So the guy walks into the bar, orders a martini, and then steps away from the counter and heads for the head.
This is not a joke.
When he comes back, he fully expects to see a cocktail glass filled with gin and a couple olives sitting on the bar at his spot. He finds nothing.
The bartender, when he gets back to him, says, “I didn’t get to ask you, gin or vodka?”
The guy says, “I said a martini.”
The bartender says, “Yeah, I heard that … gin or vodka?”
The guy shakes his head, and says, resigned, “Gin, okay? That’s what a martini is made of.”
The bartender says, “Yes, sir,” and goes off to make the drink. But what he’s thinking is, “What a dickhead.”
Who’s the dickhead here?
Most people would say the guy, who is me, is the dickhead, and my wife-like object would be among them. Really? Do you have to take issue every time you order a martini?
So yeah, I’m the dickhead, but I’m not wrong.
I never went to bartender school, but I was taught how to tend bar by the best – by a woman who learned her craft serving drinks and pouring drinks and later managing high-volume bars in the drinkin’ capitals of the western U.S., Reno and Las Vegas.
She taught me that when somebody orders a martini, you go make ‘em a martini. That means gin from the well, with a tickle of vermouth and two olives, in a martini (cocktail) glass, or “up.” Not “straight up.”
Shaken or stirred, your call: it’s not wrong to stir just because James Bond likes it shaken. It’s easier, and more fun, and looks cooler, to shake, but a lot of barkeeps maintain stirring is the best way to taste the gin.
If the customer wants a gin other than what’s in the well, he/she can specify.
If a drinker wants a twist rather than (or along with) olives, he/she can say so. But you, Bartender, need not be burdened to ask all those questions if all you hear is, “Martini, please.”
If somebody wants a vodka martini, he/she should order a “vodka martini.”
It’s gratifying to a guy to sit down at a bar, order a martini and in short order a cold double measure of gin appears in front of him, garnished with olives. The veteran barman at Falls Terrace in recent years got it right. The younger guy at the Dahlia Lounge got it right … no questions asked. They stand out among their peers, and that’s too bad.
So who says they got it right? The dickhead says.
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