“The Marjie is your honeycomb,” Angel said to me the other day. What does this mean? Well, let’s get into it. When I started at Rustic, a cocktail named The Marjorita. often pronounced in a myriad of different way by guests, was on the menu. Yeah, the proverbial spicy margarita. Look above, a few of the methods have changed over the years but the cocktail ingredients have remained the same. Once upon a time, elderflower was the new cool thing, but now it’s a little ho hum in my opinion. I’ve been wanting to revamp this puppy for a while, we tasted one the other day and felt it wasn’t that good. Indeed…The “Signature” drink side on the menu right now is pretty lame and dated, I mean, there’s the old staples on there…Maybe I’m just bored with it…I guess it’s like the almonds, olives, and bread part of the regular menu and then yes, the honeycomb on the dessert menu which will survive the upcoming nuclear apocalypse along with cockroaches and line cooks.

The problem is, people love the damn cocktail. It’s firmly ingrained within the zeitgeist of Rustic Canyon. They come in, they get a beets and berries and a marjie. If it were ever taken off the menu, there wouldn’t exactly be rioting in the streets but guests would ask for it anyway. For those of you not aware of this, the spicy margarita is a SoCal staple menu item. People here love tequila and mezcal, they’re all under the impression it’s better for you than other spirits…A bit of a sleight of hand by the industry…Yes, clear spirits not aged in oak are a little “better” for you but somewhere along the way some genius marketing machine put something out about tequila not being a depressant and yada, yada. It’s alcohol you fools.

I’ve been mulling over a replacement for some time now. I’ve come to hate the Marjie which was once the Marjorita, a drink created by the original consultation dude back before my time when Rustic acquired their liquor license somewhere around 2012 or 2013. It was named after one of our original bartenders, a woman named Marjorie, a bit of a legend who I’ve never met. Her spirit lives on with the cocktail as well as the small, foldable stool we have under the well, a product acquired because Marjie couldn’t reach the taller shelves.

Anyway, there is some history there which I dig, but I also think the drink could be improved, possible stripped of a few things, made more simple, but elevated. I mean, a simple Tommy’s margarita with a top shelf item and a dash of spicy bitters is pretty unreal on its own. There’s really no need for all the cucumber, mint, elderflower business. Maybe that’s the trick…But people hear cucumber and they get all wild…And mint of course is great with nearly anything. Maybe we’ll go back to muddling…A mint cuke smash? I don’t know. That’s the other x-factor of this cocktail…It would be really good with a big trifecta muddle of jalapeno, cuke, and mint, but as I’ve said before, muddling annoys me–It’s just a lot of clean up, especially on a busy night. The mint flakes get everywhere, the pieces get caught in the baleen of the Hawthorne strainer. The sinks get clogged if you space out and forget the muddled shmeg is in there. I know, I know, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs…I’d like to break this one. Something will come to me…I hope…I’m not super happy with the menu right now for whatever reason, I’m sure it’s fine but to me it’s a bit all over the place…Multiples of the same ingredients in different drinks drives me crazy…We’ve got a couple of those right now. I think I have some anxiety about the seasonal change and what to add. I used to get inspiration from just attending the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market. I don’t go anymore because it’s too damn far away…But I should anyway…I just don’t feel like driving to Santa Monica twice in one day. Shit man, I’m a bit burned out I think. For those who are not parents, the time change this part of the year is absolutely brutal on parents. Everyone else gets an extra hour of sleep except for us. Kids wake up now earlier because of the dratted fall behind. It gets lighter earlier now and kids for the most part gel with the sun rising and setting. It seems paltry, but that one hour can be the difference between six hours of sleep and seven. Maybe a staycation is in order…Maybe the Marjie is good, not bad…Sometimes the low hanging fruit is the ripest.