Consolidated "Martini" thread
 

Where have you had the best Martini?

For me it was the Hemmingway Bar at The Ritz Paris, made especially by Colin.
That was 4yrs ago. I must return soon!:)

Harry's Bar in Venice made by Claudio.:)

Liquid Kitty on Pico in West LA serves a solid dirty Grey Goose. :D

I guess equally important as a piece of information would be, what do you consider to be the best martini?

My own personal taste is for a Belvedere martini dirty... and here's a heresy, on rare occasion I'll enjoy it with blue cheese stuffed olives.

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GIBSONS CHICAGO!!! THE BEST! PERIOD

Any high grade potato vodka. Straight up. I usually order a couple of lemon wedges on the side and squeeze these into the martini at different intervals.

As for "best" martini, not so sure. If it's made the way I like it, then the mix is pretty much the same everywhere I go. However, for posh locations with ambience I have always enjoyed http://www.thebombayclub.com/ where I happen to be the first part of this week.

M8

That's not a new one. It is quite good ^

M8

I make the best martinis :p

The trick is to stick the gin or vodka in the freezer. Then the booze doesn't get diluted much by the ice. Quite potent.

In my cupboard right now: Ciroc, Pravda, Chopin, Belvedere, Citadelle, Magellan, Miller, Q, Bombay.

Gin tastes better the colder it gets, and there is a chemical reason for this: oxygen content increases as it gets colder, and this in turn releases flavour from the botanicals used in gin (particularly the juniper berries). My freezer is set cold enough that vodka will ice up if I put it in the wrong (colder) part of the freezer. Haven't used ice with martinis in years (it makes a difference).

A terrific lavender martini (tastes better than it sounds) is made at Trini's in the Atlantic hotel in FLL. Culinary lavender works really well but is not used much in the US.

The bar at Per Se, NYC.

$10k Martini
 

May not be the best (I've certainly never had one!) - but could be the most expensive!!!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=4505397

A martini does not contain vodka!!!!!

A traditionalist, uh? ;) I used to drink gin ones only but now I do enjoy a vodka "cocktail" (or whatever you want to call it) once a while too. Less of a hangover the next morning.

The place that serves the best martinis in town, according to a poll in the local paper, has only a couple with gin, and most don't contain Vermouth either (heresy!).

.....

A martini does not contain gin!!!!!

The approved technique is to open the vermouth bottle and let the fumes waft over the gin. Any more than that makes for an inferior martini. The alternative technique if having no frozen gin and having to use a shaker with ice is to rinse the shaker with vermouth, being careful to pour it all out prior to adding ice and the gin, then shake vigorously and pour into the martini glass from over your head (at least a 2 foot drop, to get enough oxygenation). As for the gin, I prefer Tanqueray Ten and if that is not available, Bombay Sapphire. Hate Gordons (but others love Gordons). Some of the dutch gins are also quite good, but also a lot different for true genevers.

A Matini is now, always was and ever shall be made with gin! The other drink remains clearly a "Vodka Martini", another kettle of fish, another flavor, another thrill.

The best Martini I ever had was a double in the cocktail lounge of the Warwick Hotel, New York City, the night of October 22, 1962, before departing "for the Front" (Key West, and those who remember the date will know why). The schedule of recreational physical activities following the Martini(s) in question also rank among the "Best" (at least until 8 bells of the Mid - that's 4AM, to catch the hop South).

Close to the best Martini....(but maybe a Gibson with the onions)

Unless you have access to honest to goodness Spanish Manzanilla Olives (unstuffed) and Meyer lemons,

At least a month before, find a recipe for Moroccan salt-preserved lemons, and prepare it with regular "store bought" lemons, adding a handful of cocktail onions to each jar of lemons.

Keep a liter of Beefeaters' in the deep freeze along with a rack of stemmed glasses.

Add a teaspoon of Noilly Pratt Dry Vermouth to a well-chilled Martini Glass, swirl and discard all but a few drops "filming" the interior. Add gin, about the consistency of Karo syrup.

Introduce a twist of Meyer lemon anda couple of little olives, or in lieu of same, add a twist of preserved lemon peel and a couple of onions.

Consume no more than 2 big'uns, preferably before rare red meat or enthusiastic sex. If you must combine the rare beef and sex, try the sex first, after the Matinis but before the beef.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

A cautious enquiry from someone not that familiar with this part of American dining/drinking culture: Isn´t a martini or two before dinner a little bit strong on your taste buds to enjoy the nuances of the food and wine afterwards? Of course the same question could be pointed at the G&T slinging Brits...

Or is it just a steakhouse thing?

Yes, that is the intended purpose. Make dismal food seem to taste better (by not tasting at all). As the quality of cuisine improved in the US, the martini disappeared from the dining scene for the most part. Now it is making a comeback (though often as cocktails separate from dinner, or as desert). It generally isn't combined with food except in steakhouses with the 40 oz. steak and 12 inch cigar menu.

The best martini comes from my kitchen. Tanqueray Ten, vermouth (what are the rest of y'all doing with the stuff? Watering your plants? :p ), two olives.

Diminished taste is still well worth it for me. If I've had two by dinner time, I can't feel myself chew either and I don't care.

On your next trip to Nashville...
 

Try a martini made by Brad at the Bridge Bar in the Rennaissance Downtown Nashville. He's trained many a bartender but none make as good a martini as he.

Had a pretty good one earlier this week: Ciroc, a little dirty, blue cheese-stuffed olives at Bob's Steakhouse in the Omni Hotel in San Francisco.

My favorite is still a vodka martini (with your choice of vodka) with blue-cheese stuffed olives (you can see my preference) at Red Square at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. The vodka is nice and cold, and the top of the bar is even made of ice!

For non-traditionalists, you can find all sorts of great stuff put in martinis nowadays -- I had one recently with anchovy-stuffed olives. Excellent!

By the way, this is off-topic, but I just discovered the "Bloody Mary Bar" at Mon Ami Gabi at the Paris in Las Vegas. What a great innovation -- they bring you your choice of vodka, and then the do-it-yourself bar has a handful of tomato juices/bloody mary mixes, dozens of hot and worcestershire sauces, dry spices, all different types of veggies, etc. I would highly recommend it, and have never seen anything like it.

Hey, I'll double that.......:).

Couldn't agree more!!

I must have the final say. A martini shall be made only with vodka. I have infinite and chidlish stamina for this, so just let me have the last word :D

M8

Maybe not the best, but certainly the most interesting. Sitting in Il Mulino in NYC with my wife. We were at the bar by the window waiting for a table. Just finished a Belvedere Martini (yes, the vodka kind) when a guy at the bar starts a conversation with us. He then asks us what we were drinking and I told him. He started to smile, and told me that I had answered the question perfectly and that he would buy me our next round of drinks as he OWNED Belvedere Vodka. He was there taking a good client out for dinner. Gave me his card, and we had a great conversation with he and his guests.

Not much longer afterwards, I read in Forbes that they (he and his son) had sold Belvedere for some ungodly sum of money. Cheers!

Thanks for the tip! I'll definitely have to check this one out next time. ^

best martini...

martini mondays at my good friend's house...but, since that's a little off the beaten path...

OYG (Old Yellowstone Garage), Koshu Wine Bar and the bar at Spring Creek Resort - all in Jackson Hole, Wyoming...where, I believe, nobody had even heard of a martini until about 5 years ago.

worst martini...

Paris, France - sorry...everything else is wonderful, though.

st

From what authority do you speak? Martinis have been around here in the US regularly for as long as I remember. There's no "comeback" because it never went away. Let's see, I'm 49 yrs-old and I remember all manner of adults sipping on martinis when I was young, and have seen this throughout my aging.

A before dinner aperitif is as traditional in the US as it is in Europe. It has nothing to do with the "dismal food" as you point out above.

And for you "traditionalists" on the gin thing. Gin started being mixed in martinis in the 60's. Before that it was mostly potato vodka that was being used. That being said, however, I use vodka and gin, and in some cases will mix both in a single martini.

M8

Trained in the late 50s while in college as a barman, the best of part time jobs (and tips split with the cocktail waitresses), I will categorically disagree with your claim.

Every bartenders manual and recipe book from days gone by, the hoary, hairy past, will without hesitation call for gin in a Martini. By the late 50s, occasional customers might call for a Vodka Martini - but since only a handful of big city bars might even stock "potato vodka" (for under nortmal conditions, US importers would not have touched an Eastern European/Soviet product), and US and West European vodkas were all grain-based alky.

Vodka martinis leaped in popularity in the early 60s, as much to do with Ian Fleming as anyone (just as vodka itself became "respectable", after for years being only the emphasis in a Bloody Mary or Screwdriver, the only "popular" vodka based bar beverages.

Not to detract from your experience as a barman, but there are thousands of bartenders running around who are not learned on the subject of martini history.

Potato vodkas of old were oily (which is why 007 wanted it shaken and not stirred). The resurgence of the vodka you are referring to in the 60's was due to the refining of vodka switching over to grains instead of potatos, and not due to Fleming, or The Rat Pack.

Today the resurgence of potato vodkas is due to further improvements in the refining process, not because the Iron Curtain fell. Potato vodkas were always available as a poor man's drink in the 50's, right down there with rye, and way before that, being that vodka was always primarily refined from potatos. Now potato vodkas are considered trendy, and modern refining has eliminated the oiliness problem.

Sadly we now even have vodka refined from grapes, which is an abomination in my opinion.

As for your reference to Fleming, Casino Royale was written in 1953. This was Fleming's first Bond novel, and it reflects Fleming's drinking habits. Vodka was Bond's preference in his martini and it was potato vodka - in the early 50's not early 60's. There is an instant in the books where he blends his vodka with gin.

Cheers,

M8

While I would hardly challenge your experience, please name one US distilled/bottled Vodka from the 1950s which was made with potatoes. From "Smirnoff" on down the ladder, US vodkas from the end of Prohibition to relatively recent years were "Grain" distillates, far cheaper in the US than potato alcohol, not even a good choice for moonshiners (although I've drunk sweet potato alky).

I noticed M8 had a different take on this, but then this thread has attracted some of my favourite FT writers and opinions can of course differ. Thanks for the information.

A real "steakhouse" martini followed by the massive steak and cigar is definately on my "to do" list once I get our American business going. Any Chicago area recs for such a combination?

The Martini was created by the Martini and Rossi company as a vehicle for their dry vermouth. The recipe is 2 to 1, gin to vermouth. The Smirnoff company paid the producers of the Bond films to replace the gin with Smirnoff in the movies, around 1962 or so, and this led to the vodka martini's popularity. Cheers to all!

I don't think we really have an argument here. I confirmed the grain distillation in an earlier post and the switch away from potatos. The excerpt below also confirms that vodka was here way before the 1950's. So QED for both of us.

From http://cocktailtimes.com/dictionary/history_vodka.shtml

Here is various lore as to the origin of the martini http://members.aol.com/zigystar/history/index.html

Note the lack of reference to Vodka. However, I still say that vodka has been in the mix since the very beginning. It is an either/or thing with gin vs. vodka, and not that the vodka was added much later as some fashion statement.

And of course, none of the links above are in the scholarly researched category.

Cheers,

M8

I think Ian Fleming (James Bond) liked to order a Vesper Martini, named after a female character in the novel Casino Royale.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesper_(cocktail)

Made with Lillet, rather than vermouth, and with a mix of vodka and gin.

The Vesper Martini

3 oz Gin
1 oz Vodka
0.5 oz Lillet Blanc

Shake (or stir) with ice and strain into a wine glass or large martini glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Here's an extract from the novel...

http://www.esquire.com/features/arti..._Drinking.html

Martuni's San Francisco...:)

Ok drinking is something I happen to know a little about, and the quest for the perfect Martini led me (with financial wager involved) on a quest of the finest establishments of london, all accused of having the best.

First, anything with vodka in it, does not have Martini in its name. Period. A martini that substitutes Gin with Vodka, is NOT a Vodka Martini, it is a Vodkatini.

Now, in days gone by the American Bar at the Savoy (the birthplace of the Martini) used to uses a womans vaporiser to waft the Vermouth over the top of the glass of Gin. Some variations have the bartender swilling his mouth out with Vermouth, then whispering the word 'vermouth' over the gin.

Now as for the assembly of the drinks, since the original used stirred I feel we should to, whilst I appreciate the preservation of strength, it shouldnt be too much of an issue if you are using chilled spirits anyway, so do it.

It is NEVER shaken as it bruises the spirits and alters the flavour, shaking is only ever used with drinks that require intense mixing, such as ones containing egg white, and is one of the most overused bar flourishes around.

Finally on the Bond note. Flemming intended Bonds quirks in "Martini" consumption to be a wry smile at the already well established Martini snobs, and therefore should be totally discounted.

Now the Gin.

I saw some mention of 'Botanicals' earlier, good. Gin is given its flavour with a variety of ingredients, some use dried ingredients, and some use fresh ingredients, these are the botanicals. Gins that use fresh ones (most use dried) tend to have a slightly more citrus tang to them then the dried ones. For a good gin that uses fresh try Tanqueray 10. Bombay Sapphire is widely used, and very good it is too.

The glass should be the temperature of the spirit, not hard, keep it in the same freezer.

Now the vermouth, how many of you have had a barman ask you if you've eaten or not? If you have you are in the presence of someone that truly knows whats what. If you are drinking on an empty stomach there should be a tiny touch more vermouth then if its a post dinner drink, regardless don't get too heavy with it.

Finally the garnish, well the main one to mention is how to handle the lemon peel. Do you want it? do you want it in the glass, squeezed over the top of the glass so the oil floats over the surface of the drink? Or bruised and wiped over the rim. But generally please, a touch of class, just one little olive on a plain wooden toothpick.

Oh, and where is the perfect Martini in London? i feel unable to say, I'm sure the last thing they'd want is scores of 'ghastly Americans' in, well, their American bar....

aceman,

Nice post. However I call nonsense on (1) the Fleming psychoanalysis, (2) the Vodkatini thing, and finally (3) the bruising lore.

However, that being said, I hope you enjoy whatever you are drinking.

Next time I pass thru London on my way to Edinburgh, however, I will give you the opportunity to prove your assertions to me, in person, by purchasing the referenced cocktails for me to imbibe. Most cordial of you! :D

M8

Shaken vs Stirred?
 

Heehee, I found a cute little tidbit on shaken vs. stirred martinis at The Straight Dope:

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mmartini.html

I think we need a few FT volunteers to try this and a few other variations, just for scientific purposes. :D :)

That straightdope writer must have been straight on dope. Nonsense! Poppycock! Same for the Fleming psychoanalysis re Bond. What would Bond know about martinis? He's a mere fictional civil servant who regularly gets beat up, gets fooled by wily women like Vesper, and in the Moonraker novel doesn't even get the girl, any girl! :p

I, a true and living being, shall prove the true case of the matter on shaken vs. stirred this New Year's Eve and report my unquestionable testimonial here on 1 January :D

M8