The best Martini is the one that you’re having right now.
The ‘50/50’ is a cocktail, it’s not a Martini.
You can make a Martini exactly to your personal specifications but it never tastes better than the one that a bartender makes you at a bar, exactly to spec or not.
The more revitalizing and delicious that a Martini tastes is tantamount to exactly how badly you needed one.
Life is short. Lemon twist and olive, please.
Large ice is not made of plastic or glass. Please do not over stir or leave unattended for the length of a new guests welcoming volley. We like it cold, not wet. (For current bartending generation especially). Stir, not shake (for older generation of bartenders).
A mix of large cubes and a couple of cracked ones is best.
Orange bitters only at 2:1 and above (see No.2)
I’m paying $30. Make me the fucking Martini.
There is no vodka (or bianco vermouth, for that matter) in a Martini, unless you are out of gin or making a ‘Reverse Vesper’ (which is one hell of variation - why water down the gin when you can flavor the vodka!).
I loved that you had the boldness to post this on Instagram! I also agree with your assertion about bianco vermouth. I would take it a step further and also add sherry to that list - or even any styles of gin that are not London Dry, ha.
I love Frank—we all love Frank—but I demur, at least partially, on most points.
The Martini is a simple and profoundly pliable drink that is about 90% context; this is why an objectively mediocre Martini in the right steakhouse can be just perfect, but also why—for the same reasons—an objectively sophisticated and refined Martini in a fancy cocktail bar can be hot garbage.
The Martini is a cocktail† and literally began as a 50:50 mix of the Gin Cocktail and the Vermouth Cocktail, and it is to that mixture that the Martini eventually got its name; the 50:50 Martini is unequivocally a Martini, and the “Fitty-fitty” is an excellent waypoint on the infinite spectrum of Martini ratios (that also includes all the so-called “reverse” varieties)
(see #1—it runs both ways)
Here we more or less agree!
I love olives. On the side. Not in my drink‡. (I re-tested and confirmed this for the zillionth time on Monday.) And despite being a huge fan of alliums in general, I do not care for the cocktail onion.
This consideration should probably be the law at bars with wet ice that is only barely clinging to its solidity, but it’s probably of less relevance to ice cubes straight from the home freezer. Certainly, understanding dilution is an important skill, and given the Duke’s Martini, an element of personal preference is also at play.
(see #6—it depends)
I gave up on orange bitters years ago—it does nothing for me; top-shelf vermouth these days is so potently-flavored that aromatic bitters in virtually any vermouth drink are often superfluous; that said, please drink whatever you find you like.
If I’m paying $30 for a Martini, most of that dough isn’t for the drink, so the other stuff better be fucking great or I’m staying home. (see #1)
The “sweet Martini” is a Martini (see also #2) and a criminally underrated one. (It’s merely off-dry unless you go adding syrups and liqueurs, which they used to do.) Splendid Martinis can be spun with good rosso vermouth or good blanc vermouth. Maybe even “bianco” (the Italian white vermouths), but I’ve never been impressed, myself. I’m going to continue to ignore vodka—as I have my entire adult life—except when dining at a slavic restaurant, where it suddenly makes sense.
†It seems Frank kind of wants to draw some distinction between “Martinis” and “cocktails”. I can almost get on board with the idea that a Dry Martini (as it is now most commonly interpreted: dry gin and dry vermouth) is not a cocktail because it’s objectively such an outlier. (Think about it.) But when you string together the words “the Martini is not a cocktail”, it’s obviously nonsense, so I have to accept that the cocktail umbrella is indeed vast and contains multitudes.
‡If you enjoy the “dirty martini”, by all means order them, but… what are we really doing with this?
Great thread on the most consistently debated topic in all of “cocktaildom!” A thought on #9– could what Frank means is that at those prices, we should expect the bartender to actually prepare the drink to order rather than pour out a batched “freezer martini?”