You think the only challenge facing a serious martini drinker is choosing gin or vodka? Think again.
Choosing the stuff that’s stuffed in your olive may be tougher. In that tiny territory long claimed by a cherry-red chunk of pimento, martini drinkers can now find blue cheese or garlic cloves or jalapeno peppers. Or–and we’re not kidding here–anchovies, almonds, asparagus, onion, feta, mushrooms or habanero peppers.
Order a martini at Club Lucky at 1824 W. Wabansia Ave. and, besides the ubiquitous pimento-stuffed olive, you have a choice of a gorgonzola cheese or anchovy stuffing. At Funk Groove at 5 W. Division St., the olive’s inner sanctum is occupied by pimento, garlic or blue cheese.
Caterers also are stocking the bar with various olives.
“These days, at the minimum, we’re doing blue cheese-stuffed olives,” said Blue Plate Catering’s Ami Franklin, in addition to the pimento-stuffed olives, cocktail onions, maraschino cherries, lemons and limes in a traditional bar setup. “More often, though, we’re seeing stuffed olives from garlic to jalapeno to cheddar cheese.”
The availability of so many different olives–both stuffed and unstuffed–as well as a new generation of martini drinkers ready to move beyond the chocolate/apple/orange martini craze, may have helped drive the current interest.
“People like ‘different,’ ” said Club Lucky general manager Paul Phillips. “People like things that are traditional, but they like it with a 21st Century spin to it.”
This stuffed-olive fascination is not all that outrageous. Since the more than 100-year-old cocktail kicked off its latest revival some six years ago, a new generation of drinkers has embraced the suave attitude, the cool-looking glasses, the snazzy shakers.
“In the old days, you went in and said, ‘vodka martini’ or ‘gin martini.’ Now you order Belvedere or Grey Goose [vodka],” said Jerry Collins, an exec with Evanston-based Collins Bros., which supplies retailers with bar accessories and garnishes, including 11 different stuffed olives. “People are much more sophisticated now.”
