SAN ANTONIO — It's like chips without salsa. Tacos, no tortillas. Enchiladas, hold the cheese.

A national lime shortage has sent prices soaring and has squeezed some local restaurants into using concentrate rather than fresh lime juice for margaritas, garnishing beverages with lemons rather than their green cousin or not offering the versatile citrus at all.

The Tex-Mex crisis is likely to leave a sour taste in many of the 3.5 million margarita-drinking and taco-eating festival goers who are expected to converge on San Antonio in two weeks for Fiesta San Antonio, from April 10-27 this year.

Managers and wholesalers say prices for limes, which are vital to a wide range of recipes from margaritas to ceviche and seafood, are at an all-time high and have more than quadrupled during recent months, with a sharp spike in the past two weeks.

A case of 250 limes normally runs about $4 during the summer and can reach $25 in the winter. But buyers now are dishing out close to $100 for a case, which is a historical high, said Paul Gonzalez Jr. of River City Produce, one of the largest produce and food service wholesalers in San Antonio.

Gonzalez said more than 90 percent of limes in the country are imported from Mexico and a mixture of unseasonably cold weather, hurricane and storm systems and drought has contributed much of the price increase.

“Between the wind and cold weather, the bloom sets in many farms were knocked off the trees, causing a large gap in production,” Gonzalez said. “Now (to compensate), many of the Mexican farmers are harvesting smaller fruit too early. That will likely continue the cycle into the summertime.”

David Flores, a bartender at Rita's on the River Walk for the past two years, called the increase in price and decrease in availability “frustrating” for him as well as customers. The restaurant is only offering limes upon request, he said.

“People definitely notice (not having a lime with their drink), they just don't know why ... they often think we forgot,” Flores said, who added this is the first time he's seen the market change this quickly.

Flores typically slices 21/2 buckets of limes for a shift. Now, he only does a fifth of that.

“We are having to use lime concentrate (for the margaritas), and that takes away from the uniqueness of our restaurant using everything fresh,” he said.

Keith Ludwick, a manager at Acenar, said most of the restaurant's vendors don't even have limes, and if they do, the prices are unbelievably high. He said the cartels in Mexico increasingly have made exports from the country more difficult, which he believes also plays a role, as well as marijuana farms taking over some lime farms.

“Prices were creeping up the last month but over the last few weeks the spike has been outrageous,” said Ludwick, who said the restaurant instead has been garnishing beverages, including margaritas, with lemons. But a change to food items such as guacamole is a last resort.

Taco Cabana chimed in Tuesday, warning its followers on Twitter: “A (national) lime shortage means we're forced to temporarily serve lemons only on our Salsa Bar. Don't panic, the margaritas will still be lime.”

Rosario's, a sister restaurant to Acenar, switched to lemons from limes a couple weeks ago after seeing a roughly 50 percent increase in price, Manager Mario Luna said.

Dr. Eric P. Thor with Arizona State University's Agribusiness School told KUT that millions more people around the world now are demanding limes as production is falling.

“It's very simple,” Thor told KUT, Austin's NPR member station. “As the world population expands and supply chains become longer and more complex, we find ourselves in a position where (the place) where (produce) is produced and where it's consumed is changing very rapidly.”

Limes are used for numerous food and drink recipes, especially in Tex-Mex and seafood items such as guacamole, margaritas, beer, tacos, key lime pie, ceviche, pico de gallo and sushi.

Grocery stores in the U.S. are charging 53 cents on average for a lime compared to 21 cents per lime at this time last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports.

Lacey Kotzur, a spokeswoman for H-E-B, said the grocery store chain has seen a “slight increase” in lime prices in recent months, but the rise in price is much lower than what is being seen nationally.

Gonzalez said he wouldn't be surprised if some limes in grocery stores rise to nearly a dollar each and bars could employ a surcharge for dressing beer with lime and salt.

That news doesn't bode well as the summer approaches.

“It should make for a very interesting Cinco de Mayo,” he said.

kparker@express-news.net

Twitter: @KoltenParker