The Lobby Bar is sumptuous, with a bar top that accommodates a Parthenon’s worth of marble, and banquettes that are cozy and velvety. The Martini here is beloved because it pays homage to the Dukes Martini—named for the eponymous bar and hotel in London’s St. James’s neighborhood—which is famed for its frostiness, its purity, and, not least importantly, its size.

Gotham has been a fixture of the downtown dining scene for decades. I started with a Vesper, which de-Balkanizes the conflict between vodka and gin by combining both, with a splash of Lillet Blanc serving as the Holy Spirit. The drink, while still crisp, was more toothsome than a standard dry Martini.

Tigre is one of the most beautiful bars of recent vintage that I have seen. Windowless, it glows like a jewel box, and the striking semicircle of the bar is not unlike that of the U.N. Security Council, though studded with booze. The highlight of its Martini menu is the vodka-based Cigarette. “It’s old-fashioned, like if you smoked a cigarette while having a Martini,” a bartender told me, which is absolutely on point.

Sunken Harbor, a recent but already renowned tiki bar above the steak house Gage & Tollner, has a nautical theme and one of the strangest takes on the elixir of quietude I’ve tasted: the Immortal Martini. I will keep my descriptive powder dry and instead quote from the menu: “This gin Martini intrigues the senses with sesame oil, red pepper, and a cooling hint of cucumber. Not as briny as the sea, but enough to evoke the ocean’s mist.” Precisely.

The new outpost of the storied Dante, this one on Hudson Street, in the West Village, specializes in Martinis. The eponymous Dante Martini is a heady combination of Ketel One, Fords Gin, Noilly Prat vermouth, grappa-esque Nardini Acqua di Cedro liqueur, and lemon and olive bitters.

The newly reopened Temple Bar, true to its name, is dark and muted, verging on the sacred. I got devils on horseback to go with a Plymouth Martini, very dry up with a twist. The bacon set off a long Proustian moment as I recalled the Martini-accompanying bar snacks of yore—pigs in a blanket, for example.

Bemelmans is perhaps the most classic of the city’s Martini destinations, featuring a brilliantly glowing maze of rooms and murals of Ludwig Bemelmans’s Madeline.

Aretsky’s Patroon is run by the amiable father-and-son team of Ken and Gene Aretsky. Ken was the manager of the “21” Club during the booze-soaked mid-’80s, and the clubby Patroon is known for its Martinis, its enormous steaks, and the incredible photographs on the walls, including one of Andreas Feininger’s moody shots of lower Manhattan that may be the most Martini-friendly work of art imaginable.

My favorite bartender in the city works at Le Rock, and she presented me with every Martini on the menu. The Au Poivre introduces vodka to the excitement of green peppercorn, and the Super Sec fixes most mortal problems with over-proofed gin and extra-dry and white vermouth. The L’Alaska is perhaps the most interesting.