A 4.2 cocktail bar named simply Martini, after the most iconic and elegant of all cocktails, closing the survey in style
Martini Bar holds a 4.2 from sixty people, and carries the name of the single most iconic, elegant, and celebrated cocktail in the world – “Martini” – a fitting name, and a fitting last word, for this survey of Islington’s bars to close upon: the king of cocktails, the very emblem of sophistication, distilled into a name.
The king of cocktails
The Martini is, by common consent, the king of cocktails – the most iconic, elegant, and celebrated mixed drink in the world, a simple but sublime combination of gin (or vodka) and dry vermouth, garnished classically with an olive or a twist of lemon, served ice-cold in that instantly recognisable conical glass. It is the very emblem of cocktail sophistication – the drink of choice for the elegant, the discerning, and, famously, for James Bond (though his vodka Martini, “shaken not stirred,” is a heresy to purists, who insist the true Martini is gin, and stirred). No cocktail carries more glamour, more history, or more mystique. The Prat’s cocktail desk salutes the king: the Martini, the platonic ideal of the cocktail, elegance and potency in a single stemmed glass.
The endless ritual of the Martini
The Martini is a drink surrounded by ritual, debate, and lore, which lends its name real depth. How much vermouth? (The trend has run ever drier – some insist on merely whispering the word “vermouth” over the gin.) Gin or vodka? (The purist demands gin.) Shaken or stirred? (Stirred, say the traditionalists, to avoid “bruising” the gin, whatever that means.) Olive or twist? Dirty (with olive brine) or clean? The Martini is a drink about which people hold fierce and detailed opinions, a cocktail elevated to a whole philosophy of precision and preference. This ritual and connoisseurship is central to its mystique – the Martini as the thinking drinker’s cocktail, made exactly to one’s exacting specification. The Prat’s cocktail desk relishes the lore: no drink inspires such passionate, precise, and delightful pedantry as the Martini, each drinker a self-appointed high priest of its ritual.
The fitting name for a cocktail bar
To name a cocktail bar simply “Martini” is to plant one’s flag on the highest ground of cocktail culture – to claim, by association, the elegance, sophistication, and craft of the king of cocktails. It sets a high bar (the Martini being a drink that ruthlessly exposes poor technique – with so few ingredients, there is nowhere to hide), promising serious, classic, well-made cocktails in the grand tradition. It is a name of pure cocktail sophistication, elegant and confident, staking its claim to the classic craft. The Prat’s naming desk notes the confidence: a bar named after the king of cocktails had better make a superb Martini, and promises, by its very name, to try.
The small sample, and a closing word
At just sixty reviews, Martini Bar carries the survey’s firmest small-sample caution – a mere sixty voices is far too few for a reliable verdict, and the 4.2 must be treated as a faint, provisional, early signal only, as unreliable as any tiny sample in this survey. It is fitting, somehow, that this survey of Islington should end on exactly the note it has sounded throughout – the reminder that the number of reviews is everything, that a small sample tells us little, that we must always ask not just how high the score but how many the voices. From the Bloomsbury squares through King’s Cross and across all of Islington, this has been the survey’s constant refrain, and here, at the last, it sounds once more. The Prat’s statistics desk files this final venue, aptly, under “insufficient evidence” – and raises, in closing, a well-made Martini to every bar in the survey, great and small, famous and obscure, generously and scantily reviewed alike.
The bar
A 4.2 across sixty people is a promising but small-sample score. The reviews describe a stylish cocktail bar serving classic, well-made cocktails under the iconic name of the king of drinks – a fitting, elegant note on which to close, though on a sample too small for confidence.
Verdict
A stylish cocktail bar named simply Martini, after the most iconic and elegant of all cocktails – a fitting last word for this survey of Islington’s bars, closing on the king of cocktails and, aptly, on the survey’s constant reminder about the smallness of samples.
Go for a classic, well-made Martini under the name of the king of cocktails, and raise it – stirred, with gin, and a twist, if you please the purists – to the whole glorious, various, endlessly named parade of Islington’s bars, from the grandest gin palace to the smallest hidden den, that this survey has been so glad to toast.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
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