The Grinch, the Golden and one just for Barbie: We raise a glass to some of Green Bay's most famous margaritas
Behind every great Green Bay margarita, there’s a story about how it got that way and taste testers really good at keeping a secret.
Take Los Banditos’ house margarita, which dates back to 1981 when Pat Beimborn and Craig Galloway bought the struggling Mexican restaurant on the city’s east side. The place came with a recipe, but they wanted a better one, so they went to see “a guy in Milwaukee” who showed them the basics of his.
Then the real work began.
“Craig and I sat back in the office we had in the old Los and we sort of made a big batch and just kept adding stuff to it and tasting it and saying, ‘Oh, not quite,’” Beimborn said. “And then we’d add a little more of this, a little more of that and finally we either got really drunk and said, ‘Yeah, that’s perfect,’ or it really was perfect and we weren’t drunk.”
It turns out it was the latter.
Forty-two years later, Beimborn and Galloway are retired and the original Los Banditos on Main Street closed in 2018, but it’s that same signature house margarita still served at the west-side Los Banditos, 2335 W. Mason St., they opened 35 years ago. You can get one by the glass or by the carafe, a share-with-friends liter that dates back to Los before Beimborn and Galloway bought it. You can even get one to-go (in a container with a tamper-evident seal, as required by Wisconsin law).
At Escapades, its famous Golden Margarita, often just called “a regular on the rocks” by longtime customers, originated with former owners Rafael and Tracy Ramirez, who opened the bar at 2657 University Ave. in 1989. It has been the best-seller by a mile for decades, said Mary Lawler, who bought the business with husband Greg 3½ years ago and has been bartending there for 31 years.
Customers often rave about how smooth the Golden is, and Lawler won't disagree.
“I hate to brag, but I go everywhere and try margaritas, because I love margaritas, and I find ones that are decent but none of them are ours,” Lawler said. “It’s not that I dislike them, it’s just that you can’t match ours, and there’s obviously a reason for that. We have a good recipe and we don’t tell anyone.”
For every local margarita steeped in local history, there’s the pretty new trendsetter turning heads.
Pablo’s Mexican Grill & Cantina, 850 Kepler Drive, isn’t far from Green Bay East Cinema, so when customers began coming in on their way to see director Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” blockbuster, it got the creative juices flowing for Claudia Torres, who opened the business with husband Pablo and their two children, Pablo and Kat, six years ago.
She experimented with a recipe and and landed on a dolled-up frozen concoction she called Barbie’s Margarita. Ever since she posted a glamour shot of it on Facebook with a pink sombrero, moviegoers have been coming in and requesting it.
It’s pink, of course, and leans strawberry but “really it tastes likes heaven,” Torres said. “It’s that drink that you don’t feel the tequila in it so you don’t feel guilty about drinking it. It’s really pretty. It’s refreshing. And you don’t feel it until the end.”
You've been warned.
The joy of a margarita is about more than just what's in the glass
So what is it about a margarita that elevates it from merely going out for a drink to feeling like you’ve embarked on some kind of celebration or special occasion, even if, beneath the salted rim and lime wedge, it's just an ordinary Monday?
Refreshing, yes, and a good one is a perfect blend of sweet and sour, but it's more than that.
“I can go anywhere and have a beer, but I think for a lot of people a margarita does a couple of things. It’s something different, but I think it also kind of takes them back to vacation a little bit,” said David Zander, general manager at Margarita’s Famous Mexican Food & Cantina, 1241 Lombardi Access Road in Ashwaubenon. “We pride ourselves on having what we think is the best margarita in town — size and taste and a flavor for just about everybody.”
It starts with quality ingredients and consistency, Zander said, which is why Margarita’s makes 40-gallon batches that get served in 12- and 22-ounce glasses. Presentation counts, too, like a frosted and stemmed glass.
While it doesn’t take an elaborately stocked liquor cabinet to whip up a modest margarita at home — tequila, triple sec and fresh-squeezed lime juice — it’s one of those drinks that’s far more fun to order out.
“I think that’s true with any cocktail. I know how to make an Old-Fashioned. I’ve been making Old-Fashioneds for over 50 years, but I like them better at restaurants. I think that’s true for most people,” Beimborn said.
“Everything is just better on a bar stool,” said Steve Svoboda, who owns Los Banditos with Jason Steel and started working there as a dishwasher in 1987.
At Pablo’s, one of the big draws is its house margarita by the pitcher. On a nice summer afternoon day, groups of friends come with their dogs to hang out on the pet-friendly patio and catch up over a pitcher.
“Sometimes it’s not what are you drinking, but with margaritas, it’s who you are sharing with it or the atmosphere that you are in,” Torres said. “Here at the restaurant we play happy music and girls or couples come after a hard day or a hot day, they come over here and they sit down and share something. It’s the time when you can relax and enjoy.”
Lawler likes to think part of the reason the margaritas go down so easy at Escapades is the friendly company.
“We’re like the margarita Cheers bar of this neighborhood,” Lawler said. “We’re known for getting to know people’s names and remembering them when they come in and remembering what they like to drink. I think that’s part of the charm.”
Flavors include The Grinch, Skittles, rhubarb and 'a half and half'
House margaritas tend to be the most popular at most places, with strawberry a close second, but there’s a world of flavors to explore: mango, raspberry, peach, pomegranate, blue raspberry, banana, cherry, kiwi and huckleberry, to name a few. Vintage Cantina in downtown Green Bay serves up coconut, grapefruit and salty watermelon margaritas. El Maya Mexican Restaurant in De Pere has a cilantro-jalapeno variation, as spicy specialty margaritas continue to take off.
Margarita’s, which opened in 2003, offers a host of flavors daily, along with a flavor of the month. Owner Tim Kuehn, his daughter, Taylor Kuehn, and Zander dream up monthly flavors, some of which return each year and others that are new introductions. It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.
“There’s some taste testing that goes along with that,” Zander said. “We’ve got to make sure it’s good, right?”
There’s a blackberry mint hibiscus and a pumpkin pie (billed as “dessert in a glass”) in the rotation. July’s featured flavor was coconut blueberry. August brings raspberry lemonade.
“Rhubarb is a huge hit in May every year when we do that,” Zander said. “We didn’t realize it would take off the way that it did.”
The most popular one is The Grinch, a holiday favorite made with the house margarita, Blue Curacao, peach and orange juice and garnished with a candy cane and red sugar on the rim.
For its first 15 or 20 years, Los Banditos only offered its house and strawberry flavors before eventually adding others.
“Our customers just started coming up with their own concoctions,” Beimborn said. “Can I get a half and half? Can I get an 80/20? Can I get a 90/10? They’d just want a splash of strawberry just to make it pink.”
They still do, Svoboda said.
Margarita’s keeps any of its combos to just two flavors. Strawberry-mango and raspberry-mango top Zander’s suggestions, but he also likes blackberry-peach and blackberry-mango.
Order the “Skittles” at Escapades and you’ll get all the flavors on the board together in one margarita. Lawler recommends that one on the rocks, rather than blended, to better taste the different flavors.
A few words about tequila
Margaritas have evolved with tequila, as more specialty and top-shelf tequilas offer more sophisticated tastes. Appreciation of the distilled spirit made from the blue agave plant has come a long way from the days of doing shots of Jose Cuervo on your 21st birthday.
Pablo’s carries more than 75 kinds of tequila, some infused with coffee or ghost peppers and others distilled in small batches or multiple times. Prices can range from $100 to $12,000 a bottle or $3 or $4 to $30 a shot.
“If you want a good, good tequila, it’s not for margaritas. It’s for sipping,” Pablo Torres said. “Like a good whiskey, you are not going to put any Coke in that whiskey if it’s $100 a bottle.”
Pablo’s popular house margarita is premade from his own recipe, but customers can also opt for a made-from-scratch margarita with real orange and lime juices and the tequila of their choosing.
Blended or on the rocks?
It’s a personal preference, but if you’re looking to appreciate distinct flavors or a higher-end tequila, on the rocks is the way to go. Same if you’re planning to eat more than just chips and salsa with your margarita. A blended one contains a lot of ice and a grande can fill you up before you finish that 10-inch Pablo’s Burrito.
For reasons that are a mystery to Svoboda, Los Banditos sells more on the rocks than blended in the summer and the other way around in fall and winter.
What's with the salt on the rim?
It started on the beaches of Mexico as a way to keep flies off of drinks, Claudia Torres said. Most customers at Pablo's still ask for salt on the rim, but some prefer sugar or nothing at all. Pablo’s also has a pink Himalayan salt that is a little spicy. Customers tend not to be wild about it, but Torres loves it.
Do people drink more margaritas in the summer?
Not necessarily, at least not in Green Bay. Even though they’re often associated with summer, they’re a consistent big seller year-round.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s hot or cold. Season doesn’t matter,” Lawler said.
Who drinks more margaritas: men or women?
“I would say if there’s an edge, it’s not much. It’s pretty down the line,” Zander said. “If you come in here on an afternoon and look around the bar, you’re going to see just as many men drinking margaritas as you will women.”
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Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KendraMeinert.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Raise a glass to a few of Green Bay's most famous margaritas
