Tequila Comes To Temple

For the love of tequila: That’s why successful restauranteur Sonia Salazar has brought the drink and her popular food to Temple Street.

Four years after successfully opening Barracuda Bistro & Bar on West Chapel, Salazar and her business partner Sarah Cornelius have launched Te Amo Tequila Bar & Taco. The restaurant and two bars, which opened about three weeks ago, call the space at 182 Temple St., close to the corner of Chapel near the lower Green, home.

Te Amo Tequila Bar & Tacos has 50 brands of tequila and 10 mezcals to help you get to know about the distilled spirits that hail from our neighbor to the south, Mexico.

“We love tequila,” Salazar said of the drink that is made from the heart of the blue agave plant. That ​“we” includes her little sister and lead bartender Jules Mendez. ​“Tequila has become like the new wine.”

If you didn’t know, tequila comes in five varieties; of the brands at Te Amo three of those varieties are regularly available: the silver, the reposado, and the añejo. For some brands, Te Amo also serves some select tequilas, which are the best and most expensive in the world.

Taylor Wright, who also helps keep the drinks flowing at Te Amo, backed Salazar’s wine theory up showing off a couple of bottles of Tequila Ocho. Much like a bottle of the wine, Tequila Ocho notes the year it was made. It notes the precise blue agave field that it comes from. Tequila and mezcal come from different regions of Mexico.

Wright said as with the deep interest that people have developed in wine and now bourbons, you can taste different notes from brand to brand of tequila and can even smell the bouquet. When it comes to mezcal, flavors get more complex and earthy.

“All mezcals are tequilas, but not all tequilas are mezcal,” Salazar said. While both come from the agave plant, tequila comes specifically from the blue agave plant. Mezcal can be made from different varieties of the agave plant. They’re also prepared through a different process. The agave is steamed in the process of making tequila and roasted when it comes to mezcal.

And about those bottles: If you get a chance to sit at the bar, you might notice that there are tequila bottles that look like large bottles of perfume.

“So many things are handmade,” Salazar said. ​“You can tell that these companies hire true artists to make these bottles.”

In addition to straight up tequila that they recommend you sip rather than shoot ​‚Te Amo offers a variety of tequila-based cocktails. One of them is a running favorite called ​“cruel intentions,” which is made with a reposado tequila, passion fruit, and yuzu juice, and topped with prosecco. Dierdre Rifenburgh, who serves as the front of the house manager (and is Salazar’s fiancée), helped craft that drink.

The restaurant specializes in Mexican fare that lends itself to the fun of drinking tequila, such as tacos, nachos, and quesadillas. Salazar said she can’t ever cook anything traditional, so every dish has a little twist. The sweet plantain with pork belly tacos, for instance, has cilantro crema. And she’s using ingredients like jicama, which provides great crunch and texture.

And lime. Lots of lime in the kitchen and at the bar. Wright estimated that the restaurant goes through a thousand limes in a weekend.

All in service of what Salazar said is meant to provide good food at a place you can just hang out.

“We think we’re a fun place,” she said.

Unlike Barracuda, Te Amo, which is twice the size, has room for dancing. So the plan is for a DJ to work Friday nights and for salsa on Saturday nights. Like Barracuda, Te Amo will have two happy hours. The restaurant opens at 3 p.m. each day. The bar is open until 1 a.m. weekdays, until 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday nights. The kitchen stays open until midnight.

Salazar hopes to host parties at her new space, which is decked out with one huge central bar and a second smaller bar, several big leather couches, rows of regular table seating and a more private alcove to accommodate a party.

Salazar has already noticed that her new customers at Te Amo aren’t necessarily her regulars from her other location. Many come from the new apartment buildings that have sprung up in the area since she opened her first restaurant.

Interestingly, the Temple Street location of Te Amo was supposed to be the original home of Barracuda. But the short-lived Ah-Beetz restaurant beat her and Cornelius for that space. They went out of business. So she seized the opportunity to move in.

“It worked out perfect,” she said. ​“What was supposed to be for us happened.”

Click the play button below to hear Salazar talk about her Colombian roots and business acumen on WNHH radio.