Tasting away again in Margaritaville
Alison Cook weighs in on 5 beloved Houston versions of cocktail that stay on her mind
I am a harsh judge of margaritas.
I can’t help myself. I teethed on the brisk, idiosyncratic frozen version at the venerable Spanish Village on Almeda in the 1970s; then I learned to shake my own at the elbow of Diana Kennedy, the grande dame of Mexican cuisine, when I visited her hilltop rancho to write a profile back in the 1980s. (She hated it, but that’s another story.)
Kennedy’s formula was purist. She used Herradura silver tequila, which became my house brand. Her proportions, as I recall, were 2 parts tequila to 1 part fresh-squeezed lime juice — with the pulp, if you please — to 1 part Triple Sec, shaken with ice and strained. You rimmed the glass with cut lime, dunked it in salt, and there you were.
I still make mine that way, although I have upped the lime-juice quotient a little over the years since I like my cocktails on the tart rather than the sweet side. I still remember my first visit to the iconic Kentucky Club in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where the house margarita further cemented my particular tastes.
The margarita versions with added simple syrup that have taken over the genre leave me cold — I think the Triple Sec or whatever orange liqueur you use adds plenty of sweetness — and I recoil from many of the modern fruit-swirled frozen confections (I use that noun advisedly) on offer all across this great city of ours.
So, as I said, I am a tough and idiosyncratic judge of the form. Take everything I say on the subject with several rimfuls of salt.
But I am determined to offer a barbaric yawp of defiance in defense of the quality margaritas I venerate in the town — the ones I return to year after year and, in some cases, decade after decade.
Maybe you’ll admire them. Maybe you’ll take my name in vain, and that’s OK, too. But here’s my Houston Margarita honor roll, which spans five decades and counting.
1. The Perfect at Arnaldo Richards’ Picos Restaurant. I’ve said it before, I will say it again: This grandaddy of Houston’s shaker margaritas, served straight up in a proper Nickand-Nora martini glass, wrote the book on quality. I never even have to ask the bartenders to up the this or hold back on the that: The formula is classic and uplifting. Not to mention that there’s always some left in the shaker as a chaser.
2. Spanish Village frozen margarita. This is a niche passion of mine, tart and kickbutt and wildly individualistic with its paper-thin slivers of frozen lime juice delivering texture plus. Forget every dreary, sweet frozen slush of a margarita you were ever saddled with: This flies right in its face.
3. Hugo’s, Xochi’s and Caracol’s Oaxacan Rita. I love how smoky, multidimensional mezcal, tequila’s agavebased cousin, works in a margarita. And I love how the skilled bartenders at Hugo Ortega’s various restaurants respond to my personal requirements, as in “hold the simple syrup,” so that the lime leap of the finished cocktail still makes my heart jump.
4. Saltillo Mexican Kitchen’s shaker margarita. This snug, classy Norteño outpost in Bellaire illustrates why when it comes to margaritas, it pays to know your bartender. The courtly Lázaro Villalobos ups the lime juice at my request, uses a serious 100 percent agave tequila and never lets me down.
5. Dragonfruit frozen margarita from Vanessa Lomeli at her upcoming 915 restaurant. Yeah, I know what I said about fruit-swirled frozen margaritas. Lomeli’s versions are different: based on real threedimensional fruits buzzed up to order in the blender, not the product of saccharine, artificial syrups. I first fell in love with her garnet-red Dragonfruit Margarita at her former outpost on the Gulf Freeway, and I look forward to sipping it again when she opens her El Pasoinfluenced spot on White Oak in the Heights this month.