Some drinks are sturdy enough to defy the rough and careless handling to be expected at the average bar. I can order a Manhattan on the rocks most places, and as long as the bartender doesn’t forget the bitters, I will end up with a perfectly drinkable cocktail. Not so a martini, which one can expect to be wretched.
There are two reasons I’m almost never satisfied with a commercial martini: one universal, the other particular. The universal: Few bartenders make this most perfect of cocktails with the basic craftsmanship and attention to detail necessary for such a simple drink to sing. The particular: Few bartenders make the drink the way I like it.
Why not solve the problem by demanding the drink be made a specific way? Why not just be like James Bond?
Christopher Buckley said of the obligatory order, “shaken not stirred,” that there for a while it seemed the height of sophistication — or, perhaps, just affectation. It wasn’t that the martini so mixed was itself inherently desirable; it was that Bond was confident in ordering just what he wanted. It was the sheer act of being specific, not the specifics themselves, that defined the secret agent’s charm.
Alas, for most of us, a punctilious display of ordering food and drink just so is less likely to come across as charming than as high-maintenance, more Meg Ryan than Sean Connery.
Ian Fleming knew from the get-go that he had a difficult balancing act in presenting his secret agent as both a brutal man of action and a smooth sophisticate. The author also faced the challenge of making Bond a master of luxury goods without making him the sort of off-putting person who flaunts his knowledge of luxury goods. In his first Bond book, Casino Royale, Fleming writes a scene in which Bond is having dinner and making time with the luscious Vesper Lynd. He orders an obscure vintage of Taittinger champagne and prattles on about how it is the best of the best, only to catch himself in that mix of tiresome knowitallism and fussbudgetry that is the ugly flip side of 007’s suave knowingness.
“You must forgive me,” Bond says. “I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It’s very pernickety and old-maidish really, but then when I’m working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble.”
That sly Fleming fellow was having one over on us. He sells us the notion we can be worldly swells if only we emulate Bond and become more particular about life’s pleasures, and then he laughs that the effort is more likely to make us “pernickety and old-maidish.” One might just as well have a license to bore.
So I’ve found it best not to make a pompous Bondian spectacle of myself when ordering a drink. Still, I’m left with a problem: How am I going to get a drinkable martini? If I’m not specific I’m likely to get something harsh and tepid. If I am specific, I’m likely to get something harsh and tepid, and I will have made myself look precious and persnickety in the bargain.
I have come up with a solution that succeeds in asking for a martini made to exacting standards without all the fruitless nonsense. I have had business cards made with instructions. I give one to the waiter or bartender when I ask for a martini and have found that significantly improved martinis are produced with a minimum of fuss. Here’s the card that I hand out. Feel free to do the same with the recipe you prefer.
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HERE’S HOW I LIKE MY MARTINI Three ounces of a gin that tastes unapologetically like gin (think Boodles) Three-fourths of an ounce of dry vermouth (I prefer Dolin) a dash of orange bitters * Please ice a cocktail glass before you begin mixing. * Combine ingredients over ice and stir. * The drink is not nearly cold enough—please stir some more. * You’re not done stirring yet. * If you have stirred for two minutes, you may stop. *Empty the iced cocktail glass and strain the Martini into it olives THANK YOU |
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
