Some dishes and drinks are so spectacular, they leave us wondering how they were made. We decided to find out. Welcome to Best Bites, a series where we get in the kitchen with Valley chefs and bartenders to find out what sparked their culinary genius. Dig in!
Alex Montoya feels like frozen cocktails have gotten a bad rap.
Most drinkers have, at some point, sipped a slushy sugar bomb, and it put them off, the Barter & Shake beverage director says. He speculates that this could be because there was less knowledge of cocktail science in generations past (the frozen margarita was invented in 1971), so some bartenders were likely making their best guess when they tossed things into a frozen-drink machine.
Here in the desert, where there’s plenty of need for fun, cooling cocktails. Montoya wants to change people’s minds.
“Frozen margaritas and frozen daiquiris deserve a second chance,” he says. “That’s my hot take.”
Montoya is part of the bar group behind the popular cocktail experiences Platform 18, Undertow and Grey Hen Rx, as well as the Arcadia-adjacent dive Sunny’s Lounge. He’s crafted boozy ice creams, soft serves and frozen cocktails for those bars. It’s perhaps the natural progression of someone whose first hospitality job was scooping ice cream at the Phoenix parlor Churn.
“It also taught me about fun and whimsy,” Montoya says. “That’s something that, in this era of cocktail bars and hospitality, our spaces desperately need.”
At this point in the summer, when the pavement seems to sizzle even before the sun comes up, we’ll happily take some whimsy if we can also hide from the heat in a cold, cavernous bar. Sunny’s Lounge, which sits on Indian School Road and 27th Street, fits the bill. There are no windows, cozy booths and friendly staff who are quick with banter or a drink recommendation.
During a recent visit, we ordered the frozen, hibiscus-toned Pink Margarita.
The tipple immediately frosts the globe-shaped tulip glass. The first sip is so ice-cold you can feel the chill move down your throat, quickly followed by the sting of Thai chile. This combination of fire and ice numbs the impact to a pleasant burn. The sweet acidity of strawberries, hibiscus and lime balances the cocktail. A sugar bomb, it is not. We caught up with Montoya to find out how this cocktail comes together.
Making the Pink Margarita
Childhood memories of visiting Tacos Mich & Bar for tacos and agua fresca inspired Montoya to make this marg. The drink starts with Ana Maria Tequila, which gets its soft pink hue from the addition of red wine. Montoya layers even more pink ingredients into the drink, including hibiscus tea and strawberry syrup.
The tipple comes together in a prep kitchen down the street at the bar group’s “home base,” Century Grand, the Arcadia building that houses three of Barter & Shake’s cocktail lounges under one roof.
First, the team prepares syrups and tinctures, including the Thai chile. To extract its vegetal notes and heat, the tiny chiles are steeped in Everclear.
“Since it is so high proof, it kind of eats away at the organic material of the plant or herb that we’re using,” Montoya says. “It just imparts a lot of flavor and a lot of intensity.”
They also make hibiscus tea. “The hibiscus did a lot of labor to make it more balanced in terms of what you’d want from a margarita, which is a nice acidic punch,” Montoya says.
To extract pure fruit flavor, the kitchen has a massive cold-press juicer with a cannon-like tube, down which chefs fire quarts of strawberries or whole pineapples. As chef Andrew Fouser shakes berries into the press, it releases the sweet aroma of the juiciest ripe strawberry you’ve ever eaten. They mix that juice with sugar to make a strawberry syrup.
Once they have these components, the margarita is batched at Century Grand. Making frozen cocktails requires a delicate balance of spirits, sweeteners, bitters and water. Alcohol won’t freeze and sugar can become gloppy when chilled, Montoya explains. Meanwhile, the cold makes it harder for our taste buds to pick up on flavors, he says. To build a balanced frozen marg, Montoya dives into math and science. Using a refractometer, a tiny handheld device that looks like a kazoo, he measures the brix — the amount of dissolved sugar in the cocktail.
“It’s a really awesome way to explore flavor,” Montoya says of the challenge of making frozen cocktails. “Finding ways to make that flavor work and to get your point across is just challenging and fun.”
At Sunny’s, the chilled cocktail base gets added to a frozen drink machine, where it spins for about 30 to 45 minutes. The Pink Margarita just landed on Sunny’s new cocktail menu since people seek out frozen drinks this time of year, Montoya notes. The Pink Margarita has been popular. He hopes it’ll leave a better impression than the frozen margs of yore.
“It’s really cool to see people enjoying something that maybe they had a bad experience with or didn’t think that they would enjoy,” Montoya says. “One of my favorite things to do is to surprise people with things they may not have thought they would have liked, but then they end up loving.”
Sunny’s Lounge
2701 E. Indian School Road
Sara Crocker
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