A Martini is a simple drink that features a splash of dry vermouth and a jigger of gin. It's made in a cocktail shaker with ice, and served either up or on the rocks, garnished with olives. If specified, a twist of lemon can be substituted or added as garnish. A Martini that substitutes a cocktail onion as garnish is called a Gibson. That's what a Martini is; end of story.
And yet.
Since, say, the mid-'90s, cocktail joints all around the world would have you believe that a Martini is anything served "up" in a Martini glass. So, onto the scene came countless "Appletinis" and "Chocotinis" and Idiotinis ad infinitum, with booze producers lending plenty of encouragement, ginning up countless flavored vodkas and the like. Thus began The New Mixology.
Nowadays, cocktails have their own menus, ingredients upwards of five and six, and prices upwards of $10. What, with the free-flowing, easy money gone, it's not enough anymore to serve those fruitily vacant late-'90s so-called 'tinis. We have moved on to subtlety and supposed mixological artistry, in an effort to justify the high-priced cocktail in a down economy. Bars worth their fleur de sel now stock multiple bottles of flavored bitters, special house infusions, unmarked essences, and tinctures of all types.
Bygone mid-shelf mixers like Chartreuse, Dubonnet, and Bénédictine are back in vogue. And with them, a veritable witch's cauldron-like miasma of ingredients both flowery and savory: agave, hibiscus, elderflower, cucumber, pomegranate, peach nectar, blueberries, mocha, cinnamon, eye of newt, ear of toad, etc.
Everyone's gotta be an artist chef molecular chemist these days?
Screaming Viking anyone?
If such new drink menu results were universally spectacular, I might not have a bad word to say about this thing, but I tasted an unironic cocktail recently that strongly reminded me of Yoo-Hoo. Only $9 more expensive. Might as well stay home and make yourself a Laverne DiFazio milkshake for that kind of cheddar.
Back in the late '80s and early '90s, I spent a few summers tending bar at an upscale Italian place in an upscale summer destination town. I came from a school of no-fuss bartending (call it the Don Draper school). Ice, booze, possibly a mixer; end of story. That's the way my family drank — and still does — and that's the way I worked the bar, serving up mainly Martinis, Manhattans, Bloody Marys, the occasional Gimlet or Old Fashioned.
I made drinks properly, but I was old school. When I called myself a "mixologist," I did so tongue in cheek. I was willing to muddle an Old Fashioned, but if some chirpy young thing wanted a "frozen" Daquiri, even on a dead night, I would apologize that "Sorry, the blender's broken." A Daquiri is a basic drink (lime, rum, sour, as I made it), and I made it simply and quickly, without dirtying a blender I would later have to clean.
There's an old saying that a drink should have no more than two ingredients; ice is an ingredient.
There's another old saying that Martinis are like breasts (one's not enough; three is too many). But I digress.
It was the end of the '80s after all, so I was faced with the occasional order for a Long Island Iced Tea — which, in fact, is a fantastic drink to make. Drinking it's another story. But it's a bartender's drink. Five liquors in it, and yet it can be mixed faster than a simple Martini. Because those five clear liquors live right in the "well" behind the bar — all within reach, all right next to each other — in bottles with pourers, and along with the sour mix can be poured two at a time in three easy installments.
For me, bartending was about a certain amount of style and finesse, but it was more about professionalism and efficiency. People at a bar are thirsty people. And people at a restaurant bar are thirsty, hungry people. Yet, it would seem that we present-day bar-sitters are presumed to be patient patrons of the meditative arts.
Slow Food? Sure. But what we're now seeing amounts to a Slow Booze movement. Because it takes precious time to hand-crush ice to order, use middle- and top-shelf bottles without pourers, add extracts with eyedroppers, singe the peels of organic blood oranges, and so on.
Sure, this could all be a fad. But restaurant fads can linger for ages. The faux-Polynesian influx of the '50s and '60s stuck around well into my 1970s youth — and, arguably, still has a hand in today's nonsense. And even with fading fads, certain details stick around, undead. Out went the mid-'90s swing-dance moment, but the shiny, happy cocktails stuck with us, and spawned offspring.
And now we're in the era of celebrity drink consultants who get paid to revamp cocktail menus. Please. Spare me. Call a spade a spade. And don't overcharge me for it.
Hey bartender! I've done your job and prided myself on it. But it's neither rocket (nor food) science. Now get your ass down to my end of the bar. My glass is empty.
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