Adios, apple martini. A tropical rum cocktail is the new "it" drink in the city of trends. Sure, the City of Angels still loves you, apple of our eye, but \o7 mojitos, \f7 with their deceptively tasty minty wallop, are \o7 so very \f7 this year.
Oceanside in Venice or Santa Monica? Hillside on the Sunset Strip? Downtown during happy hour? Fine dining in Beverly Hills, Los Feliz or Pasadena? The \o7 mojito\f7 mambo is there. Why, poolside at the W Hotel in Westwood, where Kim Noonan mixes a wicked \o7 mojito\f7 , the bar itself is called Mojito.
"They're very refreshing, sweet and tangy at the same time, and they're potent," says Tanya Cohen, a producer who is catching up on her screenplay reading at the W's pool. I love them. It's the perfect drink to have by the pool on a Sunday afternoon."
The \o7 mojito\f7 (pronounced mo-hee-toe), Cuba's most famous cocktail, has become the No. 1 summer drink--and not just in the Southland. Wildly popular in Miami for years, the \o7 mojito\f7 is now being served up from New York to Portland, in the classic style--the way Ernest Hemingway drank it in Havana--or with contemporary twists for distinction. Essentially a rum and lime spritzer, bartenders across L.A. are substituting vodka, cognac and a variety of fruit flavors to make their own mark on the drink.
"Every once in a while, a drink comes along that captures the flavor of the city or season," says David Organisak, a bartender at Spago Beverly Hills, who strolled into Xiomara in Old Town Pasadena last week to taste the restaurant's infamous rum and sugarcane juice concoction. "\o7 Mojitos\f7 do both. They're the perfect summer drink. I'm getting more and more requests for them at the bar. I thought I'd come in here and see if I'm doing it right."
Xiomara Ardolina has been serving \o7 mojito\f7 s at her "nuevo Latino" restaurant for six years, long before the craze for one of Papa's favorite drinks hit L.A. "I noticed on a trip to Miami that this was the biggest drink being served out there, and I decided I had to bring it here," Ardolina said.
"But now almost everywhere you go you can find a \o7 mojito\f7 . I think it has to do with the Cuban craze. Just like Cuban music is so popular, the food and the drinks are very hot. As a people, we were practically put to sleep for 40 years. But we Cubans are so outgoing and lively that it was only a matter of time before people noticed our music, our food and everything beautiful about our culture."
