Lychee martinis are on the verge of becoming the best-selling cocktail at Pineapple Club, a buzzy bar in Manhattan’s East Village.
“The only drink we sell more of is the espresso martini,” says Beverage Director Nazar Hrab.
Cheekily named I’ll Never Lychee Go, Pineapple Club’s lychee martini is made with rosé, fresh citrus and housemade lychee syrup.
“It’s one of those crushers where, if somebody at the bar orders one, they almost always order it again as their second drink,” Hrab says. “It’s not too sweet and really refreshing.”
It’s all part of the lychee martini’s 21st-century glow up. Created in the early 1990s and popular until the mid-aughts, the first wave of lychee martinis featured cloying canned fruit and whatever well vodka was within arm’s reach. Like the Cosmopolitan—another retro cocktail undergoing a modern makeover—the lychee martini of yesteryear was a mainstay of club-staurants, where food and drink typically took a backseat to partying and shouting, “What did you say?” over a thumping MGMT soundtrack.
The appeal of these new iterations isn’t purely nostalgic: Many people ordering lychee martinis at cutting-edge cocktail bars weren’t of age or even born during the drink’s original heyday. New-school lychee martinis are also a reflection of a modern drinking ethos, with bartenders using fresh fruit instead of the canned stuff and leaning on top-shelf spirits and modifiers like fino Sherry.
The triumphant return of the lychee martini could, in fact, be interpreted as a sign of the enormous strides that American drinks culture has made in a few short decades. Contemporary bar goers insist upon quality ingredients, creative preparations and drinks that prioritize balance over all-out inebriation. The 21st century hasn’t been kind to every U.S. institution, but we sure have raised our collective standards for what constitutes a good cocktail.
Modern Lychee Martinis Bring Nuance to the Bar
At Tallboy, a new bar in the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland, California, the lychee martini is a crisp, easy-drinking affair. Served in a chilled Nick and Nora coupe, it combines mezcal, fino Sherry, fresh lemon juice and two forms of lychee: a housemade lychee syrup plus a lychee sweetener from the well-regarded 1885 French distiller.
Tallboy’s owner Den Stephens wanted to be sure the drink appealed to modern palates.
“The thing about cocktails of the ’90s and early 2000s is a lot of them were on the sweeter side,” he says. “So, we asked ourselves, ‘How can we dry it out? How can we give it a lot of structure and a backbone?’ We wanted to make it sophisticated and nuanced for the 2024 cocktail drinker.”
To create a balanced lychee martini, restraint is key. Lychees are aromatic, and their juicy, floral flavors are generally perceived as sweet. When used with care, the tropical fruit has delicate ripe strawberry and pear nectar notes, plus a citrusy charm all its own. Unfortunately, like many aromatic ingredients, it becomes overpowering if doused in syrup or subjected to a more-is-more mentality.
“Exercise caution” when combining lychees with other ingredients that have floral characteristics, says Petr Balcarovsky, the lead bartender at The Apparatus Room in Detroit, Michigan. Otherwise, the mix can start to taste like perfume.
The Lychee-Scented Golden Age of Drinks
Generational divides can be overly amplified—Millennials and Gen Z have been unfairly blamed for ruining everything from mayonnaise to the housing market—but various demographics are bound to approach lychee martinis differently.
For instance, if you’ve enjoyed the tropical fruit in coconut puddings, jellies and other desserts popular in parts of East and Southeast Asia, you might welcome drinks made with lychees. You’re familiar with the fruit’s ability to express nuance.
Unfortunately, not everyone is so lucky. Certain Millennial, Gen X and other bar goers whose only experiences with the fruit was in cloying, first-wave lychee martinis might view any new lychee drink with trepidation. Meanwhile, others with little or no lychee exposure may enter the lychee martini’s latest era with open minds.
“The younger generation gets to approach it with a neutral palate—I think it’s nice that they don’t have any baggage surrounding lychee,” Stephens says, laughing.
Trends are cyclical, and erstwhile fashions are constantly reimagined by and for new audiences. On runways, skinny jeans are swapped for cargo pants. In bars, remixed lychee martinis and Midori sours get the same care and consideration as the Old Fashioneds and Manhattans that dominated cocktail menus 15 years ago. These evolutions are part of what makes cultural expressions so endlessly interesting.
“No one at Pineapple Club is even thinking about the era when lychee martinis weren’t one of the best things you can order at the bar,” says Hrab.
How to Make a Lychee Martini
“This pearlescent little number is one of the most highly recommended drinks among my friends,” writes Julianna McIntosh in her book, Pretty Simple Cocktails. Here’s how McIntosh makes her lychee martini.
Ingredients:
- 2 ounces vodka
- 1 ounce lychee juice (from a can of lychees)
- 3/4 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1/2 ounce elderflower liqueur
- Edible flowers, fresh lychees and 1 barspoon edible glitter, for garnish (optional)
Directions:
- Place a coupe or martini glass in the freezer to chill.
- In a cocktail shaker, combine the vodka, lychee juice, lemon juice, elderflower liqueur and edible glitter (if using). Add ice, cover, then shake vigorously for 30 seconds. Double-strain the mixture into the chilled glass.
- If using garnishes, skewer the lychees with a cocktail pick and rest them on one side of the glass’s rim. Add edible flowers on top of the glass.
