Is Texas Roadhouse Margarita Mix The Same As What It Serves In The Restaurant?

Texas Roadhouse may have made its name slinging surprisingly affordable steak, but devoted fans of the restaurant know the margaritas may be worth the trip by themselves. Chain restaurant cocktails are real hit-and-miss affairs, with the big serving sizes and cheap prices often balanced out by watered-down taste, overly sweet flavors, and lower-quality ingredients. Thankfully, like a lot of other popular menu items at Texas Roadhouse, that isn't the case, and the chain's ability to mix value with decent quality, shake it up, and pour it into your glass extends to margaritas that mix a strong citrus flavor with tequila you can really taste. And as luck would have it, the company has made its signature margarita mix available to home mixologists too. But is it actually what Texas Roadhouse serves in the restaurant?

Unfortunately, as much as Texas Roadhouse may be trying to recreate its margaritas for at-home consumption, it doesn't look like it. While the company doesn't say either way, a look at the ingredient list for both shows they aren't the same. It appears that the mix is trying to recreate the Texas Roadhouse Legend Margarita, and yet is missing a number of things on the Legend Margarita mix nutrition list from the restaurant. It's hard to tell exactly how much difference activated charcoal makes in the taste, but along with other things like fresh orange, and high fructose corn syrup, it's missing from the pre-made mixes you can buy at stores.

If anything, the bottled Texas Roadhouse margarita mix looks more natural than the restaurant version. Both contain water, lime and lemon juice, citric acid, and "natural flavor," but the bottled mix contains agave syrup instead of the sugar and corn syrup in the restaurant version. The Legend Margarita in-house also has a laundry list of additives like xanthan gum, the emulsifier Polysorbate 60, titanium dioxide, and caramel color, none of which are in the pre-made mix. Some of these may not affect the flavor, but the sheer volume of the extra ingredient is sure to change the experience for people buying the at-home version. Finally, although this is something you can fix yourself, the in-store version has Grand Marnier in the mix as the orange liquor that's traditional in margaritas, yet the bottled mix is alcohol-free, and only mentions adding tequila in the recipe for mixing the drink.

As a final source of confirmation these margaritas aren't the same, just look at the Texas Roadhouse margarita mix reviews on Amazon. They are actually quite positive, but even many of the reviewers who like the mix note that it doesn't really taste like the margaritas in the restaurant. So if you are craving a Texas Roadhouse margarita like the ones it serves in-house, the half-gallon jugs of ready-to-drink margaritas it offers as a take-out option may be more what you are looking for.