Tommy's Mexican Restaurant has poured agave on Geary Boulevard since 1965, and its back bar holds one of the deepest tequila collections in the country, well over two hundred bottles by most counts. The Bermejo family built the room into a tequila landmark, and the house margarita carries the name to bars worldwide.
Who would love it: tequila drinkers who want range, history, and a margarita made without sour mix. Who would skip it: anyone after a sleek cocktail lounge, since this is an Outer Richmond family restaurant with a legendary bar, not a design piece.
The space is a neighborhood Mexican restaurant with a busy bar up front, plain and unpretentious. The SF Examiner credits longtime tequila ambassador Julio Bermejo with turning the back bar into a teaching collection and founding the house Blue Agave Club. The format is simple, grab a stool, ask for guidance, and work through a list few bars can match.
Order the Tommy's Margarita, the drink that made the room famous, built with one hundred percent agave tequila, fresh lime, and agave nectar in place of orange liqueur. The tequila and mezcal list rewards exploration, so ask the bar to pour something you cannot find elsewhere. Skip the frozen-drink expectation, the strength here is neat agave and a sharp, fresh margarita.
The crowd is Richmond locals, agave enthusiasts, and visitors who came for the list, per Time Out and Difford's Guide. It runs busy at dinner and stays lively at the bar. Reviews updated in 2026 keep pointing to the margarita and the staff's tequila knowledge.
Who it is for. Tequila and mezcal drinkers chasing range, fans of a properly built margarita, and visitors using the best cocktail bars in San Francisco guide who want history with their drink. Less so for a quiet date in a dim lounge.
Best time to go is early evening on a weekday, before the dinner rush fills the bar, when staff can walk you through pours. Tommy's sits on Geary near 24th Avenue in the Outer Richmond, and it closes on Tuesdays, so plan around the Wednesday-to-Monday week. The kitchen and bar run from noon until eleven.
What regulars value, across the SF Examiner, Time Out, and the family's own history, is the depth of the agave program and the margarita that still sets the standard. The sixty-year run and the Bermejo family's tequila scholarship give the room an authority few bars carry. The throughline is a tequila institution that never traded substance for style.
Beyond the margarita, the bar runs a loyalty program for serious tequila drinkers, the Blue Agave Club, which rewards working through the list bottle by bottle, per the family's own history. The restaurant side serves Yucatecan and northern Mexican plates that hold up against the agave, so a long session has something to lean on. The room rewards curiosity more than speed.
Time Out and Difford's both frame Tommy's as a destination rather than a neighborhood stop, a place agave drinkers cross the city to reach. The Bermejo family marked sixty years in 2025, per the Richmond Sunset News, and the bar shows no sign of softening its focus. The throughline holds, agave first, every visit.
For the wider field, our guide to the best cocktail bars in San Francisco sets Tommy's against the city's cocktail rooms, and the San Francisco bar guide maps where to drink across the Richmond and the Mission. Compare the tropical depth at Smuggler's Cove in San Francisco and the pisco focus at Elixir in San Francisco. Find your nearest pour through our cocktail bars near me hub.
Sources: SF Examiner; Difford's Guide; Time Out San Francisco; Richmond Sunset News (2025); Yelp Tommy's Mexican (updated 2026). Profile by James Harlow, barsforKings.
