The wet martini served by a new restaurant in Manhattan reflects an appreciation of vermouth that’s been a long time coming.
Many adjectives have been attached to martinis over the years. Bartenders have plied drinkers with dirty martinis and filthy martinis, smoky martinis and flaming martinis, red-pepper martinis and blue-cheese martinis, breakfast martinis and midnight martinis. Midcentury advertising executives along Madison Avenue were weaned on dry martinis, grew into very dry martinis and graduated to extra dry. Inevitably, this produced a backlash, and in the 1990s it was common to find not just apple martinis but melon martinis, kiwi martinis, lychee martinis and other fruits.
It is safe to say, though, that before Eel Bar opened on the Lower East Side a few months ago, few bartenders had thought it was a good idea to sell something called a wet martini.
Recipe: Wet Martini
Not long ago, wet was the second-worst thing a martini could be. (The worst was, and still is, warm.) The word has never had a strict definition in mixology, but it implied that the bartender had allowed too much vermouth to creep into the glass. It was a synonym for anemic, sloppy, wishy-washy and other traits you don’t want in a martini. And while there was a niche audience for martinis that go heavy on the vermouth, a bar pushing a wet martini would have been like a bakery promoting moldy bread or a deli advertising tainted lunch meat.
At Eel Bar in 2024, though, the name inspires more curiosity than revulsion. Customers have reportedly been ordering them at a brisk clip, not that they don’t have a few questions.
“I do think it’s a conversation starter,” said Nialls Fallon, one of the restaurant’s owners and the person who devised and named the drink.
When asked, bartenders will explain that Eel Bar is inspired by the food and drink of the Basque Country and that the wet martini is a form of what people on the north coast of Spain call vermut preparado — prepared vermouth. Vermouth drinkers in San Sebastián or Bilbao, of whom there are many, are typically asked whether they’d like a little something extra in the drink. Usually, this means splashes of gin and Campari over sweet red Spanish vermouth. (Invariably, vermut preparado is served on the rocks.)
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