The Bar Manager at New York City’s Saxon + Parole Demonstrates How to Craft ‘The World’s Dirtiest Martini’

Maxime Belfand, the talented bar manager at Saxon + Parole in New York City, demonstrates via Potluck Video how to craft what he calls “The World’s Dirtiest Martini.” The cocktail calls for such items as olive shrub syrup, olive vermouth, olive bitters, olive juice, olive oil, and juniper-marinated olives.

It’s a stirred drink, not a shaken one…and we will start with olive shrubs. Olive shrub was used back in the day to basically preserve flavors from vegetables and fruits. Now its basically a combination of sugar and vinegar and then anything you want. We did it with olives. …Next we’re using olive vermouth. Olive vermouth is basically olives that we sliced a little bit and then we added dry vermouth. So we’ll do 1 1/2 ounces of that. Then we will add the bitter and the olive distillate. …so we’ll add nine dashes of that. …and to that we will add the gin. We use a navy strength gin. So that’s going to be the same amount of gin as the vermouth. It’s an equal part gin. It’s 1:1. Give it a gentle stir. In such a delicate drink, you don’t want to oxygenate the drink too much. …To that we add a little bit of olive oil.

As yummy as this sounds to us, imagine how happy this olive-loving kitty would be.