A Snob’s Guide To… Martinis
The perfect martini for me has always been about temperature and dilution more than any fixed recipe. A martini has to be bone cold, properly diluted and honest about what it is – whether that's gin or vodka, wet or dry. At Dante we talk a lot about ritual, and the martini is the purest expression of that: it's not a drink you rush. The occasion matters as much as what's in the glass: who you're with, the light in the room, whether someone's actually looking after you. Get all of that right and the martini does the rest.
The Dante Martini is really a house signature rather than a straight classic. It’s a vesper style with both gin and vodka, two vermouths (dry and sweet) and a touch of Sicilian lemon, sea salt and olive and lemon bitters. The olives are the detail people always ask about. We stack a tricolour of them at the bottom of the glass rather than skewering them across the top. It's a small thing, but it means the garnish becomes part of the drink as you work your way down rather than an afterthought floating on top.
I don't remember my first martini with any precision, but I remember the ritual around it completely. My grandfather, Bob Rogers, had a 5 o’clock martini every day of his adult life, and some of my earliest memories are of that hour – the sense that this was a proper occasion even though it happened daily. It meant family and friends dropping by, and time spent with them. Growing up in Australia, food and drink were always relaxed and social rather than precious, and that daily martini hour was our family's version of aperitivo before I even knew the word. It's a big part of why I do what I do now.
There are some great spots to drink martinis. In New York, selfishly, I'll say Dante – we pride ourselves on our daily martini hour. Otherwise, you can’t beat Takuma Watanabe’s martinis at Martiny’s in Union Square. London is close to my heart because that's where I started bartending many years ago; there's no greater city in the world for bars than London, and I love the team at the Connaught Bar, it's very much the same spirit as what we built at Dante. And in Sydney, where I grew up, Maybe Sammy is doing great things.
I always go 50/50 vodka with a twist. Always stirred (shaking over-dilutes it for no real reason and you lose the silkiness) and very cold. Equal parts vodka with a proper measure of vermouth rather than just a whisper of it – I like knowing it's actually there. I’ll go for a twist more often than not, though I'll happily take the olives depending on the mood. A twist is cleaner, and it lets the vermouth and the spirit actually talk to each other.
A pre-batched martini can be a better drink than a made-to-order one. It gets the drink into the drinker’s hand quickly and consistently. Batching also lets you control dilution and temperature with real precision, and it means the bartender isn't rushing a 30-second stir during a busy Friday. What you lose is a small piece of the theatre, but I believe that can be made up for. The answer to which is the better option really depends on what you're there for that night.
When it comes to martini glasses, I’m not precious about the classic V shape. It looks beautiful, but it's a poor vessel for keeping a drink cold – you're basically drinking a room-temperature martini by the last sip. I much prefer a smaller coupe. For buying them, I lean towards vintage shops and flea markets over buying new glassware.
Batch-and-freeze is the number-one way to get a super-cold martini at home. And you need to ensure your glasses have spent at least 10 minutes in the freezer.
Every home bar should have a proper mixing glass, a hawthorne strainer, a bar spoon that's actually long enough to reach the bottom and a jigger you trust – precision matters more than people think. I'd put good ice above almost everything else on this list, because most home set-ups fail there before they fail anywhere else. Beyond the tools, one good bottle of vermouth kept properly in the fridge does more for your home bar than another bottle of gin.
My go-to spirits move with the mood. For something with a bit of citrus and spice, I like an Australian gin like Four Pillars, and something classically London dry like Tanqueray or Fords when I want the martini to taste properly like a martini. For vodka I lean towards something clean and unfussy – Grey Goose or Ketel One – because vodka's job in a martini is to be a very cold, very clean canvas for the vermouth to sit on.
Vermouth is where a martini gets its personality. Dolin Dry is beautiful if you want the spirit to lead. Noilly Prat is the workhorse I come back to for a classic. If I'm doing something a little richer, or more in the Dante style, I'll bring in an Italian vermouth alongside it – the way we do with our own house martini.
Death & Co is a book I go back to constantly. It's just an extremely well-built reference. Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book has a permanent place on the shelf because of the history as much as the recipes. And David Embury's The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks changed how I think about proportion and balance more than almost anything else I've read.
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My favourite person to drink martinis with is my wife Nathalie. We built Dante together, and a lot of the best decisions we've made happened over a martini, working things out loud with each other. Beyond that, I love drinking them with the old guard of this industry – bartenders who've been doing it 30-plus years – because they bring the conversations I still learn the most from.
If it's made with intention rather than just trend-chasing, almost any variation on a martini is acceptable. A gibson, a dirty martini, a vesper, our own tricolour version – all are still built from the same bones of spirit, vermouth and cold, careful dilution. What I have less patience for is 'martini' being used as a catch-all for anything served in that glass, regardless of what's actually in it. If it doesn't have that backbone, call it something else.
I think bartenders who roll their eyes at the espresso martini are missing the point slightly. It gets people who don't think they like cocktails into a bar, and that's not nothing. It's a different drink entirely though – closer to dessert than to a martini in the classic sense – and I think it deserves respect on its own terms rather than being compared to a gin martini and found wanting. I have a lot of affection for it.
Two martinis is the correct amount in one sitting. The first one is the ritual, the settling in. The second is where you actually taste it properly and enjoy it. After that you're not really tasting anything anymore, you're just drinking. And that's a different night out entirely.
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