If I’m Paying $20 for a Martini, I Need a Fresh Glass Halfway

“I’m ruined for life,” I told my friend as I took a sip from the frosty Martini glass sitting in front of me. We were drinking at Schmuck, the newly opened and highly anticipated East Village bar from Moe Aljaff and Juliette Larrouy, and I naturally ordered the bar’s signature Martini, uniquely made with gin, shochu, Blanche de Normandie (an unaged apple brandy), vermouth and olive oil.

Yes, the Martini is delightful, but this particular recipe isn’t what ruined me. Rather, when I was about halfway through sipping the drink, a bartender deftly swooped in and poured the remainder of the cocktail into a fresh, ice-cold glass.

It was a very simple but very sophisticated move. Some bars serve Martinis with a sidecar, a small carafe with the remainder of the cocktail resting on a bed of ice to keep the liquid cold. The drinker pours more Martini from the sidecar at their leisure. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always delighted when my drink is served this way. But at Schmuck, I didn’t have to lift a finger. The bartender anticipated the room-temperature glass and replaced it with a cold one before I even had time to notice. That, to me, is spectacular service.

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We’re living in the age of $20 cocktails, a price tag that no longer shocks me. It is what it is. And at a place like Schmuck, where weird infusions and homemade everything abound, I happily pay that price for a really good drink — because while I love making cocktails at home, it’s expensive and time-consuming to buy and make all of the modifiers that go into these very professional libations.

That said, if I am indeed paying $20 for a Martini, I would very much like for you to give me a fresh, cold glass halfway through. I can’t imagine that it affects the bar’s bottom line much (if at all), and that extra touch bridges the often very small gap between a good experience and a great one.

If the sidecar is your preferred method of keeping my drink cold, by all means, keep doing what you’re doing. But if you’re charging me more than $17 for a Martini and haven’t considered this swap, now’s the time. A lot of really good bars are making really good Martinis, so it’s the little things that count.