Friday, June 15, 2012

Adventures in Abu Dhabi martinis, continued

My search for a proper martini has been well documented by anyone who knows me, and a little bit here. Interestingly, and without any planning on my part, I happened to try ordering one this week almost a year to the day after swearing off them altogether while in the UAE. And that was because I've had martinis served in margerita glasses, with bendy straw, martinis with both olives AND lemon, martinis that I swore blended vodka, vermouth and creme de cacao and most recently when I decided to try again, a brown martini, with a slice of lemon perched on the side of the glass.


 Why was it brown? I can only surmise it was brown due to the obsession by bar staff with Martini&Rossi, which is another thing altogether, whenever they hear the word "martini". Anyhoo, it tasted awful and was not at all what we wanted. And we wanted what we wanted that night, as we were celebrating some good news. So, trying not to be awful expats while whining about our drinks, we sent them back. The waitress, who was new, nipped over to talk to a fellow at a nearby table. Next thing I know, that fellow is up shaking the hand of MY fellow, introducing himself as someone who worked across the street at the hospital. He had an arm cast and was wearing a Caribou Coffee shirt, apropos of nothing.

I thought he was the manager, off duty, or something, but he wasn't. Just a customer the waitress enlisted to interpret our order, although he was clearly from the sub continent, and she was from the Philippines. He was really good at it though, and went and passed on our drink order to the barman himself. It was really nice. The drinks arrived (with an olive AND a lemon slice) and although they had a strange taste neither of us could identify, we drank them. Sending it back twice? It's bad enough that we sent it back once; we are not those people. But we did swear to each other that we really need to remember to save the martinis for when we are travelling.

Then, while my fella was in the bathroom, the concerned hospital worker in the arm cast and Caribou Coffee shirt asked how we were liking the drink. "Great!" I said. "Thank you."

He explained that they didn't have fresh lemons (weird, because they did) and had to use bar lemon (which could have explained theoddtaste) And then he said this:

"They didn't have salt, for the rim, either," he said.

Suddenly I was disappointed that our martinis did not come with salt on the rim. Because that would have been awesome. Ole.


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