Drink This Now: The Patron Anejo Margarita Kit from Jarocho Pescados y Mariscos

Photo by April Fleming

Somehow, time has not *actually* shifted, and we are coming up on the one-year anniversary of  COVID-19’s major disruption to our lives.

Prior to the pandemic and all of this at-home time, cocktail-making at home (at least in my case) was essentially solely reserved for parties or celebrations, if even then. Though I fancy myself as the kind of person who would enjoy things like muddling, shrub-making, or doing creative and interesting things with peels, the reality is that I never will actually do any of these things. But I do like a cocktail on the porch, so simple, tasty recipes are what we contend with.

The one classic cocktail that has been the number one, always good, stay-at-home standby is the margarita. Punchy, tart, and extremely refreshing when balanced correctly, they’re as good with snacks as with finer foods. There are also no obscure or hard-to-find ingredients. Easy.

If there has been one tiny silver lining about COVID-19 and the new stay-at-home normal, it is the major cultural and legal (and likely only temporary) shift on the permissibility of carryout cocktails. And while I can make a decent margarita on my own, the pro will assuredly always do better here.

Many but certainly not all restaurants are slinging cocktails to go. For a solid margarita, your best bets are to venture down Southwest Boulevard, stop at Mission Taco Joint for Jenn Tossato’s recipes, or visit Brookside Barrio (which in a surprise to me has my second-favorite to-go margarita in KC with its Spicy Pepina/Cucumber option).

The real winner though is the Patron Anejo kit from Jarocho Pescados y Mariscos. For $40, you take home a 375ml bottle of barrel-aged Patron Anejo tequila (this alone will cost you $30 at a liquor store), and house-made agave syrup. Then, the real difference-makers: fresh-squeezed orange, lemon, and lime juices; a whole lime; and a small ramekin of Tajin (A Mexican chili-lime seasoning) to dip the rim of your glass in. It takes the standard tequila-triple-sec-lime-salt configuration and returns with a 10-fold better version of each of those things, from the tequila itself to the fresh fruit and the salt. Each kit makes about six cocktails. To make it truly an unfair fight, you can also pick something up from Carlos Falcon’s menu of fresh seafood.