For Tom Joseph, the creative process is about storytelling

Mejico in Sydney might be first and foremost a restaurant, but it’s also home to one of the largest ranges of agave bottlings in the country, according to bar manager Tom Joseph.

Tom is one of the top 25 bartenders in the Espolòn Afterlife To The Bone cocktail competition, thanks to his drink, Max’s End.

Below, lightly edited and condensed for clarity, Tom talks about the creative process that brought his cocktail life, about tequila, and where he gets his creative ideas from.

Tell us what you do and where we are?

I am the bar manager here over at Mejico on Pitt Street. We’ve been here for about 11 years now. I’ve been here for about three months.

Tell us what this place is about?

Like I said, Mejico has been open for 11 years, very much about a modern Australian interpretation of classic Mexican flavours and why it’s all about trying to keep things as fresh and as local as possible, while at the same time exploring those wonderful flavours that we love about Mexico and Mexican food.

On top of that, yeah, massive tequila collection, definitely one of the bigger ones around and it’s about to get even bigger. It’s something that we really love to talk about.

What’s your drink called, and what’s the big idea behind it?

My drink is called the Max’s End. It’s probably a little bit of an over complicated story.

I was really looking at what my favourite forgotten cocktails were, putting some ideas together. And I had just got in, funnily enough, a Mexican absinthe and I was like, God, you know, no one does an Absinthe Frappe these days. And then I thought, well, I can’t do that. That’s not tequila.

But I thought about what flavours work with that. And I came back to one of my very favourite tequila cocktails, which is a Mexican Firing Squad. I always liked tequila, but that was one of the drinks that made me fall in love with tequila as a cocktail ingredient. It’s simple, it’s easy, it works.

I recently finished reading a story about a bloke by the name of Maximilian who was the last emperor of Mexico. He was put in place by Napoleon III of France in 1861 and put in place by a bunch of the French and some wealthy Mexicans. Then the Mexican community went, nah, not having that, rebelled against him and they beat the French — it took them five years, but they kicked him out and eventually he was captured and lined up against the wall by a Mexican firing squad.

It’s a drink that’s very old school, very classic, goes back to 1938, it predates a lot of those other tequila drinks. But it’s also something where the story itself is like, it’s a very big part of Mexican history, it was a big part of the rebirth of the nation, post-European colonialism.

So what’s in your recipe?

So obviously Espolòn Reposado is going in there which is the tequila base, which is really great. I’ve got that Mexican Absinthe in there, it really plays off quite nicely with the Reposado.

I love Espolòn — it is exactly what I want in a tequila, especially in a cocktail tequila. Then we’ve got a raspberry grenadine to really get some berry fruit notes kind of coming out, raspberry and pomegranate. With a bit of agave syrup in there again to punch up the tequila a bit.

Where do you get your ideas for drinks from?

History, definitely. I think that my philosophy of cocktails is that cocktails are a conversation between the bartender and the guest. First and foremost I am a storyteller, I love getting up there and having a yarn with a guest.

I need to have something behind it, whether it’s the story, there’s a story behind the inspiration for the name of the drink, the story behind the drink itself, there needs to be something there and so I guess I find a story and then I will often build a drink around that.

When I am coming up with a new cocktail, that’s where I lean towards that idea of how is this creating a better experience for the customer?

Why do you do what you do?

I think that being good at hospitality, you have to really enjoy that experience of talking to your guests. You have to really enjoy looking after your guests and making their experience the best possible — it’s something that I’ve always really enjoyed, having those conversations, having those stories, telling jokes, laughing.

Max’s End

40ml Espolòn Reposado
20ml Maxico Mystico Limpia’Uras Green Absinthe
20ml Raspberry-Grapefruit Grenadine
40ml Agar-Clarified Grapefruit and Lime Juice
2 dashes Apple Bitters

Add all ingredients into a blender with wet ice. Blend on low, then high for about 10 seconds until ice is totally pulverised.

Sprinkle dessicated citrus over top (made by dehydrating and crumbling the agar jelly left over from juice clarification).