by Nathalie Graham
The martini was born in a bathtub. Or at least that’s one way the origin story goes. During the Prohibition era, gin was easier and faster to make than time-intensive barrel-aged whiskey. After bathtub gin made some people blind, they started cutting it with vermouth. Thus, the martini was born.
That’s one of the many things my boyfriend, Harry, and I learned at Cure Cocktail, a hole-in-the-wall cocktail bar that’s a stone’s throw from Harry’s apartment on Capitol Hill. I had bought him a cocktail-making class at Cure for Christmas. Doing hands-on classes is when we have the most fun together, like when we did a tea tasting or took a blacksmithing class.
Cure Cocktail is quaint and cozy. There were lights casting a dim yellow glow on a wall of rain-spattered windows. Harry and I looked at each other as the host guided us to our seats. “We should come back here all the time,” he said.