If you saw a Broccoli Martini on a cocktail menu, would you drink it? What about a Cheese Whiz Old Fashioned? Or a Mushroom Margarita? Ignacio “Nacho” Jimenez, the bar manager at New York’s Ghost Donkey, is making one such cocktail: a Margarita infused with huitlacoche (a truffle-like corn fungus also known as corn smut).
Jimenez’s cocktail is jet black and extremely funky, with flavors of wet dirt, smoke, black garlic and freshly shaved black truffle. And it is one of the bar’s most popular cocktails. After trying Jimenez’s unexpectedly delicious drink, we asked him about all the other unusual ingredients we’ve been denying our Margaritas. He gets his inspiration from the seasons, so summertime is all about berries and watermelon, fruits we frequently add to Margs, but his colder season recommendations were more intriguing: “You can use cucumber, celery or beets in the winter—even carrots,” he says.