Want to have a drink in a restaurant? In Boston Rialto 617-661-5050 Top of The Hub 617-536-1775 29 Newbury 617-536-0290 In Chicago Harry's Velvet Room 312-828-0770 Shaw's Crab House and Blue Crab Lounge 312-257-2722 Spiaggia 312-280-2750 In NYC An American Place 212-684-2122 Grange Hall 212-924-5246 Rainbow Room, Promenade Bar 212-632-5000 In San Francisco 42 Degrees 415-777-5558 Vertigo 415-433-7250 Zuni Café 415-552-2522 In Seattle The Cloud Room 206-682-0100 Moe's Mo'roc'n Café 206-324-2406 Queen City Grill 206-443-0975

While people of all ilk have been enjoying mixed alcoholic drinks since the beginning of fermentation, the cocktail is a comparatively recent creation. The word itself came into being sometime around 1806, and what set this new breed of drink apart from the earlier catalogue of toddies, flips, syllabubs, and slings is the use of ice. Ice chilled the liquor so it would tread numbingly down the gullet in a cool, even canter. The use of ice placed cocktails in the upper echelons of society since, in the nascence of refrigeration, only the well-to-do had access to ice in the summertime. Needless to say, the best of the early cocktails were mixed in the south (like the mint julep), where a sultry climate put chilly tipples in much demand.

By the 1860s, ice had become ubiquitous. Still, ice retained its allure as a status symbol - albeit one that was available to anyone who could pay for a drink in a bar, not just to those who kept legions of servants and ice houses by their ponds. As ice became de rigueur at all hotels, saloons, taverns, and bars, so too did cocktails, and a new group of professionals were needed to mix them up. Thus, bartenders and saloon keepers became highly respected members of society, as important to a community as the doctor and the sheriff.

This period, from the 1860's through the turn of the century, was a golden age for cocktails, and new drinks were invented by the dozen. The martini, the Manhattan, the champagne cocktail, and the Tom Collins were all conceived behind opulent mahogany bars before the twentieth century. However, cocktails of old were much sweeter and more complicated than they are today; early recipes for a martini call for sugar syrup, gin, curacao, sweet vermouth, and bitters.

With Prohibition forcing a switch from fine aged spirits to brutal bathtub gin, cocktails continued to evolve along this sugary path. The harsh liquor needed dressing up, so ornate, viscous, frothy concoctions like the Ramos gin fizz (gin, egg white, sugar syrup, orange flower water, cream, vanilla extract, and lime juice) were being shaken up in speakeasies and private clubs all over the country. While these favorites may not seem as sophisticated as our modern minds imagine the roaring twenties to have been, they were the root of the roar.

With the repeal of the 18th amendment in 1933, alcohol became legal, and the climate of the cocktail changed. Better tasting spirits streamlined cocktails into the sleek, dry, elegant libations familiar to us today. Once banned from the silver screen, cocktails were embraced as symbols of movie-stardom. And, as opposed to pre-prohibition standards, respectable women were no longer excluded from the fun. The height of glamour became the evening-gowned femme fatale, with her cigarette holder in one gloved hand and martini glass in the other.

Today, the cocktail has been distilled into its sleekest form yet: a colorless alcohol, usually vodka, chilled and served straight up in a martini glass, perhaps with a twist. Where once behind a bar you'd see endless rows of mixers, today you see fewer than a dozen. Gone are most of the syrups, juices, bitters, and garnishes that flavored the cocktails of the past. Gone is everything but the two essentials: the alcohol and the ice. Some people credit this shift to our increasingly sophisticated palates, but the introduction of higher-quality, super premium spirits hasn't hurt either. It is no longer the height of chic to order a martini. Now, you must order a Stoli or Absolut martini, and stay true to your brand (even if you can't really taste the difference). In fact, flavor is no longer the issue, but rather, having good taste is. Whether or not this trend will last is unclear -- certainly much less clear than the cool, icy drink in the glass.