“Can I have an espresso martini?” The young woman asked.
The waiter smiled, but it was a cruel and unusual smile.
“I can make you a martini,” he said. “Or I can make you an espresso. There is no way of combining those two things.”
And gentle reader he was right and she was wrong and you should be ashamed of yourselves for ever having ordered the red-headed stepchild of the cocktail world in the first place.
There has recently been a lot of pushback against the Negroni because it is a despicable fraud foisted upon the drinking community by cold-eyed chancers and flamflam merchants. But as ridiculous and unjustifiable as public affection (or really, affectation) for the orange roughie might be, the continued existence of the Blend 43 martini is worse.
They are an abomination and you are a disgrace for drinking them.
The only way to combine these two elements is to drink one or more professionally curated martinis before ordering a short black in a scientifically hopeless attempt to sober up before leaving the bar.
Many, possibly most if not all mixologists don’t even bother making your alcoholic douchelordchino with a real shot of coffee. More often than not they’re just squeezing a tube of army surplus caffeinated sugar syrup into a shaker full of bar rag drippings because you are beneath contempt and the pride they once felt in joining the ancient and noble guild of cocktail professors has been utterly debased by feral cougars and insufferable flogs necking these unnatural horrors as though it was not a legitimate abomination.
I will hear no argument in reply. It is not good enough, as some of you will surely attempt to have it that with human civilisation a decade or so from final collapse, it matters not how we got drunk as we ruined everything and destroyed the world. It matters now more than ever. If we are to go out, let us at least depart with some dignity and style. To that lone waiter, holding out against the horde I say, huzzah, sir. Huzzah for you.
I for one welcome our new espresso martini overlords. I also would like to see Tiki bars with rum flavoured south seas offerings and maybe a fluffy duck or two.
A similar problem is when you ask for a Martini and the poor uneducated child behind the bar asks "Gin or vodka". A Martini is Gin. A Vodka Martini is a bastard child. No arguments will be entertained.
"Blend 43 martini" sadder words have never been penned.
I for one welcome our new espresso martini overlords. I also would like to see Tiki bars with rum flavoured south seas offerings and maybe a fluffy duck or two.
A similar problem is when you ask for a Martini and the poor uneducated child behind the bar asks "Gin or vodka". A Martini is Gin. A Vodka Martini is a bastard child. No arguments will be entertained.