The pistachio Martini is not any extra Italian than the Espresso Martini, however stroll down the primary road in Boston’s North Finish, one of many United States’ most enduring Little Italys, on a scorching summer season evening, and it’s practically unattainable to discover a bar with out one on the menu. Competing sandwich boards every declare to serve the very best model of the cocktail. 

The dessert drink is unmistakable: It arrives in a wide-mouthed Martini glass, crammed to the frothy brim with a blue-green combination of vanilla vodka, amaretto or pistachio liqueur, a splash of blue Curaçao, perhaps a little bit of Baileys and, relying on which bar you’re sitting at, a scoop of pistachio gelato bobbing on the middle of the glass.

The origins of this candy-sweet cocktail are as murky because the drink itself. However every bar stakes a declare to it. One of the vital well-liked pistachio Martinis within the North Finish comes from Caffè Paradiso, a espresso and gelato store open every day from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. Proprietor Adriana De Stefano claims that she invented the drink over a decade in the past for a cocktail competitors in Lowell, Massachusetts. When her Lowell store shut down and she or he relocated to the North Finish, the pistachio Martini got here along with her. Copycats are all over the place, she says, however she rests straightforward understanding that she makes the very best as a result of she’s the one one who provides a scoop of gelato to the drink.

Others would beg to vary. Phil Frattaroli, Ristorante Lucia proprietor and North Finish native, says that Lucia’s has been serving a model of the drink because the ’80s. In the meantime, about 500 toes away at Ciao Roma, bartenders are busy plunking spoonfuls of gelato into their pistachio Martinis, too. Phillip Rolfe, the bar director at Ciao Roma’s sibling cocktail bar, Farmacia, guesses that the drink proliferated within the North Finish as a result of many eating places within the neighborhood run on cordial licenses, due to Boston’s Prohibition-era liquor licensing legal guidelines. An 80-proof vodka is tough to come back by, however a lower-proof vanilla-flavored vodka? Each bar’s bought a bottle.

Or perhaps it’s only a love of nation. “What’s extra Italian than pistachios?” a bartender at Trattoria Il Panino casually shouts over the din on a heat Thursday evening. “We’ve the very best one, too.” The menu additionally claims that Trattoria Il Panino serves the world’s finest pasta. (Hyperbole is second nature on this neighborhood.)

As for why you don’t see pistachio Martinis a lot exterior of the North Finish, no one is sort of positive. Rolfe theorizes that the drink elements are best to get by means of the Italian distributors and gelato outlets that already gasoline the neighborhood, or maybe pistachio is just not an ingredient that homeowners wish to add to a menu not already doused in it resulting from allergy issues. Possibly pistachio Martinis exterior of the North Finish simply don’t maintain the identical enchantment. However when within the North Finish…