From the outset, Mariano Martinez’s restaurant, the place that put frozen margaritas on the map, was an experience. Then called Mariano’s Mexican Cuisine, the original was located in Dallas’ Old Town shopping center, a 5-minute ride from Southern Methodist University. Inside, Mexican music piped through the dining room and blue lighting simulated moonlight. Sorority sisters wearing skirts and gaucho hats worked as greeters. The floor was covered with inexpensive shag carpeting, and at the end of service, employees used yard rakes to clean up fallen tortilla chips. The house specialty was the margarita.
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. 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. 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.
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