Can ‘Boston’s best espresso martini’ really come from a bottle?
Bricco, the Hanover Street staple in Boston’s North End, claims to make the best espresso martinis in town.
It would be hard for anyone to verify such a boast, but Bricco’s owner, Joey DePasquale, reports that the restaurant and its sister establishments sell upwards of 100,000 of the cocktails in a given year, so he’s probably at least somewhat right.
“Since the early 2000s, Bricco has always been known to serve Boston’s best espresso martini,” DePasquale says, the kind of unverifiable claim that makes reading and writing about food and drinks fun, and a little maddening.
What’s in Bricco’s espresso martinis? Bricco’s lead bartender, Glenn Le Maitre, uses recognizable brands such as Baileys and Kahlua. There’s vodka, too — Bricco once won best martini in a Boston Magazine event sponsored by Absolut vodka. No other recipe secrets were divulged in the reporting of this story, though in theory an espresso martini should be fairly straightforward to make.
Light or dark? That’s the question facing any espresso martini drinker, depending on whether they want their martini to taste more like Starbucks cold brew or something from South Shore chain Marylou’s. DePasquale doesn’t judge.
“Personally, my style is a little lighter, so I drink mine with a splash of Baileys,” says DePasquale. “That seems to be the way that most of our Bricco guests enjoy them, too.”
If you’ve ever seen the meme where one person at a table orders an espresso martini and the rest of the table follows suit (“An espresso martini? Oh, I’ll have one, too!”), then you know how catchy that drink can be. Bricco seeks to capitalize on the drink’s popularity with the launch of “DrinkThat” by Bricco, a bottled, ready-to-serve cocktail that was launching regionally on Tuesday.
Why go into the ready-to-drink space?
“Consistency,” says DePasquale. “As we grow our company, I want our product to be consistent the same way our food is. Each bartender always wants to throw their own twist on the recipe, but now you can get the consistent pour and flavor.”
Creating a branded Bricco espresso martini required some modifications. DePasquale and bartender Le Maitre deconstructed the various liquors involved, taste testing dozens of variations over the course of three years to get to the “closest” thing Bricco serves in the North End. The ingredients include real espresso, and the drink features notes of vanilla, cocoa, and hazelnuts. Produced in Massachusetts by M.S. Walker with a suggested retail price of $29.99, each bottle yields approximately six classic martinis.
I’ve yet to try either the in-house or bottled versions of Bricco’s espresso martinis. If you do, report back and tell me what you think.