Añejo Restaurant

Añejo is the label a tequila earns after a year or more in oak, and the restaurant that carries the name pours more than two hundred of them. The tequila and mezcal list runs the full range — blanco, reposado, añejo, extra añejo — with flights for anyone who wants to taste across it, and it sits at the centre of a contemporary Mexican kitchen on Banff Avenue rather than off to the side of one. This is a dining room built for sharing: tableside guacamole to open, a spread of premium tacos and layered plates to follow, and a bar deep enough to make the drink the reason some tables came.

The food is arranged for a table that wants to build a meal in stages. Tableside guacamole comes together at the table — avocado worked with tomato, onion, cilantro, garlic, jalapeño, lime and a seasoned salt, tortilla chips alongside — the natural first order for a group still deciding what comes next. Queso fundido follows the same shareable logic, Oaxaca cheese run through with pork chorizo and mushrooms. From there the kitchen leans on contrast: tuna tostadas stack ahi over crisp corn tortillas with jalapeño tartar, jicama, cucumber and salsa macha, cool and bright against the heavier plates, while a summer ceviche of shrimp and whitefish lifts things further with roasted beets, jicama, mint and tajín. The molcajete de carne arrives heavy and communal, grilled cactus and roasted vegetables in a pasilla-tomatillo sauce with Oaxaca cheese, seared beef, chorizo and chicken. Premium tacos fill the middle, from beef quesabirria in its birria consommé to Baja-style breaded prawns, and the vegetarian orders hold their own — papas y poblano tacos, a goat-cheese chile relleno in a cornmeal crust. Dessert closes on a horchata crème brûlée, cinnamon and caramelized sugar over vanilla custard.

The drinks list matches that reach. The tequila and mezcal shelf spans blanco through extra añejo and into mezcal, with houses regulars will recognize — Don Julio, Patrón, Cazadores, Clase Azul, Arette — and flights that let a table taste several expressions side by side instead of settling on a single pour. The margaritas run well past the classic, into ginger, mango, guava, cucumber cilantro, strawberry rhubarb and blood orange, and the palomas carry their own names, from la clásica to the green goddess. It reads as a bar meant to be explored, not ordered from once. For a Mexican kitchen, the agave program is the line that ties the plates to the glass.

How the place gets used comes through in the hours. Añejo runs happy hour twice a day, every day — an afternoon window from three to five and a late one from ten to close — with half-price tequila by the ounce, discounted margaritas and classic tacos at a few dollars each. That schedule makes it two restaurants at one address: an early après stop for a table coming off the hill, and a late booth for a group arriving after a dinner somewhere else. Reservations are easy to come by, and the tables are sized and spaced for groups rather than couples.

On Banff Avenue, where foot traffic is heavy and a dinner table is worth competing for, Añejo makes its case on breadth. It can be a quick shared lunch, a long group dinner, or a run of tequila flights well after ten, and it holds those registers without asking a table to choose in advance. The name points at the bar, but the kitchen pulls its own weight — the shareable plates are built to be passed and split, and a table of six can eat well without anyone ordering the same thing. The draw is the drink for some tables and the plates for others, and the happy-hour clock — three in the afternoon, ten at night — sets the hour either way.