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I wonder if it has to do with younger people's tending toward craft beers over wine, and older people finding white wines more easily tolerated than reds.    Many of our friends have veered to more white consumption than in our earlier decades.  

Historically, martinis are a drink of gravitas for me, conjuring images of tailored suits, men with money clips and thick stacks of cash, or my dad after work at the bar of a Chinese restaurant waiting for our family’s takeout order. But the martini culture I’ve been observing recently looks nothing like this. I’m talking about tables of friends around burgers and French fries, sloshing back martinis in front of the flash of phone cameras. Twenty-somethings ordering another round at happy hour (a death wish, if you ask me). Massive batched martinis at spring kickbacks (another death wish). “Ordering a martini” has become an activity, something that someone does as much as something that someone drinks.

“You are not wrong about this martini thing,” Toby Cecchini, the owner of Brooklyn’s Long Island Bar says. “It caught everybody unaware. In the same way that years ago all these 20-year-olds were ordering old-fashioneds all of a sudden. We went from making four or five of those for older customers a year to every kid across the bar ordering old-fashioneds without any idea of what they were. I was like ‘What the hell is going on?’ and everyone was like ‘Oh, it’s this show Mad Men.’ But where is the martini coming from? Complete blowback from the pandemic.”

Every day, Cecchini gets a printout of the numbers the bar did the night before. For years, it was a battle between the Long Island Gimlet (a light lime drink) and the Dolores Del Rio (a play on a spicy margarita). “Suddenly, six months ago, the martini was wiping everything out. I was like, ‘Oh my God, we did 71 martinis last night? And 36 gimlets?’ I recently turned to my business partner and was like, ‘I guess we’re just a martini bar now.’ I watch these kids hammering martinis and I’m like, good Lord.”

I wonder if it has to do with younger people's tending toward craft beers over wine, and older people finding white wines more easily tolerated than reds.    Many of our friends have veered to more white consumption than in our earlier decades.  

Historically, martinis are a drink of gravitas for me, conjuring images of tailored suits, men with money clips and thick stacks of cash, or my dad after work at the bar of a Chinese restaurant waiting for our family’s takeout order. But the martini culture I’ve been observing recently looks nothing like this. I’m talking about tables of friends around burgers and French fries, sloshing back martinis in front of the flash of phone cameras. Twenty-somethings ordering another round at happy hour (a death wish, if you ask me). Massive batched martinis at spring kickbacks (another death wish). “Ordering a martini” has become an activity, something that someone does as much as something that someone drinks.

“You are not wrong about this martini thing,” Toby Cecchini, the owner of Brooklyn’s Long Island Bar says. “It caught everybody unaware. In the same way that years ago all these 20-year-olds were ordering old-fashioneds all of a sudden. We went from making four or five of those for older customers a year to every kid across the bar ordering old-fashioneds without any idea of what they were. I was like ‘What the hell is going on?’ and everyone was like ‘Oh, it’s this show Mad Men.’ But where is the martini coming from? Complete blowback from the pandemic.”

Every day, Cecchini gets a printout of the numbers the bar did the night before. For years, it was a battle between the Long Island Gimlet (a light lime drink) and the Dolores Del Rio (a play on a spicy margarita). “Suddenly, six months ago, the martini was wiping everything out. I was like, ‘Oh my God, we did 71 martinis last night? And 36 gimlets?’ I recently turned to my business partner and was like, ‘I guess we’re just a martini bar now.’ I watch these kids hammering martinis and I’m like, good Lord.”