The savoury cocktail wave made the Dirty Martini its flagship — "expensive lounge energy" became a personality type, and brine became a flex. The logical next move was always going to happen: if olive brine, why not pickle brine?

The Pickle Martini answers with vinegar snap, garlic and dill where the dirty offers salt and olive oil roundness. It's a meaningfully different drink — brighter, sharper, more appetite-opening — and it rides two trends at once: the umami/briny movement bartenders keep extending into miso, pickle and fermented territory, and the internet's standing obsession with pickles as a genre of content.

Bars sell it with theatre — a sidecar of extra brine, a pick stacked with cornichons — but the drink underneath is a legitimate piece of mixology: a 4:1:1 martini where the citrus a sour would use is replaced by lacto-vinegar acidity. It works for the same reason a gibson works. Some people just want dinner and a drink to be the same thing.

• Food: Charcuterie, smashburgers, fried chicken, oysters, grilled cheese — it's a bar-snack drink
• Occasion: After dark, pre-dinner with attitude, the order that starts conversations
• Music vibe: Lounge, post-punk revival, anything with a smirk

Pickle Martini · Stirred · Chilled martini glass 60 ml gin · 15 ml dry vermouth · 15 ml dill pickle brine · cornichon pick Briny · bone-dry · the new dirty

Glass: Martini glass or coupe, properly chilled Serve: Up Temperature: As cold as physics allows Garnish: Cornichons on a pick; a brine sidecar if you're feeling theatrical