I Tried This Viral Pasta Dish—I Won't Be Back for Seconds

I'm saving my ingredients for real thing.

Viral food trends and recipes seem to be a dime a dozen these days. But the dishes that really catch fire are always a must-try for me. Call it FOMO, call it curiosity, call it love of cooking, I'm here for the first-hand account. So when I saw Dirty Martini Pasta floating around, I knew it was next on my list. Not only do I love a dirty martini, but I'll try any pasta. This feels like a no-brainer, home run already.

What Is Dirty Martini Pasta?

Just take the contents of your cocktail shaker and pour them over pasta...kind of. The Dirty Martini Pasta that's making its rounds consists of aromatics like garlic and lemon zest, flavor enhancers like gin, vodka, and/or lemon juice, olive oil and butter, green olives of course, and garnishes like blue cheese and red chili flakes.

TikTok user @legallyhealthyblonde, a private events chef named Emily who makes "feel good recipes" introduced this dish, confident it would "find the right people," aka, those of us who love dirty martinis and spaghetti (Hi! Here I am!). Her video has close to 30,000 likes, so it's safe to say she found her people.

How to Make Dirty Martini Pasta

Emily's original recipe sautées garlic, lemon zest, and olives, deglazes with gin and olive brine, emulsifies some butter in there, tosses it all together with noodles, and tops it off with blue cheese, parsley, salt, and pepper.

This is a super simple meal to prepare. In fact, I already had everything I needed to test it out in my own kitchen. I made a few small changes, including adding sautéed shallot along with the garlic, and a big squeeze of lemon juice along with the gin and olive brine. I didn't have parsley so I added red chili flakes instead. Once I twirled the spaghetti onto my plate, I finished it with the crumbled blue cheese as suggested. It took all of 15 minutes to make and left minimal cleanup behind. It was off to a good start...But how would it taste?

Dirty Martini Taste Test

Let me preface this by saying, this is a tasty dish if you love blue cheese and olives. That disclaimer out of the way, it's not the new go-to pasta meal I hoped it would be. The blue cheese and olive flavor overpowered the pasta and I found myself wishing I was enjoying these ingredients in a salad instead—or drinking them in a cocktail, as originally intended. I don't think I'll be back for more. Though if there is a next time, I may try a different spin and pair the olives with goat cheese or feta, extra lemon zest, and fresh herbs like basil or chives. (Sidenote: If you've never tried goat-cheese stuffed olives in a martini, this is your call to action to do so ASAP.)

For now, I'm sticking with Cacio e Pepe, Spaghetti Carbonara, or pesto for simple summer pasta recipes to keep in our weekly rotation. With a dirty martini on the side.