Love Notes #2: Vodka Martinis 🍸

The taste of friendship, romance and self-love

One egg cup of Russian Standard vodka. Half of olive brine. A splash of white vermouth. Not shaken, not stirred – but trembled at the bottom of a glass. Two olives. Small sips – but fast. No more than three. No less than two.

This is how hangovers begin. And occasionally Sunday afternoons. I hold the velveteen liquid on my tongue for a moment before letting it soak my throat. The unmistakable salt. It’s welcoming, like an old friend opening their door on a cool night.

I read something on The New Yorker’s Instagram, a satirical post of sorts about thoughts that run through the author’s head when she orders a whiskey neat at a bar. “He doesn’t say my drink is on the house, but we both know it is,” she writes. It’s an order that inspires intimidation: “one young woman, so daunted by the ease and maturity I’m radiating – and so humiliated by her own order – whispers “vodka cranberry” to the barman and then starts weeping.

I have similar thoughts to ordering a martini – vodka, very dry, very dirty – although unlike whiskey, I actually adore its cold, alcoholic essence: salty, potent, a cure for any unwanted or intrusive thoughts running through my brain.

My friend Meg – a chic, effortless New York type of woman – is responsible for this love affair. It was a discovery made just a few weeks after lockdown 1.0 ended, right at the beginning of our friendship (bolstered by wine-fuelled Zoom calls that would last for hours at a time; me in my flat at De Beauvoir, her at her boyfriend’s parents’ house in Norfolk, forever calling from ‘the pink bedroom’). I can’t remember who brought up martinis (likely her because I’d never had one before) but she arrived on a Saturday afternoon with a small bottle of vodka from a London distillery and some white vermouth, ready to educate me.

My contribution was a jar of Perello olives (crushingly over and subsequently defamed by Real Housewives Of Clapton) kept in the fridge, its brine primed for dirtying a martini. We drank the whole bottle, salivating over the ice-cold salt-slicked liquid. This was the turning point.

Since then I’ve made no secret of luxuriating in a martini or three as my signature drink. I don’t even look at a cocktail menu anymore. I enjoy having the choice made for me. I’ve sampled many in various London institutions and can safely say that it’s usually better when I make it myself, on account of my unquenchable thirst for brine; having said that there is little more satisfying that ordering one and it coming out in a perfectly chilled, thin-walled, short-stemmed glass, the right balance of flavours (almost equal parts vodka to olive brine, in my skewed opinion) dancing on your tongue under the romance of hushed lighting.

Places where they manage to get it right: Sagar & Wilde in Bethnal Green (for the coldest glasses), Buvette in New York’s West Village (for the right amount of olive brine – erring on the side of too much), The Clarence in Stoke Newington (for the fact that they are served in large tumblers), Quo Vadis in Soho (for the frequency with which they are served to guests at all hours of the day). Places that don’t get it right: anywhere who claims not to do a dirty vodka martini because they only make their signature cocktail, often infused with some sort of unnecessary botanical. I can stomach at 50/50 as long as there’s enough brine; but I draw the line at a gin martini. Some might consider me a heathen (it’s true that the original martini was made with gin). But the beauty of a signature drink is that it’s exactly how you want it to be.

My preference is to enjoy a martini in a dimly lit hotel bar, which I often do at The Standard in King’s Cross. There is something inimitably, undeniably sexy about sipping on ice-cold vodka in a hotel bar, especially alone. Sometimes it simply doesn’t matter if the martini is not to my liking; the setting alone is enough to render me enamoured. In any case, the quick hit of alcohol provides a hazy warmth; a strange balance between cleansing and numbing; an armour of sorts that gives you unbridled confidence. Under the influence of a martini or two, I transform into a main character who can make eyes with someone across a bar, strut across a hotel lobby with all the bravado of a Bond girl, or simply fall back in love with my life and myself.

Notable martini meal combinations: dirty martinis and smashed patty burgers. A single martini with a bowl of fries. On occasion my best friend Kyla and I have been known to sink three martinis served in heavy crystal glasses, convinced we’d only need a mere salad to get through the night. Two to go with a simple tomato pasta on a crisp spring evening. Most perfectly, one to crystallise a first kiss.

This is my own love letter to a drink that has carried me through first loves and first heartbreaks; enduring friendships and long goodbyes; solo dates and big dinners at home. Yours might taste a little different. All that matters is that it means something to you.