Our National Martini Problem

More thoughts on the downfall of a cocktail

Did we ruin the martini? I asked that question recently at Esquire, and received a lot of DMs, e-mails, and texts from friends who either work behind the bar or just enjoy a good cocktail, most of them saying “yes.” I was expecting a few more angry responses, but the thing most people disagreed with was how much I love the V-shaped glasses that were once ubiquitous but have been replaced (mostly) with the Nick & Nora. Personally, I love the glassware Dale DeGroff named after Dashiell Hammett’s mystery-solving couple—Emily and I use them at home when I make her Friday night martinis—but there’s just something a little fun about the V-shaped ones that I miss.

The glass thing did get me thinking about a part of the piece that didn’t make the final cut. It helped me set up my theory looking at why I think everybody feels the need to tinker with perfection. To me, it’s a problem we see all over our culture these days where people need to find new ways to make money and convince customers they’re getting something different and unique, but really they’re just adding a little flair to an idea that’s been done before. I see it often with “disruptor” tech culture, like Blank Street Coffee or the “most hated startup” formerly known as Bodega, but you can find examples almost everywhere.

From my Esquire notes:

I started noticing the V-shaped glasses were getting swapped out almost exclusively for Nick & Noras right around the time when the mustachioed bartenders who looked like they rode a penny-farthing to work ran out of Prohibition-era speakeasy cocktail books to plunder and started acting as if they never corrected anybody that their profession was “mixologist.” Sometime before we entered the current decade, the annoyingly dubbed “Artisinal Cocktail” trend that picked up steam in the aughts had run its course. I figured that was the case when a white guy cornered me at an event in Midtown and screamed about how there was nothing problematic about tiki culture or the other white guy behind the bar who had warpaint on his face and was dressed like he was going out for the Greenwich, Connecticut community theater live-action version of Disney’s Moana. Everything had been done to death; we’d all tried the gin-gin mule, had our fill of fizzes, and learned to know our whiskey from our whisky; the only way to go was back to basics, and that’s why it makes sense every place that paid somebody to make sure the drink menu stood out suddenly went hog on the martini. It’s a classic, there’s an air of fancy to the drink, but making a good one is enough of a balancing act that a place could claim they did their take a certain way and that’s why it stands out.

I’ve been impressed with a few over the last year—I don’t usually love a Perfect Martini, but the one at Tigre is exceptional, Hawksmoor (pictured) talks up their nearly-frozen take and the drink lives up to the hype, and the Le Veau d'Or “Our Way” would win my Favorite New Take on the Martini prize for 2024 if such a thing existed—but mostly I walk away thinking the place just figured out a fancy way to tell me they were charging me three dollars more. Why would I want a martini with MSG or something described as “Like if the Boston tea party was a cocktail”? Some places play around and get it right: Inga’s in Brooklyn has a signature take on the drink made with gin, sake, and some pickled onions; they also have been working on a three-gin take with Isolation, Bordiga, and Hayman’s. That’s more interesting to me than trying to make it taste like mud.

I’m guessing that sooner or later with will all die down. I think part of the martini’s resurgence has something to do with the popularity of the espresso version with younger people; it’s like a gateway cocktail. But like anything else, people will move on, and within six months or a year we’ll see a gussied-up version of something else