Recipe Tommy's Margarita: How the World's Best Bars Build One
The margarita bartenders
drink on their night off.
Created at Tommy's Mexican Restaurant in San Francisco in 1987 by Julio Bermejo — the man who removed the orange liqueur and let tequila lead. Now the default margarita build of every great bar in the world.
The margarita is the most-ordered cocktail in the United States. It is among the most-ordered cocktails in Australia. And almost none of the margaritas we drink in our lives are good ones.
The Tommy's, created in San Francisco in 1987, is the version great bars pour when they want to show you what tequila actually tastes like.
Julio Bermejo
and the Tommy's rewrite.
Tommy's Mexican Restaurant sits at 5929 Geary Boulevard in the Richmond District of San Francisco. It is not glamorous. The room is mid-century, the lighting is functional. The bar, however, holds the largest selection of 100% agave tequilas in the United States — over three hundred bottles.
In 1987, Julio Bermejo took over the bar program from his father and started replacing the orange liqueur in his margaritas with agave nectar. The reasoning was simple: tequila is distilled from the agave plant; sweetening the cocktail with the same plant would amplify rather than dilute the spirit's character. He was right. The new build became known as the Tommy's on the menu.
Bermejo went on to be named the first Tequila Ambassador by Mexico's National Chamber of the Tequila Industry. His tiny restaurant became a pilgrimage site for bartenders. By the late 2000s the Tommy's had become the default margarita build of the cocktail revival movement worldwide — at Death & Co, Maybe Sammy, PDT, the American Bar at the Savoy.
The four
non-negotiables.
Three things, plus water. That's all it ever was. Get any of them wrong and the cocktail collapses.
Tequila is the show.
A Tommy's is not a sweet drink and not about citrus. It is a cocktail about tequila. 100% agave only — anything labelled "mixto" can contain up to 49% non-agave sugars and will taste hollow.
Agave nectar isn't sugar syrup.
Real blue agave nectar tastes mineral and faintly honeyed. The cheap industrial versions are blends of corn syrup with caramel flavouring. Read the label.
No triple sec. Ever.
Bermejo's whole point. Industrial triple sec is the single biggest reason most margaritas taste flat. Removing it lets the agave do the work.
Salt is optional.
A salt rim flattens the agave. Bermejo's original is bone-dry by design. But if you want it, a small pinch on the side is honourable. Both are right.
The world-class recipe,
step by step.
Here is the build used in most great bars in the world. Three ingredients, fresh lime, the right tequila, real agave nectar.
Tommy's Margarita
Ingredients
- 60 mlAltos Blanco Tequila
- 22 mlFresh lime juice
- 15 mlAgave nectar (diluted 1:1)
- ×Lime wheel, to garnish
- ×Salt rim, optional
Method
- Chill a rocks glass in the freezer for at least 30 minutes.
- Dilute the agave 1:1 with warm filtered water to a pourable syrup.
- Combine all liquids in a shaker with large, dry ice cubes.
- Shake hard for 10–12 seconds.
- Fine strain over a fresh, large block of ice in the chilled rocks glass.
- Garnish with a lime wheel cut just before service. Salt rim if requested.
Why we pour
Altos Blanco.
Altos was created by Henry Besant — a British distiller — and Dre Masso, a Mexican-Australian bartender, specifically as a "bartender's tequila": bright enough to lead a cocktail, restrained enough not to dominate, priced fairly. The agave is grown in Los Altos (the highlands) of Jalisco, where the volcanic soil and higher altitude produce piñas that are sweeter and more floral than those of the lowlands.
It is the bottle that, in our experience, sits behind every great bar's rail. The tequila Mexico's own bartenders choose.
Our build,
on Bermejo's framework.
We built the MXTology Tommy's Margarita to the exact ratio the world's best bartenders use. Altos Blanco as the base, real blue agave nectar, CitrusFresh™ lime locked at peak brightness, sealed at the precise dilution a hard shake delivers. No orange liqueur. No salt rim. No shortcuts.
Shake the pouch, pour over fresh hard ice in a chilled rocks glass, garnish with a lime wheel. The cocktail that follows is the one Julio served forty years ago.
bartenders actually drink.
Final Pour
The Tommy's is the cocktail you make when you want to know what tequila really tastes like. It is also the cocktail you make when you want to remember that great drinks are usually built from very few ingredients — chosen carefully, balanced precisely, treated with respect.
Three things, plus water. That's all it ever was.