Dirty business: modern martinis are utterly filthy

Martinis are getting dirtier. I’m not talking about adding a dash of brine and calling it a day: I’m talking about Christina Aguilera levels – Dirrty. Seeing a martini without a string of olives is like seeing an angel without its wings. Being able to see through your glass is overrated. The classic martini is a key accessory to a long lunch, an emblem of metropolitan sophistication. But the martinis I’m seeing are scummy, over-savoury and eagerly enjoyed by young women, including me. I think this all has something to do with the internet.

Online there’s always a new, impossible way to exist being pushed on to you. A few years ago, the “clean girl” aesthetic permeated the cultural conversation: you needed minimal makeup yet clear skin, a fridge full of healthy food and expensive fitness classes. The goal was to become a machine optimised for a very productive life: no smoking, no unhealthy foods and definitely no booze. It’s perhaps unsurprising that, in a late-stage capitalist society that wants us to embrace conservative gender roles, the algorithm is pushing a way of being that prioritises how you look, not how you feel: a way that’s full of activity but devoid of pleasure. Collective exhaustion then led to a revival of indie sleaze and the ever-relevant brat summer. It gave young people permission to live a low-effort, pleasure-driven life that existed outside the algorithm. And when you prioritise pleasure, you can allow things to get a little gross. A little nasty. And I think this is where the dirty martini resurgence came from. A dirty martini feels equal parts gritty and gastronomic, just as deserving of your attention at a dive bar as at a swanky hotel.

But these new concoctions are something more extreme, brilliantly embodied in the work of Hannah Chamberlain, known to her 600,000 TikTok followers as @spiritedla. In her series Weirdly Dirty Martinis, Sipsmith gin is infused with the skillet fat from a steak. Vodka is combined with garlicky snail oil to create an escargot martini. Anchovies dangle from the rim of a chilled glass for her liquid take on a caesar salad.

Social media tends to exhibit a trendat its most extreme, but the dirty martinis you’ll find in restaurants and bars aren’t too far behind Chamberlain. The classic dirty-olivemartini is taken to the edge of reason at Little Capo in Edinburgh, where olive gin joins olive vermouth, olive bitters, brine and garnish. The cocktailis succinctly called Olives on Olives on Pickles on Olives – just in case there’s anyconfusion. Working up the freak scale,there’s a salt-and-vinegar martini at the Portrait, the National Portrait Gallery’sbar; a tallow martini at DockleyRoad Kitchen, in Bermondsey; and a caper martini at Oma, in nearby London Bridge. At Twice Shy, in Earl’s Court, blue cheese has graduated from an olive filling (although they do that too, don’t worry) to a distillate. And then there’s the attention-grabbingwork of Bar Planet, in Sydney, which serves what it calls “the world’s dirtiestmartini”, with coriander, chilli peppers, cornichons, olives and… octopus.

Sure. At this point I’m not asking questions. I’m embracing the modern chaos of the dirty martini – especially if it means I’m not making my expensive fitness class tomorrow.