Mike's Mix: Sonora Grill
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Each Saturday, Mike Augustyniak takes us to a local bar to see what interesting drinks the mixologist is stirring up. This week, he went to the Sonora Grill in Minneapolis.
Obregon Margarita
1 ½ oz Serrano pepper-infused tequila *
1 ½ oz lime juice
1 oz agave nectar
1 oz basil syrup
*To infuse tequila: allow 3 to 4 whole serrano peppers to rest inside a 750ml bottle of silver tequila for several days. Use as you would any other tequila.
Combine all ingredients in a shaker, over ice. Shake and strain into a lowball glass filled with fresh ice; garnish with a serrano pepper slice and a basil leaf.
Taste Test
The sky is the limit when it comes to spice in margaritas – some crank the Scoville units all the way up to 'face melting.' That doesn't really work well for the Minnesota palette, so striking a balance should be the goal even for spicy margaritas around here. I think that Sonora Grill walks the line nicely with their Obregon Margarita, named the Best Margarita of 2015 by CityPages. The key is combining silver tequila infused with serrano peppers – themselves a step up in spice from jalepenos – and sweeter-than-sugar agave nectar. The result is a margarita that's just this side of "too spicy" for most Minnesotans, with a pepper finish that tingles instead of scalds.
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Sonora Margarita:
1 ½ oz silver Tequila
2 oz house-made sweet/sour mix *
1 oz Cointreau
Top with carbonated sour
*To make sweet/sour mix combine equal parts orange and lemon juices
Begin by rimming a lowball glass with lime juice and kosher salt, and filling with ice. Then, combine all ingredients, except carbonated sour, over ice; shake and strain into the rimmed lowball glass. Garnish with a lime wheel.
Taste Test
The best margaritas use tequila made with 100% blue agave; all of your headaches, hangovers, and tequila horror stories come from cocktails made with inferior spirits. Fresh-squeezed juices also make a big difference, even though fresh-squeezed lime juice can have a pretty good bite. The secret to Sonora Grill's signature margarita (and perhaps one reason why it was named a Top 10 Margarita by CityPages in 2014) is their house-made sour mix. While a normal sour would be equal parts lime and lemon juices, they replace the lime with orange juice. Oranges are naturally sweeter, and actually work to take the edges off of the tequila. The resulting is an cocktail of a different color, but a smoother flavor.
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Sonora Grill is located in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis; their Midtown Global Market location closed permanently in early 2016.
