Infusion of Spirit with Alba Huerta | Listen

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How Houston’s celebrated bar pro Alba Huerta keeps her 10-year-old cocktail program moving forward

I was born in Monterrey, Mexico, and we moved to Houston when I was young, around 4. We were raised in a predominantly Latino community and there were a lot of family gatherings, a lot of festivities around the holidays, and always delicious food. I feel like, as a child, your community shapes you, wherever you land, right? We were a Latino family in a city that was very welcoming to new immigrants and where we could find other people who spoke the same language. And so that community shaped me.

My dad worked in a restaurant as a busboy for a time and I found that those are very intriguing places of work for many Latinos. Today, you open the back door to a kitchen and it’s full of brown people and so it’s a place where a lot of us start. And for me, kitchens and restaurants have always been busy places, like a good busy. I’ve always loved the energy of working in a place that was constantly moving. And I was also attracted to the fact that we were kind of throwing a party every day. Restaurants and bars are full of people having fun. That, plus we’re always celebrating something. I’ve always thought it was super cool that I get to be present for all these life celebrations.

It’s been 10 years since I opened Julep, and of course, that anniversary was its own party. Running this business, I realized, has really made us part of a community. We’re on year eight of our oyster shucking contest and we have other tenured events. They become so important for people. We’re building those traditions for everyone else.

[My heritage] has become a lot more prominent at Julep in the past 10 years. I’m making these [cocktails] because that’s just who I am. These are the flavors that I know, and that I think are good. And there’s also an openness of everyone else who works at the bar. They’re all creating things that pull from their experiences, from their neighborhoods. It’s very heartfelt, how we put flavors together.

Cocktails are changing, and I think we try to have this mix of both classic cocktails and cocktails that are using modern techniques like clarification, sous vide, and various methods of flavor extraction. To me, that’s a well-rounded bar program, but it’s also about making delicious drinks.

Many cocktails on our menu came from exploration—so, the Snake-Bit Sprout started as a different drink that was looking at the rural elements of the South. Traditionally chamomile was used for snake bites here in Texas, and it’s also a tribute to that layered beer cocktail, the Snake Bite. I’m also really into incorporating dry infusions or tea infusions. The tequila toddy incorporates cinnamon tea. As kids, my grandmother would always give us cinnamon tea to end a meal or before bed. And one of the things I’ve always grappled with for toddies is the hot water content. It’s such a big percentage of the drink so why not add another flavor component? This one really binds the flavors together.

That exploration is what I really love about making drinks and about continuing to push our cocktails.