How the MatchaRita Got Its Wasabi Salt Rim

The MatchaRita is one of the most ordered drinks we make. It was not designed. It accreted, out of a request, an idea I turned down, and a bag of samples somebody left on the bar.

Somebody Asked

A guest asked whether I could make them something with matcha in it.

That is the whole origin. Not a concept, not a menu meeting. Somebody wanted a matcha drink and I went off to think about what matcha actually wants to sit next to.

The answer I landed on was tequila and yuzu. Matcha is bitter and grassy and vegetal, tequila blanco is peppery and vegetal in a different direction, and yuzu is sharp enough to hold the two of them together. Once you say it out loud it sounds obvious. It did not feel obvious at the time.

The Drink I Did Not Make

Around the same time, people kept telling me a ginger margarita would be good.

They were right. A ginger margarita is good. It is also on the menu of every bar in this city that has a bottle of tequila and a piece of ginger, which is all of them. If I put one up, nobody would have a reason to order it here rather than anywhere else, and it would tell you nothing about this bar.

So I left it, and went back to the matcha drink I had already made for one person.

The Rim

What finished it came from Karin, who was our sales rep at Mutual Trading at the time. She had worked out early on that I liked things that were odd or fun, and she made a habit of bringing me samples of whatever she thought I would get a kick out of. One of them was wasabi salt from Kinjirushi.

That was the missing piece. Not ginger for heat. Wasabi for heat, which is a different heat: it goes up through your nose and then it is gone, instead of sitting on your tongue.

Why It Is Cut With Kosher Salt

The rim is not straight wasabi salt. It is Kinjirushi wasabi salt mixed with kosher flake salt, and that mix is doing two separate jobs.

The first is heat. Neat wasabi salt on a full rim is too much. You are getting it on every sip, and by the third one you are drinking wasabi rather than a margarita. Cutting it takes the edge off without taking the wasabi out.

The second is texture, and this is the part I did not expect to matter as much as it does. Kosher flake salt has a coarse, flat crystal that sits on the rim and gives you something to bite. Fine salt just dissolves into the glass and disappears. You want to feel the rim, not only taste it.

Why It Works

A margarita with our yuzu slushy in it is a sweet drink. Left alone it would be too sweet.

The salt is what fixes that, which is the actual job salt does on a margarita rim and always has. The wasabi adds the small kick behind it. Sweet, then salty, then a short bit of heat that clears out before the next sip.

That is the whole drink, and it is now one of the most popular things we pour. Which still slightly surprises me, given it started because one person asked for something with matcha in it.