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The Meat Cocktail Craze

With barbecue and bone broth ruling dinner plates, it was only a matter of time before the leftovers ended up in the drinks

Back when I worked at a classic cocktail bar in New York City, there was a game we played when service was slow. The manager would choose three to five random ingredients—a bottle of vodka that came in the mail, along with Meyer lemons, St. Germain and cinnamon, for example—and challenge the bartender to create something quaffable. This is a difficult task under any circumstances, but it was even harder the day our poor bartender was given pork au jus, chocolate and tequila, and we ended up with a greenish-brownish blended drink that no one was willing to try. Making tasty cocktails out of meat is tricky, and it’s taken bartenders a while to confidently, and successfully, infuse old-fashioneds, Bloody Marys and even light gin cocktails with proteins that normally only appear on plates. But now that they have, it’s hard to go anywhere without being tempted to drink the fat.

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