For a martini experience: IN CHICAGO - Brasserie Jo - Harry's Velvet - Blackhawk Lodge IN NYC - M & R - Alva - The Algonquin Hotel IN SAN FRANCISCO - The Big Four - Bix - 42 Degrees

I recently went in search of the martini. I was not necessarily looking for the perfect martini, though such a thing would be nice to find. I was after something more abstract. You see, along with a lot of other people, I and my set embraced the cocktail with gusto in the last couple of years. Recently, one among us posed an inopportune question: why had we (all left-leaning bookish sorts) taken to drinking the liquid emblem of corporate capitalism, the central attraction at the eponymous three-martini lunch? On a moment's reflection, the question became more complicated. Didn't E. B. White enjoy martinis -- at lunch and dinner -- dubbing them "the elixir of quietude?" And what of Dorothy Parker? "I like to have a martini, two at the very most, after three I'm under the table, after four I'm under my host." And a further round of puzzling left me wondering how in the world White's elixir came to stand for the paunchy corporatism of a generation or so ago. The question had a particular relevance based on the cocktail's current vogue. (I dutifully bought my martini shaker, I am forced to admit, at Crate and Barrel). With Barnaby Conrad III's magnum opus, The Martini, as my guide and the city of Chicago as my territory, I bought a first-class ticket on the martini bandwagon, and set out after legends of the "clear one," to find not one, but many faces of the martini.

My first stop was Brasserie Jo where chef Jean Joho, who made his name at Chicago's famed Everest, gives the martini its own menu, and features a half-dozen selections. (Try the Martini Jo: Skyy Vodka, Lillet, twist of orange, nice.) In all respects, the restaurant's fare is scrupulously Alsatian, from the entrees, like coq au vin with spaetzel, to the beer (they feature a delicious recipe of their own) to the Gewurztraminers, which the waiters take pains to explain to the uninitiated are not cloying like German wines. Was the martini a French-German hybrid, I wondered? No, nothing so exotic. Though there are a few competing traditions, the martini was surely born in America in the late 19th-century, probably in San Francisco. In the second edition of the Bar-Tenders Guide (1887), "Professor" Jerry Thomas published the first documentary evidence of the martini, a recipe for his concoction of sweet gin and vermouth, called a "Martinez." Within a decade, the name had become martini, and dry gin and vermouth were favored.

And the martini did not stray far from its fancy, city roots. For example, when Jack London's Elam Harnish struck it rich in the Yukon (in Burning Daylight, 1898), he moved to San Francisco, and switched from rot-gut whiskey to the martini. So at my next stop, the Blackhawk Lodge, located in Chicago's Gold Coast and specializing in woodsy food, I wondered why they make such a point of their martinis? They have a menu of about a dozen, including the Top of the World, which sets a blue-cheese-stuffed olive inside of Finlandia Vodka. It seemed a dissonant, fancy note in my lodge-like surroundings. But then again, they also sell barbecued ribs for $20. So there you have it.

In the 1930's and 40's, the martini made its debut into a distinctly American version of high-society. In the steady hands of Myrna Loy and William Powell, in the movie version of Dashiell Hammett's "Thin Man," our hero entered into its position as THE high-octane fuel for the streamlined age: classy, savvy, and definitely urbane. Franklin Roosevelt sealed its fame in 1933. After signing the repeal of Prohibition, he mixed the first legal martini in the White House. In this spirit, I ventured to Chicago's Hotel Intercontinental, which tries to capture some of the glamour of that time -- though it may have missed the mark with its kitschy Deco/Casablanca interior. Still, the lobby bar (which they call the lobby bar) serves a martini worthy of Nick and Nora. The staff doesn't force you into a particular brand of gin or vodka, like the more exacting servers at Brasserie Jo and the Blackhawk. Your favorite recipe (what else but Bombay Sapphire 7-to-one?), is shaken or stirred (as you wish) and poured into a crystal pitcher, which is nestled discreetly in ice, where it waits in undiluted splendor to be self-administered as needed. Take your pick of a regular, blue-cheese-, or anchovy-stuffed olive.

The sax player for the Dave Brubeck Quartet once told an audience that he developed his distinctive sound by trying to sound like a dry martini -- which brings me to my next stop, the Gold Star Sardine Bar. Located in the Playboy building, this club's martini lives up to its high-toned, loungey setting. An almost comically over-sized glass of gin, matching olive, add a leggy chanteuse -- the jazzers would have been proud.

Entering Harry's Velvet Room, where an extensive martini menu complements the restaurants featured selection of cigars, raised the disconcerting suspicion with which I began. In savoring my martinis was I tasting the same pleasures that tickle some of my right-wing friends -- you know, the kind who get showy satisfaction by fancying themselves "politically incorrect?" This question required further research into a sad chapter in the martini's semantic history.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter successfully campaigned against, among other things, the martini. Carter held up "fat cats" who deducted expensive three-martini lunches from their taxes as egregious examples of the excesses of corporate greed (which, at the time, seems to have bothered people). When William F. Buckley weighed in in favor of the martini ("the martini, lets face it, has become a code word") and when Hugh Sidey dignified the sordid martini affair in his column in TIME magazine, the cocktail's doom was almost sealed. Within two years, a writer in Bon Appetit sounded a warning that the martini was about to go the way of the dodo.

Now that compunctions like Carter's are considered quaint, the martini is free to enjoy its rediscovered popularity. But what is it that we pour from our shakers? Is it Americana? fancy citification? high-style glamour? a stream of cool jazz? a tonic for all this priggish lefty stuff? All these things are in there, I think.

Whatever else you decide about the martini, use a chilled glass, invest in a worthwhile olive, serve it very cold and, as my mother-in-law always reminds me, don't bruise the gin!