Food & Wine’s 2025 Drinks Visionaries

When Philadelphia restaurant Tequilas Casa Mexicana reopened in May 2025, after a more-than-two-year closure due to a 2023 fire, agave fans around the world cheered. Both the restaurant and its founder, David Suro-Piñera, have been on the forefront of advancing quality agave spirits, like tequila and mezcal, for nearly four decades. 

Suro-Piñera was born in Mexico. He grew up in Guadalajara, took a job with a restaurant group in Cancún, and subsequently moved to Philly. In 1986, he bought a Mexican restaurant and changed its name to Tequilas. The goal: an upscale restaurant that would represent authentic Mexican food instead of Americanized versions.

“The first time I had chimichangas was in a restaurant in Philadelphia,” recalls Suro-Piñera. “I couldn’t understand why a fried flour tortilla was the most important dish people were looking for.”

His approach soon extended to the restaurant’s agave namesake as well. When well-meaning critics suggested the name Tequilas had negative connotations, Suro-Piñera pushed back. “I decided that another mission of the restaurant would be to help people better understand the culture of agave spirits,” he says.

Today, Suro-Piñera is also an educator, importer, and author (his book, Agave Spirits: The Past, Present, and Future of Mezcal, with Gary Nabhan, won a 2024 James Beard Media Award). He’s the founder of the Tequila Interchange Project, which advocates for sustainable and traditional practices within the agave spirits industry, and the Siembra Suro Foundation, a nonprofit that supports agave-producing communities with access to resources like clean drinking water, renewable energy, and educational opportunities.

It’s difficult to sum up this multi-faceted role, though Suro-Piñera tries. “I’m a bridge between amazing people,” he says. “I introduce some of the best our industry has to the best that Mexico has when it comes to agave spirits.” It’s easier to explain why he does it: “I have such a deep respect for agave culture and agave spirits. They’re such emblematic symbols of Mexico.”

To this end, Suro-Piñera has organized trips with bartenders and other spirits pros to Mexico to meet distillers and plant their feet in the agave fields, as to better to understand local traditions. He’s also reached out to academics, who have studied the social, economic, and historic aspects of agave.

In 2005, he also started making his own agave spirits. The Siembra Spirits portfolio includes a wide range of Mexican heritage spirits, including mezcal, raicilla, and Oaxacan rum. “I like to get involved in every batch,” says Suro-Piñera. “I’m always looking for an excuse to be back home. I’ve been here for over 40 years, but I’m still very, very attached to all things Mexico.”

Today, his three children continue the legacy he began and operate the day-to-day aspects of restaurant. After the 2023 fire, the family pulled together to refresh and evolve the location, bringing in a new chef and splitting the dining room into two concepts, the fine-dining Tequilas and an all-day café called La Jefa.

“Yes, it was a tragedy seeing a beautiful kitchen go into ashes,” says Suro-Piñera. “But after the smoke dispersed, and we saw what happened, and we saw love from all over the world, it was amazing.” Crowd-funding and other community support raised tens of thousands of dollars to help support the restaurant and its employees. “It was a beautiful lesson,” he says.

Despite stepping back from operations somewhat, the patriarch hasn’t fully stepped away. “I’m almost 65, and I still cannot take my apron away from my waist,” he jokes. “I never thought I’d still be so inspired and be an active restaurateur after such a long time.” 

Nor is he slowing down. Recently, in addition to his position as an advocate and a “history-teller of agave culture,” he recently added photography to his toolbox. His preferred subject matter? Agave, of course.

“The agave landscape,” he says, “is a deeply photogenic subject.”

Food & Wine’s Drinks Visionaries program showcases the people who have changed how we drink, from bartenders and restaurant owners to distillers, winemakers, and beyond. Discover the rest of 2025’s honorees here.