I spent the weekend doing some party prep for my upcoming Cinco de Mayo fiesta. Shoring up the menu and booze bar had me reminiscing about this fab restaurant I went to in Austin a few years back called La Condesa.
Nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award, they describe themselves as “an award-winning modern Mexican restaurant”—I describe them as just plain awesome! Helmed by Executive Chef Rick Lopez (at least when I went there), La Condesa was located at the oh-so-hip 2nd Street District. Besides outrageously good food and salsa so amazing you could drink it, they have the largest selection of 100% blue agave tequila and mezcal in Austin. If I had my way, I’d have the largest selection of mezcal in these gorgeous Tumblers from Bergdorf and serve ‘em straight up in my living room!
Speaking Of Mezcal…
Lucky for me, dear sweet friends, Jim and Ashley Walsh, who happen to have their own kick-ass mezcal brand called Kimo Sabe have some great cocktail recipes on their website. Like the zesty Zacatecan! Which I’m totally going to be making. And you should too!
While we’re on the mezcal bandwagon, and in case you don’t really know the difference between mezcal and tequila, here’s a few down n’ dirty facts from writer Effie Efthymiadi for FvF.
Mezcal is a distilled beverage made from the cooked saps of various maguey (a.k.a. agave) plants native to Oaxaca, Mexico. All mezcal is profusely smoky but the other flavors are determined by the type of maguey plant and production technique used. We’ll get into what those techniques are, and serve up some more mez-you-up cocktails in our next installment. For now, I’ll leave you with this Goddess-to-Goddess mythology tidbit: Agave, the Greek Goddess of Desire, raised Dionysus, the Party God of Getting Wasted. Is it any wonder they call mezcal ‘Nectar of the Gods!”
Have a favorite mezcal cocktail recipe? Let us know in the comments below!
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