FAR FROM WASTED

 

The first time I had a margarita I thought somebody was having a laugh, either that or they were trying to poison me.  It was in a bar in New York, and I was with people I didn’t know very well, and I couldn’t believe that any sane person would put salt around the rim of their glass.  

 

Well the years go by, our taste buds change, and these days I think the salt is the best reason for drinking a margarita.  I mean I like the tequila, I like the lime juice; I could totally live without the sweet sticky Cointreau or Triple Sec, but I absolutely couldn’t live without the salt.

 

Psycho-pic by Caroline Gannon

So finding oneself in Macayo’s in Scottsdale, Arizona, and attempting to go very slightly native, what could be better than a coupla margaritas and a giant bowl of nachos?  Very little. Macayo’s looks like this.

 

And then a couple of weeks later, in the bar of the Leopold Hotel in Sheffield, England a margarita was again to be had. It looked like this:

smaller and perhaps a little more intense than it’s American cousin and far more expensive ounce for ounce, but still very definitely with the salt.

 

The Leopold Hotel looks like this:

JOSE CUERVO - HE'S BARELY A NODDING ACQUAINTANCE OF MINE

 

 Well, we’ve made it to the New Year and supplies of tequila are adequate for at least a while.  I realize the above photograph makes it look as though I was drinking alone.  In fact I wasn’t but I only had the one genuine Mexican tequila shot glass with the agave moulded into the base, so that has to do for the picture.

And frankly I don’t suppose Anjelica Huston was really drinking alone in this advertising picture:

 

Nor Joan Collins in this one:

 

Given that, according to the advertising copy, Joan mixes frozen lemonade concentrate with her tequila and eats it with caviar, she probably didn’t deserve to get much company.  But I bet she did. 

THREE LITTLE BIRDS TOLD ME

Yeah well, some say the glass is slightly full, I say it’s nearly empty.  See top left:

And it only got emptier. See even further left

 And what is, or was, in the glass?  It’s a “Caliente” – “Scotch Bonnet Tequila, Agave and Lime” – it was very fine.

We were in Three Little Birds in Brixton, “Jamaican Inspired Tapas and Rum Cocktails.”  The shrewd observer might note that there’s no rum in a Caliente, but we can live with that.  The cocktail was grand. as was the food, especially the goat stew. You can see it foregrounded in the pics above.

All pics by Luna Woodyear Smiff.