February brings us the overrated holiday Valentines Day, but the short month redeems itself with the oft overlooked National Margarita Day — February 22, apparently. Yeah, I just learned about it myself, but according to The Food Channel it’s a real thing, and who am I to argue with $4 margaritas (ALL DAY Tuesday) at Cantina Laredo?
It should be a special occasion for Mariano Martinez, owner of Mariano’s in Lake Highlands. The longtime Lakewood resident invented the first frozen margarita machine. He told me in a 2009 interview that the bartenders at his first restaurant in Old Town Shopping Center on Greenville Ave. were crazy with the frequent time-consuming frozen margarita orders, so, inspired by 7-11’s Slurpee machine, he fashioned his first margarita maker out of a soft serve ice cream machine, which — after 34 years at his bar — now sits in the Smithsonian Museum.
