Drinks Do Not Translate Well

On Tuesday night, happily out to dinner with both my parents, we decide to order cocktails before drinks.  Great!  I was already settling in for an evening of drinks, food, and above all, catch-up, wonderful, delightful conversation with my parents.

So I ordered a Dirty Martini from our server.  This is pretty much my favorite non-beer, non-wine beverage, especially when they give me extra olives.  (Anuj already knows that if we both order this drink, I will eat all of his olives.   He has agreed to this as a fundemantal part of our future marriage).  The server didn't know what a Dirty Martini was (!!!), but she says if I can describe it to her, she'll make it for me.

"Pour some good vodka over ice, but no vermouth.  Add a small pour of olive juice, you know... the liquid that the olives come in?  Just pour some out of that jar. (skeptical look from server). Now shake it, pour it in an "up" glass, spear lots of big green juicy olives on a stick, and serve."

How did you feel when reading that part?  Good?  Like you wanted to drink it?  You did?!  Well I sure as heck didn't.  Ew, did you read the part about pouring out some juice out of the jar?!  All of a sudden I had a vision of the bartender dusting off his bottle container, with a few lonely olives swimming in murky liquid that he's probably dug his nasty fingers in dozens and dozens of times, and pouring that into my drink.  NO THANK YOU.   

I ordered a Cosmopolitain instead.

Which ended up being too sweet.

But it's ok, because I drank great wine and draft beers later on in the evening. 

Comments

[Mabel]

I've bartended off and on for 10 years. It's really not THAT bad. I lurrve a really good dirty martini... K1 please :)

[Katie K.]

But a Cosmopolitan translated? I guess "Sex & the City" made it in the European market... Ahhh Aiden. Oh and Smith Jarrod!!

[Saron]

As a fellow American and lover of martinis in Amsterdam, I can totally relate to your post. It saddens me when I have to give the bartender instructions on how to make a martini. I always say, "you know, like the kind that James Bond drinks."

[Saron]

I may have made a false assumption on the fellow American part. Your name sounds Dutch, but you drink martinis, ik weet het gewoon niet.

[For Joke!]

Saron - I am Belgian. Flemish actually. But I have lived in the States for the majority of my life at this point. And now I have been in Amsterdam since August!

[bon]

Pregnant and no drinkies for me... but yesterday I bought the biggest bottle of olives that I could find and ate almost every one of them. MMMMmmmmmm! It's a good idea that you already have these relationship basics worked out with your fiance.