The Martini Menu Is Back. Are We Happy?

Is the Return of Multiple "Martinis" on Bar Menus Good or Bad for Cocktails?

Martinis. You’ve got choices now.

I wasn’t writing about cocktails during the first heyday of the “Martini Menu,” which was roughly from the late 1980s to the early aughts. It was only when doing research into the Bad Ol’ Days of the 1990s for my 2019 book The Martini Cocktail that I spent quality times with the long sheets of “‘tinis” routinely handed out at big-city and small-city bars and restaurants. It was then that I encountered creations with such names as the Raspberry Martini, Lady Godiva Martini (chocolate-flavored) and the Cloud 9 Martini (vodka, amaretto, Kahlúa and Bailey's Irish Cream). People drank this stuff? And they thought they were Martinis?

As Boston Globe reporter Dick Lehr wrote back in 1998 when he waded into the sea of Martinis, “like ice cream there are 48 flavors, a crowded field that, to me, seems not to enhance but to undercut the Martini point.”

I began writing about cocktails in 2006. By that time, the wholesale rejection of such lists by high-minded bartenders was in full swing. Oh, Martini Menus still existed at your local Radisson and several family-oriented restaurant chains. But the modern breed of American cocktail bar was having none of it. One of my earliest memories of attending Tales of the Cocktail, the annual convention held every summer in New Orleans, was attending a mock wake for the Appletini. People danced through the streets in a Second Line as the cocktail cognoscenti symbolically put a drink they detested and resented to—they hoped—permanent rest.

I felt assured at the time that the Martini Menu would never return to prominence. And I was convinced that the reason no serious mixologist concerned themselves with the Martini during the aughts and much of the 2010s was because they didn’t want to tempt fate by indirectly coaxing ‘tinis back to life.

But, apparently, you can’t keep the king of cocktails down for long. Today, in 2023, it seems every new bar and restaurant has a Martini Menu. If not that, they have a house Martini, and that drink is not a Martini, but a Martini variation.

Financially speaking, you can not fault these bars. They are merely answering the public’s currently unslakable thirst for Martinis. That thirst arose among people of all generations (but mostly the younger generations) during Covid. People wanted old cocktails, nostalgic cocktails, simple cocktails and stiff cocktails to get through the hard times. And what’s more old, nostalgic, simple and stiff than a Martini?

But people want Martinis so much now that just one listed Martini isn’t going to cut it. They want choice. And even if you gave them the old, time-honored options of a gin, vodka or dirty Martinis, that still isn’t enough. They want more Martinis. They still want them to be a Martini, but they want more of them. You see the problem.

And then there is the competition factor. If you’re a bar in a bustling market like New York trying to make a play for fickle customers, you can’t just offer the same Martini they could get next door. You have to offer a different Martini, a unique Martini. Ideally, you offer several unique Martinis.

So, at Deux Chats, a new bar in Williamsburg, you have the Deux Chats Martini, made with gin, manzanilla sherry, vermouth, and celery; and a Kinky Martini, made with spicy vodka, Ancho Reyes Verde and Cocchi Americano. (I’ve tried both of these and liked both.) At the Bee’s Knees bar nearby, you have a Lychee Martini made with sake. And at Pokito a couple more blocks away, you have the XO Martini with tequila, coffee liqueur and cold brew.

In the East Village, a bar is about to open named Madeline's Martini. The house Martini, also called Madeline’s Martini, is more like a Martinez, made of gin, equal parts sweet and dry vermouth, maraschino, and bitters. Another offering, Martini by the Sea, is composed of mezcal, “sea lettuce brine,” and bianco vermouth.

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This is all good for the Martini’s stock. The drink is relevant again. It is triumphal again. But is it good for the Martini, the actual cocktail?

Bar owners and bartenders will tell you that the Martini riffs of today are different than the kitchen-sink ‘tinis of yesteryear. I wrote something about this for the New York Times last year. In the words of bar owner Sam Ross, “It’s not just any random ingredient served in a martini glass. This time around, it’s based around clear spirits stirred with wine-based products.”

He’s right. But I worry about how long that state of affairs will last.

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The first time I encountered a modern Martini Menu in our current era was at the bar at The Grill Room, the Major Food Group’s reimagining of the old Four Seasons restaurant. They put cocktail master Thomas Waugh in charge. The old Four Seasons bar was known for big, retro Martinis, made with either gin or vodka and very little vermouth. So Waugh went that model one better, constructing an entire Martini list.

I didn’t mind this list—in fact, I embraced it—because it wasn’t made up of Appletinis or Chocolatinis or other malefactors from the past, but genuine, legitimate member of the Martini extended family, such as the Alaska, Gibson and Kangaroo. I saw no harm in gathering that group together in one room, especially since every one of those drinks were executed flawlessly. The same, to a certain extent, went for the Martini menu at Dante, though that bar got a little more loose with its interpretations, as communicated by the drink called the Upside-Down Dirty Gibson.

But, you see, that’s the thing about Martinis that makes it so difficult to argue in favor of absolute orthodoxy. As much as purists would like to think so, the Martini has never been a loner. It’s always rolled into every bar with an entourage trailing behind it. “You like my man, the Martini? Well, then you might like his best pal from way back, the Turf Club; or his saltier younger brother, the Gibson; or fancy uptown twin cousins, the Tuxedo and Tuxedo No 2.”

As a cocktail theorist, this crowd presents you with an impossible choice, because while these drinks may not strictly be Martinis, they are undeniably in the Martini family and it would be foolish to say they weren’t. So, when it’s come to Martini Menus like that at The Grill, I’ve always been content to leave the gate open for that pre-Prohibition crew.

But the Martini Menus of the last two years are not of The Grill variety. They are populated by new attractions. I knew things were going in a different direction when the owners of Attaboy reopened that old Martini den, Temple Bar, in fall of 2021. There was a section of the menu titled “Martinis.” It had nine drinks on it. Nine. Some were recognizable, like the Vesper and Dirty Martini. Others were not. The Bilbao Martini had gin, dry vermouth, Bianco vermouth, salt and anchovy. The Salt and Pepper Martini had gin, blanc vermouth, sherry, piment d’espelette, salt and celery. (Actually, not a single one of the Martinis is a classic Martini, if we’re defining that as gin/vodka with dry vermouth, possibly orange bitters and nothing else.)

Since then, it’s been pretty much anything goes in terms of house Martinis at the new bars and restaurants that have opened in New York since Covid began to loosen its grip. There are seemingly two rules in operation in this new Martini-thirsty era. One: if you’re opening a bar or restaurant, you must have a house Martini on the menu, preferably more than one. And Two: that Martini cannot be a standard Martini. It must be unique.

There are a few common—and, by now, predictable—ways this house Martini is achieved. One simple way is to add fino or manzanilla sherry. This keeps the Martini Martini-esque, while giving it an edge. Another frequent twist is to split the vermouth between dry and blanc, which makes the Martini softer and adds a bit of depth. And then there are the myriad variations on the Dirty Martini which, as far as I can tell, make up roughly fifty perfect of all new, original Martini riffs. There’s not a kind of brine out there that hasn’t been put to work.

Meanwhile, we’ve seen the widely reported, triumphant return of the Appletini— that cocktail the brave mixologists thought they had buried in New Orleans 15 years ago.

If we keep this up, there’s a good chance that the generation to come—like the generation before us—is not going to know exactly what a Martini is, except that it’s served in a classy glass, costs a bit more and is maybe, usually clear.

Is this something we need to worry about? If people want to drink Martinis type A through Z, shouldn’t we just let ‘em?

Well, given my bailiwick, I can’t help but look at things from a historical perspective. During the early years of the cocktail renaissance, we all worked so hard to re-define cocktails as something specific and exact. A proper Old-Fashioned was this, not that. A good Daiquiri was this, not that. Climbing that hill toward excellence and precision was hard work. Backsliding is easy. And, I have to admit, after all that work, there is a part of me that is discouraged to see everything end up exactly where it was 25 years ago. To be a Martini should mean something. As the worried Lehr mused in 1998, “Is there a point in mixology’s continuum where a Martini is no longer a Martini?”

It makes me think of the final monologue of Syndrome, the evil genius and wannabe superhero from The Incredibles. Syndrome’s vengeful mission, once he eliminated all other superhero competition, was to make his crime-fighting inventions available to the public (he had no innate superpowers). Thus, he would level the playing field, making it possible for everyone to be incredible. “And once everyone is super,” he said, “no one will be.” To paraphrase that final line, is there the danger that once everything’s a Martini, then nothing will be?

Odds and Ends…

I was sorry to see that legendary New York Times restaurant critic and food writer Mimi Sheraton passed away last week. We never met, but we did have some interactions. When I was writing my “Who Goes There?” for Eater in the aughts and early 2010s, using a pseudonym, Sheraton was not above leaving an insightful comment if the old restaurant I was covering interested her. Regarding an appraisal of the old French fine-dining institution Le Perigord, she wrote, “Delighted to hear it is still so good and surely will go back, but, for the record: Strictly speaking if, the sole was grilled it was not Meuniere…..that would be sauteed with a light coating of flour and so is named for the miller’s wife, meuniere.” This was followed by another reader’s comment of, “Mimi Sheraton dropped knowledge in these comments. C’mon, this is the absolute best ever.” It was the best ever… Of all the RTD cocktails we’ve seen roll out over the past three years, not one has called itself a Dark and Stormy. That’s because they daren’t, because Goslings Rum owns the trademark on that cocktail name and would likely sue. That will change this month, because Goslings itself it getting into the RTD game. The “Dark ‘n Stormy” canned cocktail portfolio debut a trio of tropical flavors: Pineapple, Mango, and Black Cherry, which join the original Dark ‘n Stormy in a revamped can. (Wait—since Gosling isn’t following the the strict recipe of the cocktail with those fruity versions, is it going to sue itself?)… Fort Defiance has abandoned its brief foray into Oklahoma smash burgers and has returned to the pub-style burger it served for many years at its old location… Clover Club’s spring menu has dropped. Among the new drinks is the Coping Mechanism, made of white and green pepper-infused tequila, Cocchi Americano, fino sherry, Suze and peach liqueur… Revelie Luncheonette, the new spot from the team behind Raoul’s, that stands right across Prince Street from the original, has opened for business. They will be serving a burger, egg creams, and a fried chicken sandwich… The second episode of the final season of televisions “Succession” featured an extended scene where the four Roy siblings gather in Peter McManus Cafe in Manhattan. A worried Roman, unfamiliar with such humble pubs, hilariously asks “Can they make a vodka and soda?”… Papaya King, the beloved Upper East Side hot dog stand, has been saved. It will not close, but will move across Third Avenue, between 86th and 87th Streets. No word on if the classic neon sign goes with it… The iconic old Hamm’s beer sign outside Archie’s Iowa Rockwell Tavern in Chicago will be returned to its rightful place soon… Hammertown Barn in Rhinebeck, NY, is stocking my book Modern Classic Cocktails… Mimi Cheng’s dumpling chain has opened a location in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, where the Gumbo Boys joint used to be.

Me, reaching for a plain old Martini.