Marvin's Pepperoni Pizza Negroni

Cocktails for Carnivores

8 Minute read

23 Mar 2026

Julie Tremaine

Journalist

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A new wave of decidedly non-vegetarian libations are making mixology meatier than ever.

Think of it as dinner in a glass.

In the bar world, savory cocktails are nothing new. Recently, they’ve been trending toward drinks designed to taste like meals as much as they’re crafted to complement them. Cocktails infused with cheese or hot peppers, drinks that evoke salads, and those served with small accompaniments like caviar bumps are easier to find than ever. They’re getting bigger and meatier, too. Mixologists are leaning into protein-forward flavor profiles not just as a way to have some fun with their menus, but to meet a growing demand for palate-challenging drinks.

These aren’t your basic Bloody Marys garnished with shrimp and oysters or, in more extreme and unsettling iterations, whole rotisserie chickens. It may have started with Benton’s Old Fashioned, the bacon-infused cocktail that debuted at the New York speakeasy PDT in 2007 and popularized fat-washing as a way to infuse spirits, but the technique has spread widely since.

Austin’s Roosevelt Room serves Silver Meadows, a spirit-forward tequila cocktail with foie gras-washed St-Germain, paired with Caravedo Torontel Pisco, Junmai sake, clarified lime and grapefruit, and sweetgrass tincture. Bitter & Twisted in Phoenix offers a Dinapoli martini made with pancetta-, garlic-, and parmesan-infused gin, along with a lemon-, tomato-, and basil-infused balsamic shrub.

At The View, the rotating restaurant atop the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, a Katz’s martini is served in collaboration with the century-old Lower East Side deli. The cocktail features brisket-washed Bombay Sapphire, Noilly Prat Extra Dry, and Brennivín aquavit, served in a martini glass crusted with Katz’s pastrami spice blend and garnished with house-made pickles.

From Garnish to Main Course

“Guests are increasingly curious and open to more complex, savory flavor profiles,” SLS Baha Mar’s Director of Beverage Faizal Farook said.

At the hotel’s restaurant, Carna Baha Mar by Dario Cecchini, that translates into a Wagyu fat-washed Old Fashioned with spiced maple syrup and fennel bitters. Farook says he’s seeing “a growing appreciation for cocktails that offer depth and storytelling, especially when they connect directly to the food and overall dining experience.”

To do that, beverage directors are increasingly blurring the line between the kitchen and the bar.

For Kenzo Han, bar director at Los Angeles’s Firstborn, using kitchen byproducts behind the bar is a way to reduce overall restaurant waste. The restaurant’s Rob Roy, made with dry-aged lamb fat, Ardbeg “Wee Beastie” Scotch, Lustau Peninsula Sherry, Amaro Averna, and cherry, evolved from excess rendered lamb fat from a seasonal menu item at the Chinese-inspired brasserie.

“It’s nice to be able to use an ingredient that was going to get thrown away,” Han said, “and also happens to taste really good.”

For Han, the success of the drink comes down to high-quality, thoughtfully sourced meat. “One of the things that is really key is that the ingredient really came from the kitchen,” they said. The Rob Roy was available seasonally when Firstborn had lamb on the menu. The team has applied the same approach to duck, creating an Old Fashioned with orange overtones, and is now experimenting with mushroom trimmings.

“Any time you can bring in a flavor that’s unexpected, I think it’s fun for a cocktail,” Han said.

Fun is also top of mind for Jesse Hedberg, co-owner and beverage director of Providence’s Pizza Marvin and Club Frills, a laid-back cocktail lounge. That thinking led to Pizza Marvin’s Pepperoni Negroni, a batched and bottled cocktail that has been on the menu since the restaurant opened in 2020.

“Before it was a drink, it was a name,” Hedberg said. “Pepperoni and negroni, it’s literally meant to be…As soon as I thought of the name, I was like, ‘there’s an absolute synergy of flavors between pepperoni itself and a negroni.’”

To make it, he grinds pepperoni down, slowly renders the fat, then uses it to fat-wash a London Dry gin. “That technique's been popular for the last decade or so,” Hedberg said. “It's a great way of extracting flavor. When you strain the fat off, the gin definitely has a meaty flavor, but it’s a lot of the spices of the pepperoni too. You get chili pepper, and there are some savory notes and almost a tiny bit of spiciness.”

Hedberg is nominated for a 2026 James Beard Award for Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service. The restaurants’ other co-owner, Robert Andreozzi, was nominated in 2023 and 2025 for Best Chef in the Northeast.

Both spots balance technical precision with a sense of humor. At Club Frills, the Teeny Weenie Martini takes Providence’s signature Olneyville NY System Wieners and infuses them into vodka, with wiener, chili, raw onion, celery salt, buns, and all. It’s finished with fino sherry, celery bitters, mustard oil, and compressed celery. The result is something like a dirty martini, but with a lot more personality.

Where Flavor Gets Weird

Abigail Gullo at Loa, a cocktail bar in the International House Hotel in New Orleans, built her Muffuletta Martini with a similar approach. “I love muffulettas and I love martinis,” she said. “I was like, ‘that just sounds perfect.’” Gullo is also nominated for a 2026 James Beard Award for Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service in the Southeast.

New Orleans grocery stores sell prepackaged muffuletta kits with the city’s signature combination of deli meats and cheeses, usually including ham, mortadella, salami, provolone, and mozzarella, along with giardiniera, an olive relish with pickled cauliflower, celery, carrots, capers, and garlic.

To make the drink, Gullo bought a muffuletta kit, then julienned all of it to fat-wash Navy Strength gin. “I used a nice fragrant, savory kind of vermouth to go with it,” she said, “and we garnish with the olive salad giardiniera.” She finishes it with a drop of Sicilian olive oil and a touch of sesame oil to evoke the seeded bun of the sandwich.

It might sound strange, but Loa has long leaned into “experimental, weird drinks based on New Orleans traditions and herbology and stuff like that,” Gullo said. If you’re at her bar, order a Sazerac and listen as she explains the history of New Orleans through the spirits in the cocktail.

Gullo sees meat-washing as “nothing new” in the cocktail world. “This has been part of my cocktail DNA for 20 years,” she said. What has changed, she notes, is drinking behavior and a growing appetite for something different, especially amid ongoing conversations about alcohol falling out of favor. “I don’t feel like people are drinking less,” she said. “I think they’re drinking better.”

“That being said, I think those of us in the craft feel like we’re being attacked and we’re getting defensive,” about the idea that people aren’t drinking anymore, she added. “Sometimes we double down and say, ‘oh yeah? Well, then I’m going to make something even weirder. If the only people who are drinking are the people who are risk takers and trendsetters, then I’m going to lean into the risky trends.’”

Gullo also attributes these meatier cocktails to a growing synergy between food and cocktail programs. “What’s different from 20 years ago is that there used to be restaurants and there used to be cocktail bars, but now every restaurant is supposed to have a great cocktail program, and every cocktail bar is supposed to have great food,” she said. “What we’re seeing is the combination of the culinary and the beverage craft together.”