Order a martini and you may be asked: gin or vodka? Shaken or stirred? Wet or dry? Olives or a twist? Perhaps it’s the ritual of hospitality—which is the unspoken ingredient in every martini—that makes it a sacred cow of cocktail culture. Treat the martini with respect and it will respect you.
There’s an efficient beauty to the ol’ standards of martini personalization, but it’s a lot like trying to riff within the confines of classical music: rigid. The martini is an American invention, is it not? Does making one have to feel like playing chamber music? Time passes. The youth revolt (or forget). And thanks to a growing number of bartenders who pay less reverence to the gray-flannel-suit era that the martini has been amber-sealed within, this era’s martinis are finally starting to play out like those other key American inventions: jazz and punk rock.
Today you’ll find martinis that better reflect the diaspora of American drinkers and drink makers, like the umami bomb that is the MSG martini at Bonnie’s, a Cantonese-American restaurant in Brooklyn, or one with a blend of Korean sojus at Naro in Rockefeller Center. You’ll notice some leaning into the culinary prowess that the best bars possess, like the Old Bay martini at Denver’s Yacht Club, which captures licking your fingers after eating crabs and taking a swig of a gin martini. You may even run into a real curveball, like the tequila martini at the Beverly Hills location of the martini temple Dante.
Tequila? In a martini? For me, that’s within the rules. The essence of the martini isn’t vodka or gin. A martini is like rain or the ocean. It is clear, it is cold, and it has the power to cleanse. In fact, creating martinis that recall the sea or fresh rainfall has become a pursuit among nerdier bartenders. The martini is like a reset in a glass for the modern world. And a blanco tequila lends itself well to that goal.
Our reporting team spent the past few years sipping hundreds of martinis across the country to find modern classics and the essential, old-school stalwarts. You’ll find our 50 favorite martinis in America below, listed alphabetically by state, kicking off with our Martini of the Year.
Now, there are some folks putting cocktails into martini glasses and calling them martinis, as they did in the ’90s and early aughts. I’m all for innovation, but you have to draw the line somewhere, even if it’s a bit blurry. So we’ve come up with a few guidelines for riffing here. You can agree. You can disagree. But therein lies the beauty of a drink in which hospitality is an ingredient: The customer is always right. Except when they want cranberry juice in their martini. That’s a cosmopolitan.—Kevin Sintumuang