I helped create the Glasgow Martini - it tastes like a hot doughnut from The Barras

Glasgow is celebrating its 850th anniversary this year, an opportunity to think about the city’s past, present and future. Music is part of the personality of Glasgow - just yesterday I was talking to a musician who was enthusiastically reciting the litany of bands that have shaped the sound of the city - The Blue Nile, Simple Minds, Glasvegas, Travis, Franz Ferdinand. Food and drink is another important side of the local identity. It was with that in mind that the city centre’s latest bar set out to come up with a recipe for the Glasgow Martini.

The Noble Public House opened last month on Bothwell Street, the latest venture from Glasgow hospitality group The Superlative Collection which has venues including Glaschu, Gōst, The Duke’s Umbrella, The Clubhouse and Blue Dog. The Noble sits somewhere between a classic Glasgow pub and a cocktail bar, open 9am until late with a food menu designed by chef John Molloy. It’s already popular for pub lunches and after work drinks, weekends with entertainment from musicians at the grand piano.

Ewan Angus has created a menu of signature martinis - the current list includes a hot honey martini; passionfruit martini; and coffee martini, made using Rotovap infusions.

Rotovap is a rotary evaporator, a piece of equipment gaining recognition in the contemporary bar scene as a valuable tool that allows bartenders to extract and distil flavours like never before to create extraordinary craft cocktails. The kit has moved from chemistry lab to bar kitchen, producing clear spirits infused with pure, intensified flavours. It creates the opportunity to preserve the profile of ingredients, creating an infusion that has the essence of the core flavour.

The Noble set out to use science to distill Glasgow into a flavour profile for their martini menu. I was asked to help. Ewan started by seeking out a wide profile of flavour suggestions, inspired by childhood memories and Glasgow hospitality. This was a really fun conversation in itself, lots of references to people and places that define the city. Then there was input from people who just really wanted to try out some new flavours that they love - the Glasgow martini was a blank canvas and plenty of ways to create a new cocktail were explored.

Eventually, after lots of testing, there were five martinis put forward for consideration. Two of my suggestions made the list, the piece and jam martini alongside The Barras doughnut martini. There was also the Frazzles crisps and bacon martini, pizza crunch martini and a spicy kebab martini.

To decide what a Glasgow martini tastes like, The Noble assembled a team of judges from the ranks of local television and radio. There was Cassi the DJ and presenter of Radio Clyde’s breakfast show, alongside the station’s head of news and sport, Lorraine Herbison Hollinshead. BBC Scotland broadcaster and food writer Tam Cowan was there. Go Radio presenter and marketing consultant Aarti Joshi joined us. One of Glasgow’s great actors, Sanjeev Kohli, completed the judging panel.

The piece and jam martini made a strong start but ultimately split opinion on the panel, the sweetness of the infusion was more of a distraction than an enhancement to the drink, it was decided. It is a flavour that captures a bit of Glasgow though. The Frazzles martini looked the part but didn’t deliver on depth of flavour. The pizza crunch martini was fun but the judges couldn’t quite understand how it would fit onto a cocktail menu. That didn’t stop them munching on the mini pizza crunch that came with it - Sanjeev was looking for seconds. The spicy kebab martini was great, really interesting and infused with memories of Sauchiehall Street or Gordon Street after the dancing. Then a cocktail arrived that immediately caught everyone’s attention.

A martini is one of the best known cocktails in the world, made with gin or vodka mixed with vermouth. Clean and crisp, it can be flavoured in lots of different ways, sparking global trends. The Glasgow martini tastes like a hot doughnut from The Barras. It really does, bringing back generations worth of memories of weekends at the East End market. We couldn’t quite believe what we were tasting. To reinforce the flavour there’s a wee mini doughnut as a garnish.

Tam Cowan’s verdict: “That is excellent, I know it’s a martini, you get the sugar but it works, you do actually think you are trying a doughnut from The Barras”.

Cassi said: “What I find so impressive about this cocktail is that when you go to The Barras and you've got that smell of the doughnuts, you can actually smell it before you reach the market, I feel like smelling this cocktail you get that straight away. I think it tastes really nice.”

Sanjeev said: “If you're talking Glasgow, you're talking The Barras. And for me, the two thing a associated with The Barras are the theme tune for Superscoreboard and the smell of deep fried doughnuts. For me, of all the martinis, this is the one that’s most faithful to the thing that it’s thematically linked to. I’m really enjoying this, it’s a lovely combination.”

Aarti said: “I don’t normally like a sweet martini but this is perfect. It’s every single piece of alchemy that’s happening there, this is the Glasgow martini, it’s special, it’s a vibe.”

Lorraine said: “This really does taste like a doughnut from The Barras, it ticks all the boxes for me, it’s really divine.”

All the judges awarded this cocktail the maximum score of five out of five. And with that, the Glasgow Martini was born. You can order yours at The Noble from this weekend.

The Noble, 16 Bothwell St, Glasgow G2 6NU.