I started really disliking the triangular cocktail glass (best known as a martini glass) ever since I went to the Pegu Club in Soho and had a perfect martini in a Nick and Nora cocktail glass. The martini glass is impratical, your drink sloshes with the slightest movement. People crane their heads and hover as they approach the cocktail. They pucker their lips over the glass in a hopeless attempt to avoid the spill – it’s not an attractive look. These glasses are big, so what is supposed to be a super chilled cocktail loses its iciness too quickly. People sip it much too fast so as to savor the cold before its gone. At the Pegu Club they serve your martini in a Nick and Nora glass, which is shaped like a dainty cup with a stem. They put some of your martini in it and some of it is left inside a small carafe which is placed before you inside of a bowl of crushed ice. Elegante.

Nick and Nora Charles were the protagonists of a film series based on the novel The Thin Man starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. A sophisticated married couple, they had a lot of cocktails while being wittty and solving murders. They used the perfect martini glasses. They are known as the Nick and Nora cocktail glass.

While I was looking for the Nick and Nora glasses, I discovered that a lot of people were on the same quest. There is a whole thread about it at Chowhound. Blogger Wordsmithing Pantagruel reported going to the Pegu Club and grilling a bartender for the source. I followed a lead to a wine store on the Upper Westside, but was told they only had three left. Then success, thanks to Wordsmithing Pantagruel. Tabletop Style has them in their Minners Classic Cocktail Collection for a little over six bucks each. They arrived quickly and are now waiting to be filled.