Bright pink drinks in over-large martini glasses.
When Matell get around to bringing out Cocktail Barbie (with mini pink shaker and cigarette holder), the back of the box should carry a recipie for a Blossomtini.
The Blossomtini’s principal ingredient is rose petal vodka. It’s the same lurid pink as a Jem doll’s dress or a She-Ra castle or at any other plastic fantastic toy aimed at little girls. It comes in a giant martini glass, most suited to frozen drinks for Miami poolsides. It’s the girliest drink in the world, although my friend Suzy and I discovered them in a less than girly gay bar, Ballans on Old Compton Street.
Ballan’s, apparently, does lovely food. But for Sooze and I the cocktail menu is the star turn. It’s our place to slink off too when we want to pretend our lives are metropolitan and glamorous. The furniture is mainly black, the lighting a weird blue-green and the waiters are very pretty, although prettiest to each other. It’s the image of a late night cocktail bar I held in my head as a teenager and going there lets me slide back into decade-old daydreams of what I thought my mid-twenties should be like.
I ordered a Blossomtini because it was the first thing I saw on the menu and I was suffering from option paralysis. When it landed on the table it looked like a Barbie swimming pool, especially next to Suzy’s grown up Black Russian, and she took the piss out of me until she tried it. Blossomtinis are like liquified and chilled Turkish delight. They’re gorgeous. They’re also very alcoholic, as we found out, three later.
They do look bloody stupid though. Sixteen year-old me wouldn’t have been caught dead drinking something pink.