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If 2025 belonged to the dirty Martini and 2026 has been threatening to become the summer of the spritz, New Yorkers may have quietly found a third contender. Enter the pistachio Martini: rich, nutty, indulgent and possibly the city's next cocktail obsession.
Pistachio has spent the past year infiltrating nearly everything we eat, from viral chocolates and croissants to soft serve and coffee drinks. Espresso martinis, meanwhile, refuse to surrender their grip on the city's nightlife. But combine the two and you get a cocktail that's practically engineered for social media—and, perhaps more importantly, actually tastes good.
The latest entrant comes from SoHo's A Pasta Bar, where the new pistachio Martini leans fully into Italian dessert territory. The drink combines vodka, homemade pistachio cream, pistachio liqueur, coffee liqueur and a shot of Italian espresso before being dry-shaken, then shaken again over ice for an extra silky texture. (Think of it as an espresso Martini that spent a summer vacation in Sicily.)
The restaurant isn't alone: at Mace in the East Village, the Green Cardamom cocktail gives the espresso martini formula a sophisticated twist with pistachio oil-infused vodka, espresso and green cardamom. It's a descendant of one of the bar's signature creations, which famously drew inspiration from Turkish coffee served with baklava.
Elsewhere, pistachios keep showing up in increasingly creative ways. Tokyo Confidential serves the Dead or Alive, blending rum with pistachio, hazelnut, yogurt and Parmigiano foam. While it's thousands of miles from New York, it’s part of a broader trend toward savory-meets-sweet cocktails, using pistachio as more than just a garnish.
Of course, none of this guarantees the pistachio martini will dethrone the spritz. Spritzes are, after all, lighter, lower in alcohol and tailor-made for sweltering afternoons, while pistachio martinis are decidedly richer and better suited to lingering after dinner. But New York has never been especially interested in choosing just one drink of the summer.
So here's the real question: are you ordering another Aperol Spritz... or is it finally time to go nuts?