the tart marg
What seems like a million years ago, Alex and I had some friends over for a fajita party at our old 500-square foot Chelsea bungalow. Lacking an electric citrus juicer, we spent a good part of the afternoon hand-reaming the juice out of dozens of limes so that I could make a few pitchers of the margarita recipe that was printed on the Classic Cocktails paper place mat I’d stolen from Stingy Lulus the weekend before. If you like your margaritas so tart you might have to close one eye to swallow a single sip and your memories few and far between, I cannot recommend this old-school recipe enough.
But, if you’re only going to invite over four friends, may I suggest you make slightly less than two-and-a-half pitchers? Because in the years since, rarely a month goes by that we don’t tell the story of Dave and Steve getting ejected from a cab that night in the middle of Times Square, Steve having his “to-go cup” tossed in the trash by a patrolling police officer, Dave getting in a non-sensical argument with the cop’s partner (Steve swears they were speaking in Brogue by this point) who called him a drunken disgrace and told him to go home but Dave pleaded that he was trying to go home but mean cabbie kicked them out and then, when the cops finally sent them on their way, Dave announcing, “Well, I think I handled that pretty well.”
