How to feel confident in your martini, shaken or stirred
Life and Art from FT Weekend
Forhecz Topher
4.6 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2024
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What is it about the martini that makes it so intimidating? Even the FT’s food and drink editor Harriet Fitch Little isn’t sure if she’s allowed to order one that has both an olive and a lemon twist. On today’s episode, Harriet speaks with FT contributor Alice Lascelles, whose new book Martini: The Ultimate Guide to a Cocktail Icon is coming out this autumn. What’s better: gin or vodka, shaken or stirred? And how can you make a speakeasy-quality martini at home?
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Links (all FT links get you past the paywall):
-- Alice’s article on the rise of the 25-pound martini is here: https://on.ft.com/3YwJblm
-- Harriet is on X @HarrietFL. Alice is on Instagram @alicelascelles.
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Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Harriet Fitch Little. I'm the FT Magazine's Food and Drink editor, In for Lila Raptopoulos. |
| 0:10.2 | I recently went out for dinner with Tim Hayward, the FT's restaurant writer. The waitress arrived. Tim said, |
| 0:17.1 | shall we order martinis? And that was the moment I knew that this was going to be a fun |
| 0:22.3 | evening rather than the work meeting that it had the potential to be. If you drink, perhaps |
| 0:29.2 | you've felt a version of this in London, New York, or many of the other cities around the |
| 0:34.5 | world where martinis have become the drink of choice for people who |
| 0:38.8 | want to signal that they're sophisticated hedonists. And it's such a simple drink. A dry martini is |
| 0:46.6 | five parts gin or vodka, one part vermouth. So why is it the drink on everyone's lips? And I do, |
| 0:53.2 | of course, mean that literally. And why are we |
| 0:55.9 | willing to part with upwards of £15 or $25 to drink something that you could make at home for a |
| 1:02.6 | 10th of that price? My colleague Alice Lassels has been trying to answer this question, and she's |
| 1:09.1 | got a whole book on martini's coming out next month. |
| 1:12.9 | Alice, welcome. It is so nice to see a friendly face my first time hosting the podcast. |
| 1:18.6 | It's lovely to be here, Harriet. So let's start with that evening that I had with Tim, |
| 1:24.1 | who I believe you also know as a martini fan. You write in your book that a martini |
| 1:29.4 | sets the tone for an evening. Clearly I agree and I felt that on that evening. But what is that |
| 1:37.1 | tone and why a martini? There's something about when someone says, should we have a martini, |
| 1:43.6 | where you're immediately in sort of cahoots together almost. There's this sense of anticipation. And as you say, you know, it's going to be a good evening. But there's definitely a little bit of sort of mischief there as well. Yes. Which makes things exciting. It's definitely not quite the same as saying let's have a glass of wine. |
| 2:02.2 | It's not, no, and I feel it's not the same as saying, you know, let's both choose some elaborate |
| 2:06.4 | cocktails from the menu. There's something about a martini, which is sort of a statement of intent. |
| 2:12.3 | Yeah, absolutely. As I was saying in the introduction, it is such a simple drink, but it can be so expensive. |
| 2:20.7 | We are talking about gin or vodka, a touch of a moose, maybe an olive or a lemon twist. |
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