How are we still drinking the espresso martini?

It was invented for a supermodel in the Eighties at Fred’s Bar ... and ever since it’s sloshed about in the hand of every hedonist in town

- Joanna Taylor

WHAT’S black, white and studded with three (allegedly lucky) choking hazards? I’ll give you a clue: it’s the post-university equivalent of a double vodka Red Bull but with one key difference… despite the sticky palms, often questionable aftertaste and inevitable staring competitions with the ceiling at 3am, somehow we’re still sipping them.

The marker of an evening set to go awry, the espresso martini is a confounding cocktail . Confounding because nobody ever begins a night on the tiles thinking, “What I’d really like right now is an espresso martini…” And yet stats compiled by Dr Google say it’s the fourth most popular concoction in Britain.

Branded as cheugy by the entirety of Gen Z and either too sweet or just plain tacky by the rest of us, it’s the quaffable equivalent of an unremarkable but convenient situationship. The sort where you tell your friends, “they, er, don’t have social media”, yet keep crawling back to the comfort of their embrace for more. So why, in a time when 10 per cent of the World’s 50 Best Bars churn out innovation after innovation right here in our city, are Londoners still reaching for a taste of the espresso martini?