Tequila Mango Smoothie
From "Blue Water"
£3.43 pp (300 Thai baht for two)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/10
So there’s this hipster greenhouse on the island of Koh Tao overlooking some ocean that I don’t know the name of just yet - and of course I feed on things like this, so I was on it like a leach to a vein. You could see the coast and the rain, and a man bun, so it really had everything you could ever want in a cafe that is also a restaurant. The same way that non-binary people excel being baristas, I believe hipster millennials make amazing bartenders, so I knew the mixologist would run the bar like the navy and as always, I was right. I don’t know what causes this phenomenon or if it’s one of nature’s beautiful coincidences, but when a good thing comes your way, you grab it and hold it to your lips.
I love when healthy things are made elegant. This slow-burn is a smoothie that presents the tequila like: “oh yea my boyfriend came, I hope that’s okay.” and you play along but actually realise they go well together because you are drunk and believe in love. It’s very beachy, but not in an “omg a shark” type of way but more like a topless surfer coming through the rain from just having ridden a wave while he was looking right at you.
At first, I was like: “Is this even a smoothie?” and after another sip I was like: “How is this anything?”. The taste was unknowable. I became a Sim drinking the pixels of a cocktail on a screen - a nice cocktail - but I was still a Sim. With this drink I could switch my brain off and look into those sandy colours and find peace, which is what I needed for the evening that followed… In a haze, my friend went to the beach at night on a side quest and I spent the next thirty minutes tracking her down like Liam Neeson does in every single movie he’s in. For some ungodly reason, I thought the best plan of action would be to ask every single person on the entire island if they had seen her. I don’t know who I thought I was but thankfully, we left the next day. My friend was okay but my pride took a while to heal after that night and still hasn’t fully recovered. I’m not sure if it ever will but at least something good came out of it.
Sometimes it’s better to focus on certain parts of an evening rather than others so you can feel better about yourself the next day. Because at the end of it all, life moves on and there will always be another millennial hipster bartender to look forward to.