The Big Olive!
There's a story about a New York businessman sitting on his bar stool, scrutinising the bartender's every movement as he prepares a dry Martini. When the barman reaches over for that final twist of lemon, the man snaps: 'If I want fruit salad, I'll ask for it.'
The Martini connoisseur has definite views on the amount of lemon peel or the number of olives; he understands the proportion of gin to vermouth.
I've never failed to enjoy a Martini. What better pick-me-up can there be than this sophisticated cocktail with a kick so powerful it's come to be known as 'Fred Astaire in a glass'.
And what better place to search out the perfect Martini than New York City, spiritual home of what Truman Capote called a 'Silver Bullet'.
But no New Yorker better understood the Martini's allure than the wit, poet and literary critic Dorothy Parker. 'I like to drink Martinis. Two at the most. Three, I'm under the table, four I'm under my host.'
Dorothy Parker's drinking was done at the infamous Algonquin Hotel, the 'Gonk'. It's the grand old lady of New York hotels: walk into its dark, panelled lobby, settle in one of its armchairs and let the faded Art Deco elegance bring back the ghosts of its literary past.
Order a Martini, discover it is chilled to perfection, then imagine the Gonk in its heyday, a few decades after it was built in 1902, when New York's infamous Round Table gathered there for its long liquid lunches.
Parker was foremost among the Table's bunch of newspaper writers, magazine editors, critics, actors and hangers-on.
That great New York humorist, James Thurber, was always circumspect about his Martinis - 'One is all right, two is too many, and three is not enough,' he said. But I ignored his advice and opted for a second by nipping over the street to the Royalton Hotel.
I'd been told it boasts what the purists dread - an extravaganza of lurid variations on the Martini, served at its own, post-modern bar dedicated to the cocktail. I kept to the classic dry Martini and it was good, though colder would have been better. But the place was trying too hard to be hip.
Travel Guide: New York