The shrinking martini is taking over London
BRITS take their martinis seriously. They don’t demand that the drink comes flavoured with espresso. Instead, mixologists ask if you want the cocktail shaken or stirred, as they serve the beverage from elaborately appointed trolleys, mixed with house-made gins and vodkas.
So don’t expect a cost-of-living crisis or the tendency towards drinking less to prompt Londoners to stop ordering the most classic of cocktails. Instead, they’re downsizing.
The tiny martini has been popular in the US since before the pandemic, offering drinkers a break from the cocktails which had ballooned in size in the 90s and noughties. Now, London has been swept up in the mini moment.
Among the places where you can sip a modestly sized version is Hacha, which serves a 40-millilitre (about 1.5-ounce) Mini Martini for £4.50 (S$7.78) at its outlets in Brixton and Dalston. Hacha, which focuses on agave-based beverages, serves the drink with either mezcal or tequila with peppery, house-made white vermouth.
“Once we had it perfected, it was a no-brainer that we would serve it martini style,” founder Deano Moncrieffe says. “We wanted a drink to suit both martini lovers and martini newcomers without committing to a full serve at aperitivo hour.”
The standard martini is made with two to three ounces of gin or vodka, as well as a widely varying amount of vermouth. But the popularity of fruity, attention-grabbing martini-esque drinks such as Sex and the City’s cranberry juice-spiked Cosmopolitan meant glasses got bigger around the 90s, exploding from the conventional six ounces to double that size. It didn’t take long before 10- to 13-ounce martini glasses were in high demand in the US.
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From there, those bigger drinks made their way to the UK, according to famed mixologist Ryan Chetiyawardana – also known as Mr Lyan – whose Southbank bar Lyaness was named best in the world at the 2022 Tales of the Cocktail. One reason, he said, was the perceived value of a supersized drink. The available glassware in the UK also pushed bars towards serving bigger drinks. “There was no option but to serve a big martini because people were using glassware designed for sours, not spirit-forward cocktails,” he said.
But now, Britons are sobering up, a bit. The famously boozy country has been dialling back consumption; alcohol sales fell 9 per cent in 2022.
Another benefit: Smaller drinks invariably come with a lower price tag, which is good news at a time when inflation continues to affect UK consumers, including the rising price of alcohol. Earlier this year, 50 per cent of Brits said that they would cut their alcohol consumption because of the rise in the cost of living.
At Carousel, a Fitzrovia restaurant with revolving chefs and concepts, the current menu from Poon’s Wontoneria includes a toasted sesame and pickled ginger “marteeny” on the dinner menu.
The 35-millilitre drink complements some of the key flavours in the signature wontons.
“I’m not a big drinker, so the idea of a small drink really appealed (to me),” said Wontoneria’s Amy Poon, founder of the beloved Chinese restaurant Poon’s.
Drinks expert Clotilde Lataill worked with Poon to make the petite drink that goes for £5.50. “When we did our tasting, she brought these beautiful little cut crystal glasses, like a dolly set, which I just loved,” Poon said.
But don’t underestimate the cuteness factor of the little drinks, even if they do sometimes look ridiculous in a grown person’s hands.
The miniature drinks grabbed the spotlight in the UK in 2019, when Tayer + Elementary, the East London spot that is ranked No 2 on the World’s 50 Best Bars list, introduced the silky-smooth One-Sip Martini.
The base of the £4 gulp is ice-cold Tayer vodka, served in a shot glass with martini ambrato vermouth, fino sherry and a blue cheese-stuffed olive. “Traditionally, in a regular size, the blue cheese olive will start to steep out in the liquid,” says co-founder Monica Berg. “To prevent that, we made the drink smaller. Then it was just making sure that one sip would be as good as possible.”
Chetiyawardana was an even earlier champion of the diminutive cocktail. At his now-shuttered bar, White Lyan, he served the very small (as small as 50 millilitres) Bone Dry Martini from 2013 to 2017. “We used to have couples drop in to have a few of them before heading out to dinner,” he says. Now, he occasionally serves them to guests at Lyaness.
Over at Soho’s trendy Rita’s, where Dua Lipa goes to drink martinis, the mini 35-millilitre Gilda martinis have become popular enough that the place sells them as a gift set that includes engraved glasses for £30.
There will always be places that believe in maximising the alcohol content of their martini, and that is very true in London. Duke’s, one of the world’s most famous purveyors of the drink, jams four ounces of gin into its martinis and sets a two-drink limit on orders at its Mayfair establishment.
And in fact, not all mini martinis are a value proposition.
Cask-aged gin Seventy One, founded by fashion photographer Mert Alas, has worked with destination bars around town to create mini Golden Martinis. The elegant member’s club Harry’s in Marylebone last year began serving the 100-millilitre drinks in custom-made crystal glasses priced at £20 and up. They go for £30 at the buzzy Chiltern Firehouse, also in Marylebone.
At the Beaufort Bar in the Savoy Hotel, they’re £45 a pop – served, in that instance, with a caviar bump. Still, that’s cheaper than the full sized martinis; those cost £40 to £60.
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