A taste of Mexico has landed in Canberra's Sydney building - by way of Cooma.
Mescals Tequila Bar and Restaurant opens its doors on Northbourne Avenue on Saturday - bringing a menu filled with Mexican delicacies and a bar filled with tequila and mezcals.
It's the second restaurant-bar for brothers Divyansh and Jubin Garg, who opened the first Mescals in Cooma in 2022.
"Before we opened in Cooma, they were like, what is a burrito? What is nachos? And slowly, they got to learn what Mexican food is," Divyansh Garg said.
"But we wanted to open up in Canberra, because a lot of tourists come from Canberra, to Cooma.
"They told me that we should open a place in Canberra because they want to drink, and they can't drink because they have to drive back from Cooma. They said, open either in Civic or in Brandon, so we can drink.
"So we chose Civic and some of our friends own some of the buildings around here and they said this particular location [in the Sydney Building] was quite valuable to people."
The brothers aren't expecting the Mexican menu to be quite a learning curve for the Canberra customer base, but they do say they pride themselves on using authentic flavours, sourcing ingredients from around Australia and at times internationally.
"We're not just using one chilli, for example. We're using guajillos, ancho and chipotle chillies," Divyansh Garg said.
"And every dish has a different aspect to it. We don't do salsa for every dish. Each has its own flavours that we make fresh."
Then comes the drinks list - the highlight of which is the selection of mescals and tequilas - which takes the restaurant-bar through from lunch to dinner and then onto its "nightclub" phase that lasts until 4am.
If there's one thing that the brothers want to impart on Canberra, it's the difference between tequila and mezcal. Or rather, why tequila is a mezcal but a mezcal isn't necessarily a tequila.
While tequila is made from one kind of agave plant - the blue weber agave - mezcal is the term for all agave-based spirits.
And it's the latter that Mezcals chooses to make their margaritas out of.
"Mezcal tends to be an earthy flavour," Jubin Garg said.
"It will be smokey and when you drink it, you can feel it while you taste, if that makes sense.
"And people can tell the difference in the margaritas. And even in Cooma, mezcal is starting to grow in popularity, not just as a brand, but as a drink of choice."
