Places and people really need to start qualifying their offerings, ie Brandy Manhattan, Bourbon Manhattan, Poser Martini, etc. That way everybody has a common frame of reference.
It’s not like we’re ever going to even come close to agreeing on any of these things. Except maybe that “the other guy” has a naugahyde palate. 
I agree… if for no other reason than a lot of garden-variety bartenders are scandalously ignorant of their craft, and probably need some help in getting you the drink you’re looking for.
My wife and I went out for dinner at a nice place some years ago (Al Biernat’s in Dallas, FTR), and she ordered a daiquri. A plain daiquiri, meaning lime juice, rum and sugar(or syrup). Instead, she got some weird strawberry-ish bright red concoction.
You’d think the bartender at a place like that would actually know what a daiquiri is, or have the freaking sense to ask, but apparently not.
One place I go that is sort of a martini oriented bar, the bartenders shake the thing like it’s a can of paint at Home Depot. I’ve told them that I’m not sure about bruising gin, but they’re killing it. One of the younger bartenders thought because you use dry vermouth, that a dry martini meant more vermouth. He actually still thinks that, but makes them correctly assuming everyone is ordering wrong.
+1 for a gin martini always having vermouth. And a dash of orange bitters and a twist is classic. The orange bitters bridges the vermouth and gin perfectly. Nevertheless, no bitters and a olive is acceptably a martini. No vermouth is typically used in a vodka martini because it just doesn’t make sense, but then again a vodka martini is just a chilled shot in a pretty glass. Bruising to me is just a word for shaking air and ice into the mix making it cloudy and icy. Stir a martini.
Screw that. The ice slick on top of a martini, if done well, is one of the best parts of a martini IMO. I care not if it’s cloudy or clear; it must have that ice slick.
I once ordered a martini and was told she couldn’t make one because she “didn’t have olive juice”. I blinked and ordered a beer.
I feel like Rose’s is perfectly fine, even though it creates a completely different experience. I don’t like people to assume; I might prefer one or the other, depending.
I have met bartenders who don’t know what a gimlet is :smack:
That’s a lost cause, I think, and 99% of people these days expect the frozen kind. It is odd that he didn’t ask though, and also if frozen was assumed, that they didn’t ask if you wanted some other fruit (banana seems common).
A twist in a martini is good too. Hendrick’s martinis often use a cucumber slice, instead.
…and that serving something in a martini glass doesn’t entitle it to the name “martini.”
now I don’t mind a good booze discussion but is it me or are most bartenders these days just lost if a drink needs more that 2 or 3 things in a glass ?
I mean I know at places like chilli’s and such that have bars or cocktails they value speed over accuracy but I think true bartending is a dying art …
I miss the old 50s style Chinese place we had here because they made drinks you didn’t need more than 2 or 3 of and they had all the post ww2 fruity stuff…
Or the suffix “-tini.”
Right.
I’ve often wondered if we’re going to have to pass some sort of Federal Law about this.
I don’t drink Long Island Iced Teas, but I like watching a good bartender throw one together.
+1
A martini is a recipe, not a style. Gin, dry vermouth, cold, olives.
I have become accepting of vodka being substituted, and those “dirty” martinis can be an acceptable variation, but there is no such an animal as a “Oreo cookie martini” or an “appletini.”
Let me tell you about the time my father ordered a “perfect Rob Roy, with a twist, straight up” at Applebee’s…
Actually, that would have been true had you said it 20 years ago, but in the last 10 years, there’s been a real renaissance of cocktail culture, serious mixology, and bars that serve that kind of thing. There’s even a convention for this stuff- “Tales of The Cocktail” in New Orleans every summer (**DSeid’s **link is from their site) where bartenders and cocktail hobbyists go and learn about technique, ingredients, etc… and drink quantities that would stagger Ernest Hemingway.
But I don’t know how prevalent it is in the nation as a whole; even here in Dallas, one of the bigger cities in the country, there are maybe around 20-30 places that could claim to have serious cocktails and bartenders, and the rest are places that have a waiter who got “promoted” to being a bartender and taught how to make the advertised house drinks, serve beer and wine, and make a handful of extremely basic mixed drinks like gin & tonic, <spirit> and coke, cosmopolitan, etc…
If I walked into one of the 30 places and told the bartender that I wanted that perfect Rob Roy, they’d actually know what I was talking about- both on the Rob Roy part, and on the “perfect” part (equal amounts sweet and dry vermouth, instead of one or the other).
The rest wouldn’t have a clue on either account, and would probably ask you what it was, and then may not even have both kinds of vermouth on hand, depending on where you are.
(…must…not…write…grr…grraagh…) You mean a Pukin?
:D:D:D
Tonight’s Cocktail Hour will feature two Abominations Unto Nuggan. I will be making the wife her favorite Dirty Vodka Don’t-Call-It-A-Martini with two habanero-stuffed olives, while I will be enjoying a Manhattan-like concoction featuring Rittenhouse 100 proof rye, sweet vermouth, Angostura bitters, a small dollop of Luxardo Marachino syrup and three, count 'em three cherries. Hers will be shaken, whilst mine shall be stirred. Both will be delicious.
^It’s all good.
Cheers!
I never understood why garnishing a martini with an onion instead of an olive makes it an entirely different drink, but make it with a totally different alcohol (vodka), and somehow it’s still a martini.