review of Shalom Auslander’s Mother for Dinner (The Times)

On the agonies of Homeschooling (The Times)

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SHOPPING LIST

Let’s stick with tequila shall we! You will need: tequila (reposado best, as I say) and agave syrup - and also… FRESH ESPRESSO. A Moka pot or Aeropress are the most economical ways of creating good espresso at home. Or you could just pick some up from a coffee place I guess.

☕ ☕ ☕ ☕ ☕ ☕