Peter Canny remembers the primary time he witnessed a Bikini Martini slink throughout his bar. It was at Pig’s Eye Pub in Hartford, Connecticut, his earliest bartending gig, circa the late Nineties. The large, dive-y spot—what on the time was often called an influence bar—may frequently pack in 300 faculty college students.
“This was within the period the place you’re simply grabbing no matter you have got on the backbar and off your soda gun and making an attempt to give you enjoyable pictures to, you recognize, get the get together began,” says Canny, a Hartford native and longtime hospitality vet.
An older bartender working on the pub on the time launched him to the Bikini Martini when a visitor requested a drink that will be “enjoyable, fruity and in a Martini glass,” says Canny. “[She] was in search of one thing sturdy, however not too candy… but additionally just a little candy… and pink.” The bartender threw collectively the requisite components: vodka, Rose’s grenadine and coconut-flavored rum.
One thing about that drink caught with Canny. “It simply had that nostalgic feeling of being younger and in class, first [time] legally being out at a bar, and holding a Martini glass for the primary time.”
Finally, Canny’s profession in bartending introduced him to New York, the place he joined Infinite Hospitality Group, the staff behind East Village cocktail bars together with The Wayland and Goodnight Sonny. As we speak, he’s co-owner and beverage director within the group’s newest venture, a newly opened Martini bar on Avenue C referred to as Madeline’s Martini.
When Canny devised the debut cocktail menu, that includes greater than a dozen Martini- and ’tini-style drinks, he determined to function his personal homage to the ’90s drink. In researching its historical past, he discovered that the Bikini Martini might have originated because the signature cocktail of a swimsuit style occasion. Variations—many gimmicky—abound: blue variations that includes blue Curaçao, layered shows, recipes with pineapple juice or peach schnapps. However the widespread denominator was all the time the trinity of grenadine, coconut rum and vodka.
To construct a contemporary Bikini Martini for Madeline’s, Canny tinkered with each the rum and grenadine parts. As an alternative of pouring a commercially offered coconut rum, Madeline’s makes its personal model by fat-washing Plantation 3 Stars gentle rum with coconut oil in a two-day course of that yields a extra pure coconut taste. The grenadine can also be housemade, constructed with pomegranate juice sweetened with sugar and augmented by recent vanilla bean. The Bikini Martini at Madeline’s retains the vodka base of the unique, but additionally contains recent pineapple juice for additional tropical taste in addition to three dashes of Peychaud’s bitters, for each coloration (they’re going for pink, in fact) and stability. Altogether what you get is a melody of simpatico flavors: tartness from the pineapple and pomegranate, enjoying reverse wealthy dessert notes of coconut and vanilla. All of the components are mixed and given a tough shake over ice earlier than being double-strained right into a frozen, V-shaped Martini glass. “You’re left with this lovely, pink, frothy, enjoyable cocktail,” says Canny.
The staff at Madeline’s didn’t understand how company would reply to the ’tini. “We thought, This could possibly be a house run or a swing and a miss,” says Canny. However within the few months Madeline’s has been open, the drink has been among the many prime three sellers. “We put [the Bikini Martini] on the menu type of as an ode to our historical past of bartending, and it took off.”
This new tackle the cocktail seems to be tapping into that particular place drinkers have of their hearts for his or her earliest recollections of cradling a Martini glass, sipping on a drink that feels extra elegant, extra grownup. “Everyone can keep in mind across the first time they held a type of, or the sensation that they’d after they ordered a Martini for the primary time,” says Canny, whether or not it’s the subtle basic or a fruity drink within the V-shaped vessel. “It’s a ceremony of passage.”
