When it comes to cocktails, a new word has been added to the traditional order: as well as “shaken” or “stirred”, drinkers are increasingly asking that their martini be “small”.
Rather than the customary martini serving, which starts from 150ml upwards, British bars are serving mini versions, starting from as little as 30ml, as drinkers aim to keep a clearer head and spend less.
At Rita’s, a bar and restaurant frequented by Dua Lipa in London’s Soho, downsized martinis hover around the 100ml mark. Rita’s co-founder Missy Flynn says they are designed to be finished in three or four sips. “The mini version opens up the palette. It’s like a starter drink before moving on to something else such as wine.” With millennials and gen Z showing less interest in drinking to excess, scaled-down martinis make sense.
This week the Blue Bar at the Berkeley in London introduced a £35 “martini flight” that consists of three 35ml-sized martinis, each with a different tasting note. Over at the farm-to-table restaurant Pinch, in Suffolk, customers sip on petite martinis while waiting for Roman-style pizzas. At the UK restaurant group Dishoom, the drink comes served on a doily in 40ml coupe glasses.
At the east London hotspot Tayēr + Elementary, the “one-sip martini” has become such a cult order that it has resulted in its own merch line. As its name suggests, it is designed to be knocked back in one go. The bar’s co-founder Alex Kratena says that on an average evening 200 of the teeny martinis are served.
Presented in a ribbed shot glass, the 35ml minute martini comes with a gordal olive stuffed with blue cheese – Kratena’s take on a traditional dirty martini. At Rita’s you can add a gilda, a type of Basque pintxo in this case featuring a green olive, blue cheese, anchovy and hot jalapeño. Flynn describes the fat and spice from the savoury snack as “working harmoniously with a wet martini”.
Ryan Chetiyawardana, who founded the award-winning London bars Seed Library and Lyaness, credits a wider martini renaissance with fuelling the shrunken trend. And while martinis are usually associated with a high price tag – the Connaught Bar in London’s Mayfair serves 16,000 martinis a year at £26 a pop – these downsized versions start from as little as £4.
Flynn says the miniature trend is helping to move the martini on from its James Bond connotations. They are also less intimidating. “Drinking a martini shouldn’t be a chore,” Flynn says. “We convert a lot of people who say they don’t like martinis.”
The trend goes back to the roots of the cocktail. While original glasses were almost pocket-sized, they have ballooned in modern times. Jane Peyton, the author of the book The Philosophy of Cocktails and founder of the School of Booze, pegs the rise of colossal coupes to demand in the 1990s for drinks such as espresso martinis.
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“Non-alcoholic ingredients make up a bigger percentage of the recipe [in these drinks], thereby requiring a larger glass,” Peyton says. “Oversized glasses are brash and suited the culture of the time.”
Chetiyawardana says: “People are realising that a cold snappy martini is much more delicious than a bucket of a warm one.”