An ongoing adventure of travel and living while using a wheelchair. Tim has been disabled from birth. Darryl is his father and caregiver who travels with him.
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You see this variation of a regular margarita at many restaurants these days. It's becoming so prevalent that you can now go into just about any bar and order a Cadillac margarita and the bartender will automatically know you talking about tequila, grand marnier, brandy, plus a sour component.
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This is just an upgrade from a regular margarita but it does make it taste better...if you do it right. The key is to use good ingredients. 100% agave tequila, Grand Marnier (or Cointreau) instead of triple sec, a nice brandy (or cognac if you really want to go upscale) for an added kick. Lime or lemon juice in place of sweet and sour mix.
All hand shaken and served over the rocks.
INGREDIENTS 2 oz. - premium tequila 1.3 oz - Grand Marnier or Cointreau 2/3 oz - brandy or cognac 2 oz - lemon or lime juice (or 1 oz. of each), fresh squeezed
Mix all ingredients in a cocktail shaker over ice, shake and pour over ice into two salted-rim margarita glasses.
We recently moved from Southern California to Northern California and are finally getting to the point where we have a little extra time to pay attention to our blogs at The Musick Channel again.
Let's get things started off with a new cocktail hour.
If you follow this blog, you know that we love a good margarita. I hate going to a bar or restaurant, ordering one, and then finding out they just used basic margarita mix and a shot of tequila. We appreciate those bartenders that take the time to mix each ingredient from scratch...like the bartenders we featured in our "Southern California's Top Three Margaritas" video.
Well, we left our comfy confines in the San Gabriel Valley, east of Los Angeles, and bought a house up here in the Gold Country of California's Motherlode region. We can't wait to settle in but, in the meantime, we have to spend a few nights at an Indian casino...the Jackson Rancheria in Jackson, California...until our sellers have moved out and we're cleared to move in.
Jackson Rancheria is a nice resort and casino but it's almost dry. Only one bar here that opens up at night...what're we to do?
Luckily, we're not packed for travel. We're packed for moving. I find the bag with the tequila, sweet and sour mix, some limes, brandy, and Grand Marnier. That's right...I have a Cadillac margarita bag packed for our adventure.
What I don't have is a cocktail shaker, salt, or glasses. Hmmm....how will we swing this?
The solution is a couple of salt packets my wife has in her purse, an empty water bottle, and the plastic glasses put in our room by the hotel's housekeeping staff.
I cut the limes, run them around the rim of the glasses, dump the salt out on a flat surface (an empty snack bowl we had), and make the drink.
In the empty water bottle, it's two shots of tequila, 1.5 shots of Grand Marnier, a splash of brandy, and the juice of one whole lime. Squeezing in that lime juice was the hardest part. Fill the bottle with sweet and sour until 2/3 full. Cap and shake.
Fill the two glasses with ice (procured from our floor's ice machine) and pour the mixture in.
(Please read our Covid 19 Statement first - Ed) It used to be you couldn't get around the Los Angeles area without a car but that's changing. Ever since the days of Tom Bradley, city leaders have been investing in transit...in fits and starts...and creating a new network of railed, public transit. We're now starting to get to the sweet spot in the results of all that work and billions of dollars worth of investment. The city's rail lines span just over a hundred miles, not counting the regional trains of Metrolink and the express bus lines of the orange and silver lines.
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Recently, the latest extension of the Gold Line opened up in our area of the eastern San Gabriel Valley (another extension of the Expo Line has also opened and you can go from downtown Los Angeles to the Santa Monica Pier). Originally, this line went from Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles and now has been expanded to run from the Azusa/Glendora city line in the northeast to the edge of Montebello in East L.A. to the south.
I've been commuting on it daily to work, now I'm taking a day to bring Letty and Tim along to do a little exploring.
It's around 45 minutes from our start at the City of Hope in Duarte to the Little Tokyo/Arts District station one stop beyond Union Station. To get a little fortification for our journey, we start off with a little pie and coffee at the Pie Hole, a small coffee shop in the Arts District. This former industrial area and extension of Skid Row attracted a lot of artists with it's low rents and large lofts where they could experiment and create away from the attention of Hollywood and downtown. Those days are gone and now it's a gentrified hot spot of Los Angeles.
While we're here, we'll take in a little tasting session at one of the microbreweries here, Angel City Brewery on the corner of Alameda and 4th Streets. We taste a variety of their beers and ales. Some are good, some are a bit more average. Moving on, we head a couple of blocks east to Little Tokyo. This historically Japanese neighborhood is full of sushi bars, kimono shops, Japanese grocery stores, and restaurants.
Today, we're coming here because my wife is a big fan of Japanese knitting and crochet books, which she painstaking translates into working patterns. She finds these at the Kinokuniya Book Store in Weller Court, next to the Little Tokyo Doubletree Hotel. A DASH bus takes us to downtown's other Asian enclave, Chinatown. Just north of the Hollywood freeway, in the area around Broadway and Hill Streets, Chinatown is another historical neighborhood that was originally Italian. When Union Station displaced the original Chinatown when it was built, the neighborhood moved a few blocks north to its current location. A Shaolin festival is going on today with booths on meditation, books, musicians, and souvenirs.
The main stage features kung fu demonstrations by pint-sized students of local schools.
Around the corner on Broadway, the Phoenix Bakery has been turning out very good sweets for over 80 years. The owner takes pity on me and gives me some free samples of the sugar butterflies, just being finished. They are outstanding.
Of course, that leads to me buying a box to take home along with the almond cookies my wife bought. Chinatown has it's own Gold Line Station so we climb back onboard for the last leg of our trip to the eastern end in Azusa.
From the Azusa station, it's a short walk south until we hear Max yell out, "it's been a long time, where you been? I was about to call your house."
Mexican food fans in this neighborhood know that this is the call to come sip some of the state's finest margaritas and eat some fantastic food at Max's Mexican Cuisine. We're on the train, so we'll take two. Why not?!? Darryl Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick All Rights Reserved
To celebrate, here's our Margarita Madness Cocktail Hour which features the video that's embedded in Chapter 1 of our book. Enjoy...
The first chapter is our new Southern California's Top Three Margaritas and features this video that we've spent the last 6 months working on and putting together so we could launch it with our book.
Watch the Video!
Southern California's Top Three Margaritas
Check out the video and for the complete story...along with eight more delicious chapters and well over an hour of video...go over to Amazon and download the book. You'll have your own personal GPS to delicious eating up and down this Golden State.
Below, check out our Margarita Madness video where we try to determine our own personal favorite margarita recipe.
Thanks for you support - Darryl
We've been challenged, folks. The first Cocktail Hour we ever did was my version of a margarita. A bartender in Baja California said it wasn't a margarita...to be authentic, a margarita had to consist of only tequila, Cointreau (or Grand Marnier or triple sec), and lime juice.
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Now I've had a margarita at the bar legend says invented this drink and had it that way. It's OK, but not as tasty as I can make it. But the gauntlet has been thrown and we must answer.
Tim joins me as we make a completely authentic margarita and we give it a taste. Then, we make one with my recipe and see which one tastes better. Who will win? Watch the video embedded in this report to find out!
Classic Margarita 1.5 oz. tequila 1 oz. Cointreau (or triple sec) juice of one lime
Salt the rim of a martini glass using the rind of the lime. Mix ingredients in a cocktail shaker half filled with ice and shake. Strain over the rocks in the martini glass.
Darryl's Margarita 1.5 oz. tequila 1 oz. Cointreau (or triple sec) .5 oz. brandy juice of one lime 1 oz. Sweet and Sour mix.
Salt the rim of a margarita glass using the rind of the lime. Mix ingredients in a cocktail shaker half filled with ice and shake. Strain over the rocks in the margarita glass.
Upon learning that we’d be going to one of his favorite restaurants in the world while he was at camp, Tim was not a happy camper. “Don’t worry,” I told him, “the weekend after you get back is a three day weekend…let’s go up there when you get home.”
Of course, if you followed our trip without Tim to Paso Robles, you’ll know that we had to make an emergency trip to pick him up because he got sick. And sick he was for a couple of days. We didn’t know if he’d be well enough by the weekend to go, but thankfully he did get better and off we went.
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The restaurant, as many of you who know us will already guess, is the wonderful Los Tacos de Huicho in Bakersfield, California which sits at the southern end of the San Joaquin, or Central, Valley.
Yes, we did go to Huicho’s and, yes, the food was as absolutely delicious as always, but this trip is not about Huicho’s or even one of our favorite destinations, Bakersfield, all that much.
After dinner, it’s back on the 99 north to our next stop about an hour’s north…the Charter Inn and Suites in Tulare. The hotel, which sits adjacent to the freeway as Prosperity Avenue, is about the best hotel I know of in the Central Valley along the 99 corridor.
See More California Food Destinations in our Kindle E-Book!
Big, spacious rooms with a great hot breakfast buffet. Monday through Wednesday, they also include dinner. There’s a lending library in the lobby, a nice pool area with spa, a patio area with a barbecue, and a very good staff.
Our room was a king size suite. Not technically accessible but at least as accessible as many other “handicap” rooms we’ve stayed in that didn’t feature a roll-in shower. Wide access areas for the wheelchair, comfortable bed, a queen size sofabed, a large bathtub which more than accommodated our bath chair, and good wifi access. There are even robes in the closet. All for around $90 – 100 per night.
The Central Valley is the biggest agricultural area in the country. It’s not the California of beaches and palm trees, but plays a vital role in providing you with the food on your table. This morning, we’ll see some of that first hand.
After breakfast, it’s over to nearby Visalia where a farmers market sets up in the local Sears parking lot each Saturday. It’s jammed packed with produce, cheeses, eggs, and more. It’s not set up like a lot of farmers markets back home where there are more craft vendors and kiddie rides than there are farmers. Here, while there are a couple of non-food vendors, it’s all about the food.
And the food is amazingly good. Sweet donut peaches, large red grapes, figs, oranges, heirloom tomatoes, zucchini bigger than my arm, and many items that, frankly, I have no clue what they are but they look delicious.
Our plan is to load up on all the fresh produce we can, keep it in our air conditioned hotel room, and then pack on ice for the trip home in the hot, valley summer heat. It worked like a charm and we dined like royalty on all that farm-fresh produce for a couple of weeks.
Back at the hotel, we pack the most perishable items into the small in-room fridge, and turn the a/c up for the rest. We have a nice swim in the pool and then head over to Hanford, which is about 15 miles west of us.
It’s the 4th of July weekend and the temps are over the century mark. In downtown Hanford, it’s 106 degrees. Not a problem.
The main reason we’re here in this beautiful little town is ice cream. One of the state’s…and probably the country’s…great, classic ice cream parlors sits across the street from the town’s plaza. We’re talking about Superior Dairy.
In this location over 80 years, Superior is a gorgeous, small town ice cream emporium with brass chandeliers, pink booths and counter stools, and some of the most generous portions of frozen cream you’ll ever see.
Letty has just one scoop of rocky road.
Tim and I share two scoops of cookies and cream, covered with a rich caramel sauce and whipped cream. Look at those two pictures. That is quality ice cream served in gigantic portions. Together, that’s about $7 worth of dessert.
Superior is also known for their S-O-S (Superior Oversized Sundae) sundae, pictured above, a gargantuan banana split that can easily feed four or more.
The cold ice cream cools us down nicely from the furnace outside. We walk across the street to the shady park that houses some beautifully restored buildings…the Municipal Auditorium, the Veteran’s Memorial Hall, and the old courthouse…across the street from an equally impressive restored Fox Theater.
It’s shady, with a cool fountain, a couple of snack stand, and lots of cool grass to play or lay on. We see this little parakeet, probably someone’s escaped pet, happily chewing on stalks of grass.
In the evening, it’s back over to Visalia to visit the Rawhide.
Just south of Visalia’s great and walkable downtown is Recreation Park, an old minor league stadium. The team, going through lots of names over its 65 year history, is currently affiliated with the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Rawhide are the Diamondbacks single A team playing in the California League.
In 2009, the stadium was renovated with new club level and grandstand down the right field/first base line. There are wheelchair seats along this area, where we sat, and also in the stands along the left field line. There are a couple of accessible seats behind home plate about six rows back, but they’re behind an aisle and not too desirable.
Access to the level we sat at was via a slow, creaky lift that had to be repaired before we could use it…you can read more about in our stadium review.
At the game, it was a salute to military night with veteran’s throwing out the first pitch, different branches being honored each inning…i.e., one inning Navy active members and veterans were asked to stand up so the audience could applaud their service…another veteran singing God Bless America during the 7th inning stretch, and…most poignant of all…cadets setting and serving a dinner to an empty table in front of the mound to POWs and MIAs who should be there but are not.
The game itself was pretty exciting with the Rawhide easily handling the visiting Lake Elsinore Storm…even though the PA announcer called them the Inland Empire 66ers for two innings before he caught on.
The food was miserable and delicious. The miserable was the Italian sausage that Letty had, the delicious was the incredibly good bratwurst that I got to replace it from a grill near our seats. A very good selection of beer, including local microbrews, topped the concession selections.
All in all, a very fun game with just a couple of glitches. Visalia’s a very fun place to be.
In the morning, we checked out, shopped the outlet mall behind our hotel, and moved south to Bakersfield. Here we checked in to the Marriott Springhill Suites, which is pretty much our vacation condo these days with all the time we spend in this town.
We wanted to take one more night and go to Huicho’s one more time. Before that, though, we went to our favorite bar. I’m a fan of the margarita and love when one is made right. Here in Bakersfield is one of the best.
Mexicali, on 18th Street on the eastern edge of downtown along Mill Creek, makes the best I’ve had. Their house margarita made from scratch is a tarty little piece of heaven. Their Cadillac margarita takes what is the best plain margarita I’ve had up several notches on the taste scale. It is the nectar of the gods.
Along with the great drinks, the bar here is so comfortable and the people so friendly that it feels like home, having drinks with some old friends. A truly classic, great, and dark bar.
On the morning of the 4th, after a fitful night of sleep as some other rude guests were shooting off firecrackers in the parking lot (necessitating many calls to security) in the middle of the night, we check out and head to Huichos. (Note…after complaining at checkout, the hotel manager knocked our rate down to $50).
On Friday, the people at Huichos told us they would be open on the 4th. Between then and now, someone must have changed their mind because now they’re closed. Darn!
We’d saved up our appetite for this and were now disappointed. Back in downtown, we were looking for somewhere…pretty much anywhere…that would be open on this holiday. I see a burger stand with people working out back so I pull in.
Juicy Burger is a Five Guys knockoff located on 24th and M Streets, in the same building as the University of La Verne’s Bakersfield satellite campus. It looks just like Five Guys when you walk in and has a very similar menu. It also has both Coke and Pepsi machines, so Coke and Pepsi fans should all be happy here.
We order some burgers and fries, not really expecting much.
The burgers were amazingly good. Juicy, cooked to perfection, with great, tasty produce. The fries were also good, not served in quite the heaps that Five Guys does, but the burgers were the star of the show here…incredible!
The staff here was very friendly and competent. Each meal comes with a cookie but the counter person also gave me one to sample while we waited for our food. Great food, great service, and fast food pricing. What more could you want? We now have another very good place to eat on our ever-growing and long Bakersfield food list…seriously, this is such a good food city. Come here for that if nothing else.
I hunted down the manager and let her know just how much I loved this place.
Our appetites nicely sated, our disappointment at missing Huichos subsiding, we climb into the van to make that one last trip over the Grapevine to head back home.
Darryl Copyright 2011- Darryl Musick All Rights Reserved
Ready for the Top Five? Last week's first installment of the Top Ten are below these five. Now, on to the Top Five most popular Cocktail Hour videos, as voted by you, our visitors...
5. Tequila Tasting with the Tios - A cross-border tequila run, followed by a tasting session at a Yuma hotel with two of our Mexican uncles and our aunt. These guys know their tequila and it was a lot of fun filming this with them.
4. Amaretto Sour - This lower alcohol cocktail proved mighty popular with our visitors. Note that although it is lighter in alcohol, it still packs plenty of calories. Still, a tasty drink.
3. Belgian Beer Festival - An annual festival at Lucky Baldwin's pubs in Pasadena and Sierra Madre, California. This video comes from the Sierra Madre location.
Here is the rest of the Top Ten Cocktail Hour Videos...
10. White Sangria - This wine based drink has lower alcohol content than most of our recipes. Since it's mostly wine and juice, it's not bad in the calorie count either.
9. Tequila Party at Rudy's - Each year, Rudy's Mexican Restaurant in Monrovia, California has a tequila tasting night with free-flowing agave spirits poured by reps from different distilleries. Rudy also puts out a great buffet to keep those stomachs full.
