Recipe Pornstar Martini, Done Right: The Douglas Ankrah Method
How Douglas Ankrah invented
the 21st century's biggest cocktail.
There are very few cocktails of the twenty-first century whose origin is precisely documented — date, place, bartender, full original recipe. The Pornstar Martini is one of them.
Douglas Ankrah created the Pornstar Martini at the Townhouse bar in Knightsbridge in 2002. Twenty years on, it is the most-ordered cocktail in the United Kingdom and one of the most successful cocktail inventions of the modern era. This is the drink as Ankrah created it — and the cocktail we built on those foundations.
Knightsbridge, 2002.
A six-month build.
Douglas Ankrah was born in Ghana in 1966 and moved to London in the 1980s. He trained as a hotel manager before moving into bartending in the early 1990s. In 1999 he co-founded LAB — the London Academy of Bartending — in Soho, which became one of the most influential cocktail bars of the era. He left LAB to open the Townhouse in Knightsbridge in 2000.
The cocktail was created in 2002, after Ankrah returned from a trip to South Africa. He had encountered a passionfruit-and-vanilla cocktail at a Cape Town hotel and spent the next six months refining the structure for the Townhouse menu. He initially called the drink the Maverick Martini, after a strip club he had visited in Cape Town. He renamed it the Pornstar Martini the same year — partly as a joke, partly because he thought the name would help it stick.
It stuck. The cocktail spread from the Townhouse to LAB, then to the wider London bar scene, then to the rest of the United Kingdom. By 2018 — fifteen years after its invention — it had become the most-ordered cocktail in the UK. By the time of Ankrah's death in November 2021, it was being served in bars from Sydney to Singapore.
Why fresh passionfruit
is non-negotiable.
Passionfruit — Passiflora edulis — carries its acid character in the seeds and the pulp. A version of the cocktail built on passionfruit syrup or concentrate has the colour and the basic sweetness of the original but lacks the structural acid that gives the drink its identity. Difford's Guide is explicit on this point, and Ankrah's published recipe specified fresh pulp from day one.
The visual identity matters too. The cocktail's signature is the dense foam cap, half a fresh passionfruit floated cut-side up on top, and the scatter of black seeds suspended in the foam. None of this can be faked with syrup. The fresh fruit is the cocktail.
Fresh passionfruit pulp.
The cocktail's structural acid comes from the fruit, not the liqueur. Difford's Guide and Ankrah's published recipe both specify fresh pulp. A syrup version lacks the seeds, the sharp acid burst, and the visual identity.
The vanilla is the seam.
Vanilla is what holds the passionfruit and the vodka together. Ankrah used vanilla vodka; modern bars split the role — premium vodka plus vanilla syrup — for finer control over the seam.
Prosecco alongside, never inside.
Conigliaro and Stephenson have been explicit about this for two decades. Pouring the Prosecco in destroys the foam, dilutes the drink, and ruins the cold-and-fizz reset between sips.
Foam is structural.
The cocktail's identity lives in its foam cap. Without a dense foam, the half-passionfruit garnish has nowhere to float. Egg white or gum arabic — either way, the foam must be built during the shake.
The Prosecco sidecar
stays in its own glass.
From the original 2002 build, Ankrah served the cocktail with a small flute of cold Prosecco on the side. The function is specific: the cold and the carbonation of the Prosecco reset the palate between sips, allowing the sweetness and the acid of the cocktail to read clearly throughout the drink.
Tony Conigliaro at 69 Colebrooke Row and Jamie Stephenson have been explicit about the rule for two decades. The Prosecco stays in its own glass. Pouring it into the cocktail destroys the foam, dilutes the drink, and ruins the cold-and-fizz reset. The two elements work together because they remain apart.
The world-class recipe,
step by step.
Here is the build a London bar with a proper bar program — LAB, 69 Colebrooke Row, the Connaught — would use. The ratios are slightly tighter than Ankrah's original to suit modern palates.
Pornstar Martini
Ingredients
- 45 mlArchie Rose Vodka
- 15 mlPassoã passion fruit liqueur
- 15 mlVanilla syrup
- 15 mlFresh lime juice
- ½Fresh passionfruit pulp
- 2 mlGum arabic (or 1 egg white)
- 60 mlProsecco — separate flute
Method
- Chill a coupe and a Champagne flute in the freezer for at least 30 minutes.
- Slice a passionfruit in half. Scoop the pulp of one half into the shaker. Reserve the other half, cut-side up.
- Combine all liquids in the shaker. Dry shake hard for 10 seconds — no ice.
- Add large dry ice cubes and wet shake hard for 12 seconds.
- Fine strain through a Hawthorne and fine mesh into the chilled coupe.
- Float the passionfruit cut-side up on the foam. Pour the Prosecco into the chilled flute — alongside, never inside.
Our build,
on Ankrah's framework.
We built the MXTology Pornstar Martini around Ankrah's 2002 framework: Archie Rose Original Vodka for the structural spine, Passoã for the depth, fresh passionfruit pulp for the acid and the identity, vanilla syrup for the seam, fresh lime for the citrus cut, natural gums for the silky foam.
The Prosecco sidecar tradition is preserved. Every order is the cocktail and the flute, served together, never combined.
When you shake the pouch, the gums emulsify and the dilution lands at the 26% point a 12-second wet shake would deliver in a London bar. Open, pour into a chilled coupe, float a half passionfruit on the foam, pour the Prosecco alongside in a chilled flute. The drink Ankrah served at the Townhouse, ready in the time it takes to slice a passionfruit.
In your hands in thirty seconds.
Final Pour
The Pornstar Martini is one of the only modern classics whose origin is documented to the year, the bartender and the bar. Twenty years on, it is still the United Kingdom's most-ordered cocktail and one of the most successful inventions of twenty-first-century bartending.
Same Passoã. Same fresh fruit. Same Prosecco on the side.