At H Mart, tropical fruits lined the produce aisles like shiny, bespoke jewels. Sun-warmed papaya, halved and neatly wrapped in plastic, beckoned to be eaten. Ripe pineapple and candy-sweet mangoes adorned store shelves, their aroma intoxicating. And bright pink pataya were wrapped in foam nets, as if to contain their flame-like green, leafy tips.
My heart, however, yearned for lychees.
I don’t remember many specifics about the very first time I tried a lychee, but what I do recall is that it was love at first bite. There’s something rather whimsical about eating the oblong fruit. First, one must peel back its leathery skin, which, when ripe, is a beautiful shade of pinkish-red, sometimes with faint streaks of gold or light green. Inside is the lychee fruit. Its translucent-white flesh — which is soft yet has a bite to it — tastes mystifying: floral with notes of rose, pear and strawberry.
Growing up in the suburbs of Maryland, I looked forward to summers because it was the only time my family’s refrigerator would be stocked with bowls of pearlescent lychees. I’d spend hours basking under the sun, popping one lychee after another into my mouth, indulging in their syrupy goodness. There’s a running joke amongst my friends and me that a bowl of lychees hates to see me coming. It’s basically internet slang that means I can never have too many lychees. Leave me with an entire bowl (which typically contained anywhere between 20 to 30 lychees) unattended and I’d be able to finish it all in a matter of minutes.
As I got older, my love for lychees intensified. In addition to enjoying the fruit, I’ve also acquired a taste for lychees soaked in booze, namely, lychee martinis. A few years after graduating from college, I moved to Washington, D.C. — my first “big girl” move away from home. With any major move comes the quest to find your “go-to” trifecta: coffee shop, restaurant and cocktail bar. Within a few months, I found my “go-to” bar: Silver Lyan. I fell in love with its cozy yet sultry ambiance (which occupies a former bank vault) and its expertly crafted Lychee Martini. The cocktail itself touts a homemade lychee syrup made from clarified frozen pure lychee puree, Roku gin (flavored with six Japanese botanicals, including cherry blossom, yuzu, sencha, and sansho pepper), Ginrei Shiro and cherry blossom salt. Simply put, it’s heaven in a cocktail glass. And while the drink wasn’t the most frugal beverage to enjoy every week on a night out — especially as an early 20-something — it offered a sense of excitement and nostalgia. Each sip and bite of boozy lychee transported me back to those slow summer days spent feasting on fresh fruit to my heart’s content.
We need your help to stay independent
In recent years, the lychee martini has been making a sort of comeback after enjoying its heyday in the late ’90s and early 2000s. As written by Eater’s Lulu Chang, “The comeback cocktail starring the bobbing fruit from East Asia made its first appearance in the early 1990s — around the same time fusion cuisine seemed to be all the rage in big metropolitan cities. For a time, the lychee martini was almost as ubiquitous as the Cosmopolitan — a not-so-distant cousin popularized not by a cooking trend, but rather, ‘Sex and the City.’”
There’s much debate about who created the cocktail in the States, but some reports attribute that achievement to Decibel, an underground sake bar in New York City’s East Village. Established in 1993, the bar debuted a lychee syrup–flavored vodka martini, which, according to Decibel owner Bon Yagi, was already being served at the bar’s Tokyo location owned by his brother. “When I first started working there, nobody was serving Lychee Martinis,” former Decibel manager Takahiro Okada told Punch in 2019. Reading about Decibel’s original lychee martini, I felt an odd kinship — as if my own fruit obsession had been quietly waiting in the city all along.
Want more great food writing and recipes? Sign up for Salon’s free food newsletter, The Bite.
From underground sake bars to high-end fusion spots, everyone seemed to put their own spin on the drink. “Part of what makes finding the original Lychee Martini so difficult is the sheer variety of early iterations,” wrote Chris Crowley. Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Vong began serving lychee martinis around the same time. And Indochine, which opened its doors in 1984, continues to offer its Lychee Saketini — sake chilled with lychee and lemon juices.
With the lychee martini’s overall popularity comes its expansion into various cuisines. The cocktail has long been a staple at various Asian or “Asian Fusion” establishments, considering that the lychee fruit is native to the subtropical regions of southern China and Southeast Asia. But in recent decades, it’s been spotted at American, French and Mediterranean dining hubs.
Last year, I moved to New York City and thus, my search for a bar with exceptional lychee martinis resumed. I’ve settled on two bars: Verlaine, for its exceptional $8 lychee martinis during happy hour and Levant on Smith, for its artistry and chic martinis.
I don’t think my love for lychees and the elegant lychee martini will ever fade. Summer’s quintessential cocktail has carried me from childhood markets to New York rooftops — and I suspect the lychee still has more places to take me.
