At Caffé Vittoria in the North End of Boston, a drink arrives in a conical glass, a scoop of pistachio ice cream melting into the light green liquid. Served with a demitasse spoon, its taste falls somewhere between dessert and a boozy cocktail.
Recipe: Pistachio Martini
It’s the pistachio martini, beloved in this part of the city, where chalkboard signs spill onto the street announcing its presence on menus. But scratch below its frothy surface and what emerges are more questions than answers — not to mention a healthy dose of skepticism from cocktail snobs. What is a pistachio martini? Why are there so many versions? And why is something that effectively tastes like melted ice cream so popular?
In the North End, bartenders are quick to credit the drink’s popularity in the heavily Italian American neighborhood to its connection to Italy.
But pistachios aren’t Italian.
They actually originate in the Middle East, and, although it’s a popular flavor in Italy and Sicilian pistachios are highly prized, Italy isn’t one of the nut’s top growers: Iran, Turkey and the United States all produce more.
And while a pistache fizz, made with lemon juice, sugar, gin, pistachio cream and seltzer, in the 1895 book “Modern American Drinks” is commonly mentioned in the same breath, it bears no resemblance to today’s iterations.
Instead, modern recipes fall into two camps. One is made with pistachio cream and chocolate liqueurs and vanilla-flavored vodka. The other contains Irish cream liqueur, Amaretto and blue Curaçao, with pistachio nowhere to be found. Only the drink’s gray-green hue hints at a connection to the nut. (Is it still a pistachio martini if there’s no pistachio?)
“You wouldn’t think these three things go together, but they do,” said Carol Madey, the owner of One Eleven Martini Parlour in Lemont, Ill., a Chicago suburb. She serves the nut-free version because it’s the lighter of the two, but she does add in some pistachio — crushed, and on the rim.
Once they try it, she said, “a lot of people order more than one” and not just as dessert. She says she’s seen people order it before, during and after dinner.
Lauren Clark, owner of Tip Top Wine Shop in Easthampton, Mass., and the founder of Drink Boston, which chronicled the city’s cocktail scene from 2006 to 2014, points to the renewed interest in nut-flavored cocktails like amaretto sours and martini riffs like the espresso martini as a potential reason.
But all of this may miss the point of the drink, and of drinking dessert cocktails in general, Ms. Clark said, especially around the holidays when sweet, creamy drinks, like eggnog or coquito, are often on offer. And while she may prefer the pistachio cream version to the one made with blue Curaçao, she thinks they both speak to the freewheeling nature of the cocktail world.
“Adding pistachio, some Bailey’s and chocolate to a cocktail?” she asked. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
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