I love a little tableside theatre

Tableside drinks. Restaurants doing some drinks theatre. I’m talking vodka bottles encrusted with ice, extreme martini pours from a height, enormous pepper grinders to crack black pepper on top of a tomatini. I love a little tableside theatre. There is a childlike joy and whimsy to be had from any kind of performance during dining. We’re told not to play with our food, to sit just so, to hold our knives and forks like this, to drink quietly and without display. So when there’s an element of show in our drinks, it feels like a not-so-quiet rebellion against whoever told us not to blow bubbles in our juice.

It seems like I’m alluding to the growing popularity of martinis every other month in this column, as so many people are doing them and claiming to have the best one. It’s little wonder, then, that the places serving them can afford to indulge in a little campery. At the recently opened Osteria Vibrato in London, martinis are poured from a great height at the table, but because ex-operatic tenor Charlie Mellor is its proprietor, and live piano is a regular fixture, this just makes sense. A narrow stream maintained for several seconds briefly becomes a live, dynamic sculpture at the table.

Then there’s the space race towards the world’s coldest martini. The team at Bob Bob Ricard reckon they might have just done it at -22C. Not far off the temperature at which it might be too solid to pour. It’s part of a scheme to back some of the noughties theatricality that BBR is loved for – you may know the Sohorestaurant as the home of the Instagram-friendly “press for champagne” button. While they were developing the process for this freezing martini, the bottles didn’t look cold enough, so staff took extra time to build up ice on the bottles, to look as if they’d been prised from an iceberg rather than a special freezer.

Then there’s the element of performance in drinks that feels more rooted in tradition and ritual, especially when the drinks ordered are a little more costly. At the singular Dukes Bar, martinis are, infamously, made in front of you by an impeccably dressed gentleman. Round the corner, at the Ritz, the digestif trolley is wheeled past the round tables to display rare spirits. There’s also the ridiculously plush pedestal of the methuselah (six litres, because why not) of Louis XIII Cognac in the Guards Bar at Raffles London.

For some, it can all get a bit much. There is a current trending meme on social media titled “the type of thing I accidentally order when I’m trying to be nonchalant”. The videos will be someone on a date trying to be mysterious and aloof (qualities I look for in a PI, less so a partner), only to order a paloma in an entire frozen block of ice, a negroni from a smoke-filled bell jar or a daiquiri with its own accompanying musical number.

I think perhaps everyone is taking themselves a little too seriously. It’s not cool to be preoccupied with coolness. Bring on the high pours, the deep freezes and the theatrics. Dinner and a show? That’s a nifty date, especially in this economy.