The State of the Margarita in Los Angeles, by the Numbers
In Los Angeles, the Margarita is more than a cocktail, it’s a lingua franca. It’s ordered by the pitcher at neon-lit cantinas, clarified and crystalline at fine dining restaurants, shaken with hibiscus on the Eastside or dosed with smoked pineapple distillate at one of the city’s most ambitious cocktail bars. In a place where tequila is as common as traffic, the Margarita still dominates.
On a recent weekend, I asked bartenders across L.A. to share how Angelenos are ordering their Margaritas by tallying their sales for one night of service. The numbers don’t lie. At Matt Egan and Max Reis’ new Sherman Oaks hot spot, Daisy Margarita Bar, the namesake drink accounted for 424 orders. At Damian, Enrique Olvera’s Arts District restaurant, Margaritas made up nearly 70 percent of total cocktail sales and Bar Flores, in Echo Park, sold 32 pitchers,15 nonalcoholic variations and an impressive 220 by-the-glass Margaritas—the cocktail is alive and well in all its many forms. Even at a spirits-driven bar like the iconic cocktail haunt Thunderbolt, the Margarita still accounts for about one-fifth of all orders.
According to Jon Cross, GM and beverage director at Loreto, in Frogtown, where more than half of all orders are for Margaritas, the drink’s popularity is due to its specific geometry. “It’s the Platonic ideal of a sour. Spirit, citrus, sweetener, tuned for balance. Tequila’s grassy heat, lime’s sparkle, orange liqueur or agave’s cushion, then a salt rim that literally rewires your palate,” he says.
Every bar we surveyed has at least one Margarita on the menu, but the approaches vary. At Thunderbolt, the house take is La Frutera #3, a lush blend of tequila, guanábana, smoked pineapple distillate, pepita and cashew. Mírate’s best-seller is El Guero, an aguachile-inspired riff that plays like a Margarita in disguise. Daisy Margarita Bar pushes volume through signatures like the Salsa Verde Margarita (made with tomatillo, green chile and cilantro), while Bar Flores leads with its hibiscus-infused Pink Marg. At Valle, the crystal-clear, gold-dusted Maggie transforms the classic through milk-punch clarification.
Angelenos are more interested in what spirit goes into the mix more than ever before. As Cross put it, guests are chasing transparency: “‘Is it additive-free?’ is the new ‘salt or no salt?’” Tromba’s blanco tequila was the most common bottle for the job among surveyed bartenders, and Fortaleza was the most requested by name. For orders of the classic drink, about two-thirds of guests requested tequila, while one-third asked for mezcal.
While most surveyed bars use a classic kosher salt rim, some cocktails, like the gold-dusted Maggie at Valle or the cinnamon sugar-garnished house Cadillac at Damian, get creative with it. Brynn Smith, at Bar Next Door, reports that customers are ordering Tajín rims more often than salt. And at Daisy, there are no salt rims whatsoever. Instead, the bar adds salt solution straight to the cocktail; they say this offers a perfectly balanced drink. For bars that do offer salt rims, very few customers (around one percent) request their Margarita without.