Cocktail · London dry gin
Green Room
Herbal, sharp, the exact colour of a lime leaf.
The name is a joke about waiting, but the drink is not a joke. This is the most savoury thing on the list — a gin martini that spent a season abroad. We infuse the vermouth with kaffir lime leaf and a little celery, which sounds worse than it is; what you actually get is a cold, clean, green-tasting drink that resets your palate between everything else.
Build: two ounces London dry gin, three-quarters of an ounce lime-leaf vermouth, a quarter ounce of chartreuse, one dash of saline. Stirred forty seconds over big ice, strained into a chilled coupe. No garnish. A garnish would be apologising.
If you are the sort of person who orders a martini and then complains it tastes like a martini, this is the one for you. If you are not, order it anyway.