Filthy Food Review

We all know the struggle, save for professional mixologists, of trying to make the perfect cocktail at home. It's all too easy to not get the amounts of alcohol, sweetener, or citrus right. And on even worse occasions, your egg whites won't foam for a whiskey sour, or you'll add an overwhelming amount of hot honey to a spicy peach margarita (yes, I'm speaking from experience on those last two).

Sometimes it's best to keep things simple, and stick to canned cocktails and cocktail kits, which are easy to serve and enjoy without the help of a bartender. Enter Filthy Food (available at Filthy Food) , a brand that aims to elevate the cocktail experience with its premium mixers and garnishes. We tried out Filthy's drink mixes to see if they could compare to what you'd get at a bar—here's what we thought.

What is Filthy Food?

Filthy Food was founded in 2010 by brothers Daniel and Marc Singer. They launched the business after noticing how poor quality the garnishes being used by bars and hotels were back in the late 2000s.

By word-of-mouth, the brand slowly gained popularity among bartenders, and eventually, Filthy was becoming the standard garnishing at many major hotels, airlines, and cruise operators.

As of 2024, the brand offers several drink mixers (bloody mary, margarita, olive brine, pickle brine, and black cherry syrup) and a variety of olive garnishes (blue cheese, filthy pickle, filthy pepper, pimento, and pitted) as well as two cherry garnishes (Amarena and Maraschino) and pearl onions.

You can also buy the bundled mixes and garnishes together in one of Filthy's cocktail kits for $40.

What we like about Filthy Food

The ingredients are high-quality

Check the ingredient list on an average store-bought cocktail mix, and you're likely to find additives and artificial sweeteners. Filthy Food takes a more natural approach.

Its margarita mix, for instance, is made from 100% real Florida lime juice and organic agave nectar from Jalisco, Mexico. Its olives are naturally cured, giving them a rich, nutty and woody flavor, which are used to make Filthy's olive brine. Filthy also sources its wild Amarena cherries from Northern Italy, which are used to produce its black cherry syrup.

Mixer flavors are well-balanced

Filthy prides itself on its fresh, natural flavors, and the result is a superior-tasting cocktail to most other pre-mixers on the market.

The margarita mix has just the right balance of acidity and sweetness, while the olive brine is clean, concentrated, and not too salty.

We also love the addition of the black cherry syrup to a margarita, old fashioned, or amaretto sour—it has a deep, rich cherry flavor and just the right viscosity for mixing.

Packaging is high-quality and recyclable

Filthy Food's mixers come in 100% recyclable, colorful, no-leak pouches in either eight ounces or 32 ounces.

The eight-ounce size is perfectly portioned to make two margaritas, which makes it easy to enjoy a drink with a partner, while the 32-ounce size is ideal for making a batch of margs for a larger group.

We love the small spout on the bottle that allows for precise pours, even when dumping it into a blender or cocktail shaker. The pouches are also super portable and easy to fit on a packed bar cart or refrigerator shelf.

What we don't like

There's a fairly limited selection

The only department that we thought Filthy was lacking in was its cocktail kit selection, which is limited to dirty martinis, bloody marys, and classic or black cherry margaritas.

Eventually, we hope to see the brand offer different flavors of margaritas, along with more mixes, perhaps for whiskey sours, Moscow mules, Negronis, espresso martinis, and more.

Is Filthy Foods worth it?

Yes, especially if you like serving (and indulging in) at-home cocktails

Filthy Food's cocktail mixers and garnishes make a wonderful addition to any home bar, especially for those who value simplicity and convenience.

The fresh ingredients, delicious flavors, and sustainable packaging are sure to make me a repeat customer, but it's the brand's ethos and transparency that ultimately won me over. Filthy states that its mission is to make the drinks you love better, with "no shortcuts [and] no crap"—we'll certainly raise a glass to that.