Lille Allen/Eater
After a resurgence behind the bar, martini ingredients are starting to show up in recipes for salad, babka, and more
As a growing number of restaurants and diners lean into nostalgic, luxurious experiences, martinis — which the Guardian once called “retro hedonism in a glass” — have also found themselves at the center of a hot cultural moment. Now, it seems our recent martini madness is moving out of the glass and onto the dinner plate.
The first martini-inspired food recipe that caught my attention was Emily Ziemski’s dirty martini salad dressing, published on Food52 in March. It made perfect sense: I like my (gin) martinis crisp, salty, and olivey, which is also how I like my salads. A few weeks later, via a paywalled Substack post, came a martini babka from recipe developer Kate Ray involving twists of orange marmalade and green olive tapenade. More recently, a dirty martini pasta has been popping on my TikTok feed thanks to Emily Eggers, the recipe developer also known as Legally Healthy Blonde.
These martini-inspired recipes aren’t just olive-flavored: Eggers’s pasta involves making a sauce of crushed olives, gin, olive brine, and butter, then topping it all with blue cheese. It looks delicious. Naturally, Eggers’s videos of the pasta have gone viral, and the recipe has gotten traction on food sites.
