Paddington restaurant Tequila Mockingbird marks seven years by asking guests to get a special tattoo
Tequila and tattoos .. what could possible go wrong? Paddington restaurant Tequila Mockingbird is marking seven years by inviting guests to get a special tattoo.
Confidential
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Do you love a restaurant so much that you’ve bought their merchandise?
How about getting a tattoo?
Paddington Latin American restaurant Tequila Mockingbird is marking it’s seventh birthday this month with festivities but perhaps the most inkredible of all is the opportunity for fans of the venue to get a tattoo of the restaurants logo.
The logo itself is based off the cover of Harper Lee’s famed To Kill A Mockingbird book, but in the place of eyes are crosses which hint to the dizzying effects of tequila.
Owner Michael Fegent got the logo, his first tattoo, inked when he opened the business to remind himself of the work he put in to get it to that place.
“The restaurant is an old [1898] terrace and we converted it to a restaurant and had to go to court twice to get our amendments approved. It’s now a permanent reminder of the big hours and savings we poured into,” Fegent said.
Fegent’s bar manager and best friend Mark Crawford also got the tattoo and then, as part of a drunken dare, his former head chef got it on his hand.
“He now works at a restaurant in Melbourne with my logo,” Fegent laughs.
The first three fans who get the tattoo will be gifted with a $100 voucher each month for a year. The tattoo must be at least 10 cm diameter and cannot be a former staff member, current employee or family or friend.
The tattoo is also significant for Fegent, because it marks the birth of his first restaurant. Tequila Mockingbird combines the flavours of Mayan, Aztec, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, and Afro Caribbean cuisine.
He’s since opened Mexican restaurant Esteban in the CBD, and is working on his third restaurant in Balmain.
“We’ve purchased an old Fendi store during lockdown and it’s architecturally an amazing place. We are going to create a 226-seat Argentinian restaurant,” he said.
Fegent has returned from a three week culinary trip to Argentina in preparation for the restaurant. “We’re going all out,” he said.
Fegent said in a hospitality market that is saturated with Italian and Japanese restaurants, his longevity has been doing something different.
“One of the reasons I started Latin American was for that reason. To do something different and challenge ourselves.”
“Tequila is the baby and it has a lot of emotional and sentimental value,” he said.
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