It was the peak of sophistication: Curvier than a Martini glass however deeper than a coupe, the Nick & Nora was the glass of the early aughts’ nice craft cocktail renaissance. It was elegant and traditional, and on the identical time, it was new. When, in 1987, Dale DeGroff initially revived the glass for the pre-Prohibition cocktail listing on the Rainbow Room—and christened it the “Nick & Nora,” after the murder-solving sophisticates within the 1934 movie adaptation of The Skinny Man—it was a riot towards the V-shaped Martini glass that had come to dominate the nationwide cocktail scene.
If the V form had associations of tacky Martini bars and saccharine pseudo-Martinis, the Nick & Nora was elegant, delicate, understated. It hopped throughout Manhattan from the Rainbow Room right down to Pegu Membership, after which in every single place else, an indication of a brand new period. Ingesting was now not the provenance of partiers; now it was a pondering man’s pursuit. “I feel the Nick & Nora is fairly emblematic of that very severe time,” says Derek Cram, bar director for San Diego’s Puesto. And, not by coincidence, it was ideally suited to very severe drinks.
“We have been favoring plenty of stirred, boozy cocktails, as a result of they have been simply so completely different from what was being consumed on the time,” says Cram. That Nick & Noras have been additionally sensible, laborious to spill and laborious to interrupt was a part of their attraction. Bartenders liked them, and patrons got here to anticipate them, a classy indicator of a well-made drink. William Elliott, bar director and managing companion at Maison Premiere in Brooklyn, New York, in actual fact remembers “flack from some sorts of cocktail nerds” for not utilizing Nick & Noras. (He prefers a V.)
However then—it’s tough to pinpoint the precise second it occurred—the Nick & Nora began a sluggish fade. “It sort of disappeared, with out me truly figuring out that it disappeared,” says Brian Evans, head of bars for New York’s Sunday Hospitality Group. It isn’t that they’ve vanished from the earth—Nick & Noras are nonetheless in every single place, together with at a number of of Evans’ bars—however that they’ve misplaced their standing. Abe Vucekovich, beverage director at Meadowlark Hospitality in Chicago, is a passionate Nick & Nora partisan, and nonetheless, he worries: “I feel it’s perceived like outdated particular person’s glassware?”
It was a confluence of things. “I hate to be overly reductive and simply pin every little thing again to the pandemic,” says Evans, however, on the identical time, in fact it modified what folks needed from their drinks. The resurgence of going out led to the frenzied resurgence of Martinis, typically in title solely—Espresso Martinis, soiled Martinis, ’tini Martinis, any Martinis—which helped redeem the fame of the much-maligned V-shaped glass. Abruptly, it appeared to suit the second. It was, as Eater’s Jaya Saxena put it, “sharp and laborious and slightly bitchy.” It was what the development forecaster Sean Monahan referred to as “growth growth.” And it was enjoyable. The Nick & Nora felt like a holdout from one other time.
A minimum of, for now. To be out of trend solely means to be positioned for a comeback, and the “dainty” V is reaching its saturation level. When it does, the Nick & Nora might be ready: easy and chic, as sturdy as ever.
