At Le Veau d’Or, the longstanding Upper East Side bastion of old-school French dining that recently reopened under new management, a Martini comes one of two ways: “Your way or our way.”
Your way is pretty self explanatory — it’s a Martini served however you like it.
But if you choose “our way,” your Martini will come in two glasses. The first looks like a Martini glass and is filled with two-and-one-half ounces of Old Raj gin, a half-ounce of González Byass dry vermouth, and a couple dashes of orange bitters. So far, so good; that’s a Martini by any reckoning of the name. The second glass, however, is a highball containing two more ounces of vermouth and topped off with Vichy Catalan sparkling water, all cooled down by the same ice that was used to stir the Martini.
The industry term for that used ice is “dirty ice.” Typically, customers don’t ever see dirty ice. It is thrown in the sink after a cocktail is made. In fact, it’s one of the hallmarks of modern mixology that dirty ice should never touch fresh liquor again. But at Le Veau d’Or, bar director Sarah Morrissey is using dirty ice in the restaurant’s marquee cocktail.
Like the restaurant itself — which is now a modern interpretation of an old-school restaurant template (the new owners are the team behind the trendy Frenchette and Le Rock) — Le Veau’s house Martini is a mash-up of different eras and their approach to the sidecar,
