![]() He believes the business is the culmination of their father-son relationship. Take Rodarte’s own liquid nitrogen margarita, a drink he first dreamed up in culinary school that’s now the most popular at his and his father’s restaurant, Beto & Son. (In fact, the drink scene is such a draw that Visit Dallas recently relaunched the Margarita Mile, a self-guided food and drink trail of eateries and bars shaking up modern takes on the timeless bev.) As always, with time comes innovation, so dozens of hotspots across the city have put their salt-rimmed stake in the ground with unique twists on the O.G. You’d be hard pressed to find a Tex-Mex joint in the city that doesn’t have at least one frozen marg machine whirring away behind the bar. ![]() Today, it sits in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, where it’s been since 2005.Ĭountless restauranteurs have followed Martinez’s lead since his heyday. ![]() The original machine produced countless cocktails for an entire decade before breaking down. “I’m sure it was unfathomable by Martinez at the time, but as a Dallasite, I can confidently speak for all of us when I say Dallas would not be the same place without this innovation,” says Rodarte. Boozy and impeccably chilled, the drink changed the cocktail world and the Tex-Mex restaurant scene (which Dallas is famous for) forever. After toying with his dad’s recipe to get the ideal consistency and flavor, he finally nailed it. Martinez tried and failed to obtain a Slurpee machine from 7-Eleven, then bought a secondhand soft-serve ice cream machine to solve the problem. I doubt a blender would last us even a week.” “For example, at Beto & Son, we will sell over 500 variations of a frozen margarita in a day. “The blender is obviously easiest and quickest if you’re making small batches but almost impossible to use in a restaurant because of the sheer volume,” explains Rodarte. (Today, Mariano still owns and frequents five restaurants across Texas.) The first night was a roaring success-except the bartender was buried in margarita orders and began haphazardly tossing ingredients into the blender just to keep up, resulting in less-than-delicious frozen margaritas. When Dallas voted yes, the younger Martinez opened his own restaurant, Mariano’s Mexican Cuisine. ![]() This changed in 1970, when an amendment made it lawful to sell individual cocktails once approved in local-option elections. The young Martinez grew up bussing tables at his dad’s Mexican resto, El Charo, where he’d see him blitz a few frozen margaritas in a blender for his customers, back when liquor couldn’t be sold by the drink in Texas eateries. Martinez may have perfected the frozen margarita, but it was his father who planted the seed for the cocktail. ![]()
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