08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Martinis are getting downright filthy in the Bay Area
The Filthy Martini at San Francisco bar Causwells is so full of olives it's practically a liquid tapenade.
The house-made brine contains three kinds of olives. The vermouth includes both olive brine and an olive infusion. And the drink is garnished with an olive that, like a Russian doll, is stuffed with another olive that's stuffed with a third olive.
'We wanted to really lean on this olive thing,' said partner and beverage director Elmer Mejicanos. 'If we're going to make a dirty martini we're going to make it the dirtiest we can.'
Mejicanos is one of many Bay Area bartenders finding creative ways to up the olive quotient in martinis lately. They're addressing a couple of different trends when doing so. The first is the all-consuming thirst that younger drinkers seem to have recently developed for the dirty martini, that classic concoction of spirit, vermouth and olive brine (the 'dirty' part). The second is more of a bartender-initiated push toward super savory, food-inspired cocktails.
'Trend-wise, it's felt recently like these swings have become really extreme,' said Nora Furst, one of three partners in cocktail consulting firm West Bev. 'We get really crazy into savory and then we get really into low and no (alcohol), and then we get really into high-proof bitter flavors,' Furst went on. 'And then we swing back and find some kind of middle ground where we can exist peacefully for a little while.'
Furst's middle ground might be found in the Olive Leaf Martini her team developed for the Italian restaurant Corzetti off Union Square. It contains an olive leaf tincture made by her business partner Stephanie Gonnet, with olive leaves foraged from street trees in nearby Boeddeker Park. The tincture goes into the martini along with gin and two types of vermouth. Then the entire cocktail is 'olive oil-washed' — infused with olive oil that's later strained out through a freezing process, leaving behind a bit of flavor and a soft, unctuous texture. It's finally served ice cold with olives and a lemon twist.
'What we really wanted to do was to pay homage to the whole olive,' said Furst.
Other bartenders like Scott Baird, who developed the menu for the top-floor Starlite in the Beacon Grand Hotel, olive oil wash individual components of the drink rather than the whole. His Dirty '90s Martini contains Grey Goose vodka washed with extra-virgin olive oil he called mild and buttery, and a mix of vermouth, sherry and brine. To keep things era-appropriate, the drink is shaken hard so that ice shards float on top, and it comes accompanied by a blue-cheese-stuffed olive on a bed of ice.
Left Door, a Cow Hollow lounge in a former apartment upstairs from Bus Stop Saloon, is also highly committed to martinis. About half the menu is martini variations, including classics like the Vesper and Gibson. Their dirty version is made with vodka, a large portion of Castelvetrano olive brine, and an extra bump of seaweed-saline solution. They also offer an extra savory martini, with Belvedere 10 vodka washed with Meyer lemon olive oil, vermouth, fino sherry, and Hog Island Sea Salt solution. It's served with a caviar set-up on the side to help justify its $45 price tag.
Apparently unsatisfied with the amount of olives, Left Door's bar manager Rachel Azhadi said they're working on another martini to go on a future menu made with an olive foam on top, plus an anchovy-infused vermouth made by local brand Veso.
Veso, based on Treasure Island, is a common denominator in much of this recent martini revolution. Its olive vermouth contains Castelvetrano olives infused into the fortifying brandy, and the brine from those olives is mixed into the wine before bottling. It's used everywhere from Causwells' Filthy Martini to the Blind and Dirty cocktail at Menlo Park's Bar Loretta (created by Furst from West Bev) and the House Martini at Outerlands. There, Outerlands bar manager Andi Miller mixes it with Four Pillars Olive Leaf Gin, relieving her of the need to make infusions or olive oil wash anything for the drink. The gin is made with olive leaf tea and cold-pressed olive oil, among other Mediterranean-inspired botanicals.
Meanwhile, the Anatolian martini at Dalida quadruples the olives, with your choice of Grecian gin or vodka washed with fresh olive oil; the vodka itself contains some olive distillate. That's mixed with Veso Olive Vermouth, another dry vermouth and what bar director Evan Williams describes as 'a whisper' of potent house olive brine featuring Aleppo pepper. The drink is then garnished with a house-marinated olive and a strip of lemon.
But Causwells martini is still the filthiest of the bunch. The team also makes their own brine: Champagne vinegar, white balsamic vinegar, lemon peel, dry herbs and other ingredients are blended with pulverized Kalamata, manzanilla, and Castelvetrano olives. Then the brine is run through a centrifuge to clarify it. Unlike most dirty martinis that have a recognizable seawater haze, the Filthy Martini at Causwells is clear. Nobody would know your dirty secret, if not for the garnish.
The drink is topped with Mejicanos' 'olive turducken,' which is a sliced Kalamata olive stuffed into a Castelvetrano olive, which in turn is stuffed into a manzanilla olive. 'We thought, what if an olive didn't have a pit and it was all flesh? ' Mejicanos mused. 'When you're eating an olive without a pit there's such an opportunity there to fill that hole with flavor.'
