The El Vilsito Cocktail

An Al Pastor Junglebird cocktail at Pretty Decent

I was having dinner with my chef friend Jonathan Zaragoza one night and I started telling him about a cocktail on our menu that is basically an al pastor Junglebird, and that it’s named after what I think is the best al pastor in Mexico City. He goes: “El Vilsito, right?” Right. Mexico City is the birthplace of the al pastor taco and while there is not a consensus best place for the dish, El Vilsito is the al pastor taco that comes up the most when the discussion arises. The place is an auto repair shop that only serves tacos at night after the auto shop closes, and they run late, serving until 3AM. I consider al pastor here, with El Rey de Suadero in the Polanco neighborhood, to be the two If-You’re-Only-Eating-Two-Tacos-In-CDMX tacos. For our Season 7 menu, inspired by travel to Mexico City, I wanted to do an al pastor cocktail and I wanted to name it after my favorite version.

An al pastor taco is defined, for me, not by the adobo but by the pineapple. Proper al pastor features a healthy slice of pineapple as garnish, and the ripe piña atop the trompo dripping its juice into the meat below is as important to the taco as the pork itself. So we really push the pineapple in this cocktail by making our house al pastor mix piña-rich. The combo of pineapple and a Oaxacan rum led pretty quickly to “hmmmmm, how about a Junglebird riff?'“

Enter here the pineapple debate: freshly juiced pineapple or canned Dole brand pineapple juice? Here’s some numbers and notes, from our research.

We found that fresh juice tastes much more acidic and lighter than canned Dole, but they both measure out to the same brix. This is great, because our target for our final al pastor mix is a brix of 35 and when we are consistently getting the same brix on fresh and Dole, that’s one less thing to manage. We want a big pineapple flavor, which Dole gives us, but we also want lively and appealing acidity in the cocktail which we get from freshly juice pineapples. So we use both, clarifying them separately in a Spinzall.

When the centrifuge has run a batch of pineapple juice—fresh or canned—the rotor is left with a hefty amount of solid that we want out of the drink. This is why we clarify. This also gives our pineapple juice a longer shelf life and it lightens the color of the drink so it looks brighter and prettier. We blend 3 parts clarified fresh pineapple with 2 parts clarified Dole to get the base of our al pastor mix. From there, we’re just adding the spice profile from that taco, a bit of lime for more acidity, and blitzing it all together.

El Vilsito

1.5 oz Dakabend Oaxacan rum

1.5 oz Pretty Decent al pastor mix (see below)

0.5 oz Contratto Bitter

0.5 oz fresh lime juice

Combine all ingredients in a shaker, shake for 12-14 seconds then fine strain into an old fashioned glass full of ice. Garnish with a pineapple wedge lightly dusted with worm salt. Or without the worm salt if you’re vegetarian. Or weird about eating worms. Whatever. We’re all going to eat worms one day when the cows are extinct, might as well get used to it now.

Al Pastor Mix

800 mL clarified fresh pineapple juice, plus more

200 mL clarified Dole pineapple juice, plus more

125 mL lime juice

1 garlic clove, toasted

1 t anise seed, toasted

1 t cumin, toasted

1 bay leaf, toasted

1 cinnamon stick, toasted

5 cloves, toasted

3 ancho chiles

1 pasilla chile

1 guajillo chile

Sugar, by weight

Place the three chiles in a hot skillet and toast for 20 seconds or so, just until aromatic. Place them in a bowl and cover with hot water to rehydrate for 20 minutes.

In the same skillet, toast the cumin, anise, cinnamon, bay leaf and cloves very quickly, just long enough so you start to smell them. Remove, set aside, and toast the garlic clove until it’s browned all over.

In a Vitamix or other high-powered blended add all the ingredients except the sugar and blend on high for 120 seconds so everything is well blitzed and incorporated. You’ll see the mixture go from pale yellow—like the pineapple juice—to a dark red adobo color. Once everything is blended, pour the contents of the blender through a fine mesh strainer lined with a couple layers of good cheesecloth. This might require hours to fully strain, and it’s ok to set it in the cooler overnight to do so.

Once the mix is strained, weigh it, then weigh out that much sugar and place everything in the Vitamix and blend on high until all the sugar is dissolved. You’ll probably need to do this in batches.

After the sugar is blended, again weigh the solution. Now take that value and add that much pineapple juice—weigh out 60% clarified fresh pineapple juice and 40% clarified Dole pineapple juice—add them to the mix and stir to combine. You’re basically making a 1:1 blend of the sugar-added mix and pineapple juice to get to a final al pastor mix with a brix of 35. I’ll pass this through cheesecloth one more time just to make sure it’s nice and clean. Will hold in your fridge for 10 days or so.