Martini cocktails, martini bars and martini culture
The Spirits Boutique bar is a small gem in Olbia, on the nort east Sardinian coast. The place is something between a bar and a liquors shop, created by bartender Emilio Rocchino with the idea of becoming a reference for the many bars and restaurants of the nearby Costa Smeralda (or at least for those …
A cocktail bar in Via del Pratello, the students' area in the city with the olderst university in the western world, where beer and wine is normally what you get (and not of the best quality)? Well, yes. The Macondo was a susprise for me too, a bologna former resident (with some experience of the …
Alfred Hitchcock, the Hollywood film director and producer, enjoyed Martini cocktails, and liked these very dry, with just “one short glance at a bottle of vermouth”. I could not find more information on Martini drinking habits of Hitch: can anybody help?
Clark Gable also liked Martinis, actually he is the Hollywood character connected to the Marrini Dry in the great book Cocktail of the Movies (highly recommended). In order to make them really dry, James Gannon, the newspaperman Clark Gable played in Teacher’s Pet, moisten the cork of a bottle of vermouth and then runs it around the …
As I often say, sometimes it is not you searching for the best bar, it is the best bar coming to you. Thai is what happened to me in Bristol, when after having searched for a good cocktail bar without success (despite the fact that the city is packed with bars, mostly students-oriented), I popped …
Expectedly, Rabat is not a cocktail city, especially if you want to avoid minstream hotels chains. But it is definietly a party place where you can get proper booze also in local places, such as the Palatino. The place is a cool and quite bar at 7pm, and a crazy and noisy grotto from 10pm …
This is a special review, and not only because the NO Cafe is a very special bar, where you can sip a classic Martini or any creative cocktail you can imagine in a fantastic medieval square in the centre of Modena, accompanied by lovely tapas mixing classic Emilia flavours with a touch of fusion. No, this …
Chueca, the hip barrio in Madrid, is full of bars, still it is not that easy to get a really good cocktail or two (we leave to others the debate on how the recent cocktail hype in Spain has not really raised the average quality of drinks in the country). But, some really good bars …
Life is sometimes bizarre. You travel around for years searching for the perfect mixture between quality of drinks and creativity in making something new, then you end up in a town (Torino in my case) which is surely not known for its cocktail scene, and you find a bar that is probably the most creative …
Sometimes internet searches for "the best cocktail bar in town" are disappointing, but when they work the feeling is good. In Leicester, for example, if you follow this advice you'll feel like a local, even if you are in town since a couple of hours. The manhattan34 bar is in fact one of these places where you …
The Martini Hour 