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“Potent but polite,” in Mariano’s words, and I have to agree. It’s icy cold, the perfect balance of tart and barely sweet, and the tequila is present but not aggressively so. My machine-poured margarita is served in a tall, slender cocktail glass. While we wait for our table, we order a round of margaritas and I notice the hat-tips to Martinez’s invention-a golden margarita statue, plaques sharing the mythology: “The World’s First Frozen Margarita…” Beaming customers stop to take pictures alongside.
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It’s spaghetti Western elegant, or as Google describes it, “caballero-chic.” Front and center is the horseshoe bar and the prized frozen margarita machines. The interior looks like a cavernous hunting lodge with log walls, wagon wheel chandeliers, and a small ecosystem of taxidermied animals mounted in the dining room. Like the pick-up trucks and the ten-gallon hats, the sheer size reminds you you’re in Texas. The Dallas location, now called Mariano’s Hacienda Ranch, has since moved to nearby Northeast Dallas and is one of five locations. On a sweltering Texas evening on the cusp of August, I visit Mariano’s restaurant. With time, the restaurant would become a Dallas institution-the invention of the frozen margarita machine only added to the legend. As Mariano explains on a recent phone call, people would order a “setup,” like Coke over ice with a lime, and pour their liquor of choice-usually whiskey or rum-into the mix. Prior to that, it was a “brown bag state,” meaning customers could bring a bottle of alcohol to a restaurant as long as they kept it in the bag, off the table. It was 1971-the same year that a coffeehouse called Starbucks opened its doors in Seattle and just a year after Texas passed a constitutional amendment making liquor by the drink legal. The floor was covered with inexpensive shag carpeting, and at the end of service, employees used yard rakes to clean up fallen tortilla chips. Sorority sisters wearing skirts and gaucho hats worked as greeters. Inside, Mexican music piped through the dining room and blue lighting simulated moonlight. Then called Mariano’s Mexican Cuisine, the original was located in Dallas’ Old Town shopping center, a 5-minute ride from Southern Methodist University. From the outset, Mariano Martinez’s restaurant, the place that put frozen margaritas on the map, was an experience.