Almost always, when I have a Martini in a bar, there’s a beautiful icy mist floating in the drink. Sometimes it actually seems to be floating slightly below the surface of the drink. How do bartenders do this? It never happens if I try to mix one at home.
If you shake the thing, hard, in a martini shaker, the ice shatters and fragments. When you pour it through a strainer, only the little tiny sparkly bits make it through.
This is why a connoisseur always demands that his martini be . . . shaken, not stirred.
I think part of it is the ice in bars/restaurants is already smaller (from a machine) than your ice at home (from the tray/icemaker) so that it breaks easier. The other part of it is they use that strainer with the curly wire around the edge (or a slightly smaller glass inside the shaker) which lets smaller pieces of ice through. I know at home I use the kind of shaker with the strainer built-in as holes in the top, which are way too small to let any ice through. Hmm. I’m going to change that, I think!