The Manhattan Has a New Name at the Bar

A Manhattan is a Manhattan. Rye, vermouth, bitters, cherry. The spec hasn't changed in a century. The name, apparently, has.

Punch filed a piece this week tracking the spread of "Boy Martini" as a bar order. The drink is a Manhattan. The Manhattan is bourbon or rye, sweet vermouth, a couple dashes of Angostura, served up with a cherry. The Boy Martini is the same thing, ordered by people who've decided the original name needed an update.

The term follows "girl dinner" and "boy kibble," two online shorthand phrases for gendered eating habits that circulated widely in 2023. Girl dinner: cheese, crackers, wine, no real cooking. Boy kibble: protein bars, cold cuts, a gallon of milk. The Boy Martini extends the same logic to cocktails. A Martini reads as aspirational, cocktail-bar literate, the kind of drink you order when you know what you're doing. A Manhattan reads as your uncle's drink. Rename it, and it's back in play.

The article cites bartenders in Brooklyn and Manhattan who've started hearing the order. No one's rewriting the menu. The drink arrives as it always has. The customer just called it something else.

The tell here is the suffix. A Boy Martini is a Manhattan that someone decided needed the cache of the Martini name. The Martini has carried that weight for decades. Gin, vermouth, olive or twist, served in a V-shaped glass. It's the drink that signifies knowing what you're ordering. The Manhattan has the same pedigree but without the same cultural shorthand. Calling it a Boy Martini borrows the branding.

Whether the name sticks depends on whether bartenders start using it back. So far, they're not. The piece quotes one bartender saying he nods and makes a Manhattan. Another says she's heard it twice in the past month. That's not a trend. That's two customers.