Article: Tommy's Mexican Restaurant

Tommy's Mexican Restaurant

Julio Bermejo is world famous for inventing his own style of margarita. He let me interview him over a tequila tasting at his family's historic restaurant. The original article can be found here on Medium. The original article ran on June 24, 2020.

Tequila and Humanity

Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant is world-renowned for inventing their signature style of margarita, but no amount of fame could ever make them forget their roots in San Francisco’s Richmond District.

You’d never know that Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant is consistently listed as one of the top 50 best bars in the world just from looking at it. Customers pack in to eat Yucatán food in bright red soda fountain booths against a modest backdrop of serapes, holiday lights and Mexican folk art that adorn the walls, and the low ceiling amplifies the dinner rush noise, sending a soundtrack of family banter and the crunch of complimentary tortilla chips reverberating cheerfully through the dining room. Behind the bar, the globe’s largest selection of vintage tequila sits unassumingly next to a white board with specials and a flat-screen featuring ESPN.

When first walking into the restaurant, I immediately noticed a flock of people spilling around the corner of a large wood-paneled wall that partitioned the bar from the rest of the dining room. The space between the bar counter and this barrier was small — no more than four feet wide, creating a crowded, jovial experience for the droves of tequila drinkers that packed the barstools and adjacent standing room. Customers have just enough space to order drinks and talk to their immediate neighbors, sending a cacophony of excited conversation, clanking glasses and ice-shaking reverberating off the walls.

Yet, the inventor of the world-famous Tommy’s Margarita and bar operator, Julio Bermejo, whose parents founded the restaurant, barely had time to look out at the lively energy. His signature cocktail is served across the globe, but that night the international bartending icon only cared about one thing — keeping up with his customers.

Everyone crowded behind the wood-paneled wall in the bar area seemed to be his friend — whether they actually knew him or not. Each drink he served was paired with an inside joke, a fact about the tequila they ordered, or at minimum, a friendly greeting. Patrons used his first name and gave him a thankful salute when they got up to leave. He kept tabs on everyone while effortlessly making margaritas, the process of mixing, shaking and pouring into a glass as much a part of him as the hands he used to complete it.

But while the wood-paneled wall helped bring people together that day, its ability to hide Julio from others is what got his younger self back there in the first place.

“Really I came to work at the bar area because people on the other side [of the wall] in the dining area couldn’t see me. I felt safer,” he remembers. “I hated working here. I was embarrassed — I went to UC Berkeley and got decent grades…my colleagues that I went to school with had office jobs and not service jobs.”

However, over time, he gradually fell in love with the agave spirit the more hours he logged behind the counter, and soon forgot the stigma that he associated with the service industry. This made him a better bartender, galvanized his creativity and let him write his place into the mixology history books — all while preserving the heart, warmth and sincerity that Tommy’s is known for. Their story is one of humility and integrity, and no amount of success or fame could ever change that.

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After originally immigrating to the United States in the 1950s through the Bracero Agricultural Workers Program — which was part of an agreement between the US and Mexico that encouraged Mexican citizens to come to America to work farm jobs — Julio’s father and namesake of the restaurant, Tommy Bermejo, landed a job at the now-shuttered Bighorn Grill in San Francisco. After working his way from being a dishwasher to a line cook, Tommy and his wife, Elmy, decided to open a restaurant of their own.

“When my father saved up some money, the skills he had learned led him to believe he could open a restaurant, which is total f–ing insanity,” jokes Julio. “Any person in his right mind would not open a restaurant.”

With Julio not around to convince his parents otherwise, they opened Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant in 1965. Over time, they’ve grown their mom-and pop eatery into a hallowed San Francisco institution as synonymous with Richmond District locals as the avenues and 4PM fog. The community effuses with affection for them — people flock to Tommy’s each night, some who have been coming for decades and are more friends than patrons. The Bermejos have seen the neighborhood grow up around them; and in return, the neighborhood has gotten to see them grow too.

“My youngest son lives in Dallas, and he gets off the plane [to visit] and he says ‘let’s go to Tommy’s,’” says Luther, a loyal customer that first came to Tommy’s in the late 70s. A relocation to San Jose forced him to take a sabbatical, but since he retired and moved back to Lake Merced a couple of years ago, he comes about every other week. He noticed me asking “his guy” Julio questions from the other side of the bar. Friendly and welcoming, it’s clear he’s just here to catch up with the staff; but with a tone that sounds like he’s about to challenge me to a game of one on one, he lets me know “this is the only true Mexican restaurant in the city.”

Next to Luther is John, a UPS worker and East Bay local that first came to Tommy’s in 1977. He’s frequented the restaurant for so long that the late Tommy Bermejo used to make him appetizers that weren’t on the menu, but to this day he’s never found a margarita that compares to Julio’s. When his friends would ask themselves, “Where’s John?” it was always rhetorical.

“He’s at Tommy’s,” he proudly grins.

It’s his Monday off day, and unless he’s out of town, he’s made the three-hour round trip from Berkeley every Monday he’s had off over the last two years to catch up with the Bermejos. He was at the bar when I arrived, and he orders another margarita right before I leave two and a half hours later.

There are so many others with stories like John and Luther’s, and the restaurant is filled with tributes to its history and the people that helped write it. Photos of regulars’ and employees’ kids line the walls, and Julio treats them not like customers, but old family friends — because they are.

“We’ve been here forever…we’re a neighborhood mom and pop. We know most of the guests that come here,” says Julio. “It’s different. We’ve seen John’s friends, John’s friends’ kids, John’s friends’ grandchildren, and that’s cool because we’re part of our little community here. We’re part of the Richmond district.”

That district, like most neighborhoods in San Francisco, has seen endless change over the years, but Tommy’s has managed to remain steadfastly consistent. Tommy Bermejo passed away in 2011, but Elmy still comes into the restaurant daily and much of the staff has remained over decades. They’re a staple of the community. It’s where the Tommy and Elmy raised their kids and made their friends. The neighborhood and those who live there are just as much a part of the restaurant as the restaurant is a part of the neighborhood. And as Luther and John show, people simply love them.

Yet of the all the Bermejo kids, Julio is the one that went on to become the modern face of Tommy’s. And with the work he does behind the bar, and status in the world of bartending, he’s managed to make their neighborhood a little bit bigger.

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While they opened the bar area in 1972, Tommy’s didn’t start focusing exclusively on tequila until the late-1980s when Julio decided that they would be the first place in the US to only serve tequilas made with 100% pure agave. For a spirit to be classified as a tequila, it only needs to be made with 51% agave sugar, and lower-shelf makes typically use cane sugar as a cheaper replacement for the other 49%. The low-cost makes these tequilas — dubbed as “mixtos” — common (think Jose Cuervo), but they’re of lower quality and lack the taste of one made with 100% agave. Julio was willing to take the financial knock in order to uphold quality.

Then in 1990, he got the idea to put agave nectar in their margaritas, instead of the traditional orange liqueur, so that you could focus on the flavor of the base tequila being used in the drink and eliminate some of the sweetness. It was hit, and the Tommy’s margarita was born.

The idea spread worldwide and today the cocktail is recognized today as a New Era Drink by the International Bartenders Association. Tommy’s has been on the cover of nearly every major news publication, including the Wall Street Journal twice, and Julio’s notoriety in the industry led to his appointment as the official United States tequila ambassador to the Mexican state of Jalisco, where the majority of the world’s tequila is produced. Former Mexican President, Vicente Fox, then later tapped Julio to join his party on a trip to Europe to sign tequila’s denomination of origin agreement with the UK and France, which formally stated which territories in Mexico could authentically participate in tequila production.

Subsequently, Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant has become tequila holy ground, featuring the aforementioned largest collection of vintage tequila on Earth and routinely drawing customers and industry vets from all corners of the globe. Not bad for a family restaurant in the Richmond.

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For bartenders and tequila fans, Tommy’s is a bucket list spot, but despite this fame and success, they still stay true to their Richmond roots. It would be easy for them to start catering exclusively to mixology aficionados and lean heavily into “foodie” culture. But showing off isn’t their thing — Julio is a self-confessed social media novice and he’s just started using Instagram since the onset of the pandemic. Instead, he’d rather share a drink with you in person.

On any given day, you can find the ever-charismatic Julio curating tastings for customers, listing off everything from where a spirit is made, how it should taste and what makes it different from others. A few years ago, he introduced the “Vintage of the Week,” letting anyone, with any knowledge level, have a chance to taste part of their reserve vintage collection. Hey loves tequila and wants to teach others about it, whether they’re an aficionado or only know what it mixes well with inside a red solo cup. It doesn’t matter to him.

Tommy’s is also the home of the Blue Agave Club — which is a more robust rewards program like you’d see at other bars, but instead of getting a free drink after ten-hole punches, they focus on teaching their members about tequila. Founded by Julio, of course, there are three levels of membership — Master, Ph. D. and Demi-God, and members can attain each level by trying different tequilas in the Tommy’s vintage collection, passing a written test, and even taking a distillery trip in Mexico. It’s the largest Tequila tasting club in the world with over 9,000 members extending across five continents.

In the late 80s and 90s the restaurant would always get a lot of Russian guests (the Richmond has a history of being a Russian-heavy neighborhood), but they would never drink anything and would insist on sitting in the back, out of view of the bar.

“They would never drink anything and only get water. Then when they would leave, we’d find a couple bottles of Smirnoff underneath the table,” he reminisced. “Now, they all drink tequila.”

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But above all else — the world’s best bar lists, Tequila ambassadorships, rubbing shoulders with politicians, inventing a cocktail, Wall Street Journal covers — Julio and the Bermejo family run a restaurant for something much greater.

Their business isn’t transactional. Sure, they sell food and drinks, but the charm of Tommy’s, and what still draws people in after 55 years while so many other San Francisco restaurants have fallen, is the way they treat you.

Operating a restaurant is inherently human to them. Service is everything, and they provide it with true authenticity, earning praise, adulation and devotion from their Richmond neighbors. They’re genuinely empathetic to what’s going on in their customers’ lives because the same things are happening around them. They’re not friendly to get a 25% tip; they’re friendly because they want to be treated the same way.

You can go to Tommy’s for tequila, but the experience hooks you.

I trekked to the restaurant from my Lower Haight apartment back before places started to open, knowing that the industry was facing an uncertain future with the advent of COVID-19. When I arrived there, a large (appropriately-distanced) crowd gathered outside while waiting to get to-go food as the unrelenting wind whipped in from the ocean. They stood there in heavy coats and shivered in an effort to warm themselves, their desire for a Tommy’s margarita worth the frigid conditions. Of course, Julio was in the center entertaining and carrying on conversation and banter — just as he did with Luther, John and everyone else in the bar, and it’s obvious he’s seen most of the people before. It wouldn’t matter if he didn’t.

Humanity is inherent in everything at Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant — the way they run their business, their valued relationship with the community, and the hospitality given to anyone that walks in their door. It doesn’t matter whether you own the laundromat on 25th Avenue or run a bar on the 25th Parallel. Honestly, it doesn’t even matter if you just need to use the bathroom— you’ll be treated well, and this is why they’ve survived since 1965.

“Going out [to eat] is part of something natural, to me, and I think it’s the greatest thing,” says Julio. “And you shouldn’t just save going out for when you travel or when you are in a different city, because if you’re lucky enough to be in San Francisco, there are some cool spots here and people who do exceptionally good work.”

Today, the wood-paneled wall that used to shield Julio from his friends while he worked at the bar has been hollowed out at the center and replaced with shelving in a glass display case, so only the wooden part is seen at the side. Of course, these shelves feature tequila, giving strangers and friends alike a window into the world that he wants to share.