Any Twitter community has its drama, God knows, and Cocktail Twitter is no different. But every now and then, an exchange emerges from nowhere that actually leads somewhere educational. Such was the case recently when a chance trading of information led to what was surely the only substantial discussion of the Hartini on record. I entered the conversation when someone noted the only Google hit for “Hartini” led to a cocktail app I co-created.
I found out about the Hartini in 2019, when I was putting together my app “The Martini Cocktail” with Martin Doudoroff. The app collected every significant historical recipe and variation of the Martini I could find and put them in one place. One of them was the Hartini. The drink appeared in a 1955 book in my library, “The Diner’s Companion” by Maurice Dreicer, a colorful grifter who spent forty of his years on Earth in search of the perfect steak. He never found it, and never published the planned book about his quest. (The IRS didn’t take kindly to that, given all the steak dinners Dreicer has written off over the years.)
Anyway, the Hartini was invented and named by James A. Hart, an impresario of local renown. Hart, born in Eddyville, Iowa, was a hotel man all his life. He got his start in Chicago as assistant manager at the Sherman hotel. He was appointed as general manager of both the Ambassador East and Ambassador West in 1933, and succeeded in transforming the two then-staid hotels into centers of social activity. Hart attracted stars of stage and screen to the Pump Room restaurant inside the Ambassador East, which opened in 1938 and was described by the New York Times as “the glamour restaurant of the Midwest.”
A man of flashy ideas, Hart dressed the waiters at the Pump Room in Hunting Pinks and black satin knee-breeches and armed them with flaming swords, which were used to cook any number of meats and vegetables tableside, including a half a chicken. The walls were colored sapphire and the circular booths were done in cream-colored leather; Booth One, reserved for only the most Very of the VIPs, was equipped with a private rotary phone.
The Hartini was a product of its era, when Martinis were getting stronger and vermouth was a dirty word. According to Dreicer, the recipe called for a half ounce of dry vermouth to be poured over a rocks glass filled with cracked ice. The vermouth was then strained out, leaving a tumbler of vermouth-tinged iced. This method was known as an “in-out-out” Martini. To the glass was then added three ounces of gin or vodka. Where the drink was slightly ahead of the curve was the suggestion of vodka, which was just beginning to creep into Martini glasses, and the idea of a Martini on the rocks, a trendy variation that began to appear in American bars and homes in the early 1950s.
A variation on the Hartini found in the Dreicer book appeared in a column called “Tower Ticker,” which ran in the Chicago Tribune on December 2, 1950 (a clip furnished on Twitter by Threesome Tollbooth bar manager Jesse Sheidlower). This was called the Hailstone Hartini and was supposedly inspired by a patron’s experience suffering through a hailstorm in northern Wisconsin. From the Trib:
Relating the incident to James A. Hart was enough to send the Ambassador hotel’s president into a huddle with his bar manager, John Sayad. Edison never made such medicine! Hart and Sayad contrived molds to make snow white “hailstones” by freezing aerated, or carbonated water. Over six “hailstones” in a highball glass they pour a six-ounce martini (four parts gin to one of dry vermouth), swirled lightly, added an anchovy olive, and agreed mutually to “let it rain.” A further refinement is to be a plastic stir stick in the shape of a lightning bolt.
Sounds like a stroke of attention-getting genius worthy of one of today’s restless mixologists. The Hailstone Hartini was a considerably larger and wetter Hartini than the one found in the Dreicer book.
Dreicer was a tireless promoter of the Hartini, a drink he predicted would sweep the nation. (He mentioned the Hartini on one track of his peculiar EP of audio cocktail instructions, "Here’s How to Mix Them.”) But it was not to be. Hart died February 27, 1960, at the age of 60. Pump Room menus from the 1960s on do not list the Hartini. So, it’s likely the Hartini’s short reign at the Pump Room ended with the 1950s. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a Hartini yourself tonight.
Hartini
3 ounces gin or vodka
½ ounce dry vermouth
Into a rocks glass filled with cracked ice, pour the vermouth. After a few seconds, strain the vermouth from the glass. Add the gin or vodka. Stir briefly. Dreicer does not mention a garnish for this drink, so take your pick, lemon twist or olive.
If you didn’t click on the link above where it says “tireless promoter” - stop.right.now.
Go back and listen — if you haven’t had enough of Maurice Dreicer talking about Mixing Drinks at the end of that eight minutes, then go to WMFU’s link here and check out the whole album. You’re welcome.
The slavish typographic resemblance of the cover of Dreicer’s “The Diner’s Companion” to Baker’s “The Gentleman’s Companion” is curious. I think “hailstorm” may have been a pseudo drink category at some point.