This Boston Pizzeria Infuses Its Pepperoni Pies Into a Negroni

The Negroni has ranked among the world’s most popular cocktails for decades now, claiming the No. 1 spot the past four years in a row. The public’s admiration for the bitter red beverage has inspired countless variations, several of which have established themselves as archetypal in their own right — just look at drinks like the White Negroni and the Kingston Negroni. But at Boston’s newly opened FiDO Pizza, guests have the opportunity to sample a unique riff on the Italian classic that’s designed to pair perfectly with the restaurant’s namesake cuisine. That riff is, of course, the Pepperoni Pizza Negroni.

The cocktail comes straight from the brain of partner and beverage director Ryan Lotz, who wanted to keep the beverage menu at the Allston neighborhood restaurant lighthearted and playful. FiDO — shorthand for “fine dough” — is the fifth concept from Boston’s Traveler Street Hospitality, which also owns restaurants Bar Mezzana, No Relation, and Black Lamb, as well as cocktail bar Shore Leave.

“Not that these restaurants aren’t playful, but I wanted FiDO to have a tongue-in-cheek bar program, and the Pepperoni Pizza Negroni seems to fit in perfectly there,” Lotz explains. “We’re a pizza restaurant, and Negronis obviously have a connection to Italian food, so I wanted to find a way to do it.”

The idea for the drink first came to Lotz during a visit to Providence, R.I.’s Pizza Marvin where he sampled the restaurant’s famous Pepperoni Negroni for the first time. Inspired, he returned to Boston with the idea of creating a drink that better encompassed the entire profile of a pepperoni pizza — not just the cured meat resting atop it.

After attempting to make the drink using dozens of techniques and infusions to reverse engineer a pepperoni pizza’s flavor, Lotz realized nothing he tried was working. Clarifying the cocktail with a milk wash eliminated too much of the flavor; tomato infusions weren’t strong enough; and fat washing the whole Negroni was a mistake. The drink just didn’t taste enough like pizza.

“So I thought, ‘Maybe we should try something that seems stupid, and soaking an entire pizza in a bottle of gin seems like a really dumb idea,” he says. “So we gave it a try.”

As FiDO wasn’t open for business yet, Lotz walked to the pizza shop up the street and ordered two slices of pepperoni, requesting both heavily charred. After that, he took them to the bar, poured a bottle of gin on top, and let them soak for 24 hours. Then he tasted it.

“I realized at that moment that the missing flavor was the char itself,” he says. “The myriad ways I tried to make the drink just couldn’t replicate the roasted flavor of the crust. That specific note of fermented, yeasty dough just screams pizza to me, and this hit perfectly.”

While the flavor was ideal, Lotz found the texture of the gin to be too oily for cocktails. Luckily, fat washing exists, and Lotz found it to be the right technique for a flavorful, and far less greasy, base spirit. From there, the rest of the Pepperoni Pizza Negroni came together fairly quickly.

Credit: Reagan Byrne

The cocktail begins by infusing a whole pepperoni pizza in three 750-milliliter bottles of Beefeater for a full 24 hours before the mixture is frozen for fat washing. Lotz explains that the bar team has tinkered with several types of gin, but is currently using the classic London Dry for its complementary flavors.

“The oregano flavor, floral fruitiness of the tomato sauce, and char of the pizza are all really well complemented by Beefeater,” he says. “It rounds the flavor of the drink out with a nice minerality. Not to say we won’t switch it out for a future batch, but right now it’s working really, really nicely.”

After the Beefeater has been fat washed, the gin’s pizza flavors are slightly less pronounced, so Lotz replenishes the herbaceousness with two very important ingredients: the oregano-forward Industrious Spirits Co. (ISC) Pizza Strip Vodka and St. George Spirits Basil Eau de Vie. Once the build is completed with the Negroni’s standard sweet vermouth and Campari additions, the Pepperoni Pizza Negroni is hooked up to FiDO’s draft system and ready to be served.

When dispensed, the cocktail is charged with nitrous oxide, resulting in a weightier mouthfeel than the standard classic. While it’s nothing compared to the density of something like a Guinness, Lotz says the system does impart a slight creaminess, resulting in a more viscous tipple.

In Lotz’s view, one of the best parts about the drink is seeing who orders it. “Some folks come in and don’t even want to get close to it,” he says. “Others are like, ‘That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard of. I can’t wait to have two of them.’”

But perhaps it’s this exact curiosity that’s driving sales of the savory, bitter beverage. According to Lotz, the Pepperoni Pizza Negroni consistently ranks among FiDO’s most ordered cocktails, and warmer weather brings with it an increase in orders, meaning the team needs to prep a batch far more often. Every keg of Pepperoni Pizza Negroni makes about 65 cocktails, and this past summer and autumn, FiDO Pizza was making several batches every week.

“It’s a tasty drink, and I love it, but it’s meant to be fun. It’s not meant to be a serious drink,” he says. “We’re not trying to add the Pepperoni Pizza Negroni to the cannon of classic cocktails. Maybe it will take off, though. Stranger drinks have happened.”

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