"Bar Month" at OnMilwaukee.com is back for another round! The whole month of February, we're serving up intoxicatingly fun bars and club articles -- including guides, unique features, drink recipes and more. Grab a designated driver and dive in!
I tried my first Michelada in Merida, Mexico, a city of almost 1 million people on the Yucatan Peninsula -- and one that I'd never heard of until my awesome visit there in 2002. Sitting down at one of the city's most well-known restaurants, we asked the waiter what kind of good local drink we could order. He pointed to the Michelada on the menu, and when I asked him if it was tasty, he just shrugged his shoulders.
Hardly a ringing endorsement, but my vacation giddiness prevailed and I tried this most peculiar beer cocktail. Think of it as a Mexican Bloody Mary. Spicy, salty and strangely refreshing, I'm still waiting for it to make its way to Wisconsin.
There isn't one agreed upon recipe for the drink, and I'd imagine that it varies across Mexico (turns out it's not native to that region after all). Here's a recipe from seriouseats.com that closely mirrors the one drink I had at that Merida restaurant:
1/2 lime
Coarse salt
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce
1 dash soy sauce
1 dash Tabasco sauce
1 pinch black pepper
1 dash Maggi seasoning, optional
12 oz. beer, preferably a dark Mexican beer like Negra Modelo (Although I prefer it with a light beer, like Sol)
1. Squeeze the juice from the lime and set aside. Salt the rim of a highball glass by rubbing it with the lime and dipping it in coarse salt. Fill with ice.
2. Add lime juice, Worcestershire, soy sauce, Tabasco, pepper and Maggi, if desired.
3. Pour in beer, stir and serve, adding more beer as you sip.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
