You will love this Negroni that tastes like spaghetti

Welcome to Swig City, where we point you toward can’t-miss drinks at the best bars, taprooms, and kitschy Italian joints in the Bay Area. Cheers!

It’s official: The most savory, aromatic, don’t-miss cocktail of the fall is the spaghetti Negroni at Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack (opens in new tab). Yes, a spaghetti Negroni — more proof that there are no hard-and-fast rules to this stiffest of aperitifs.

Served over ice and garnished with a sprig of rosemary, the drink is playful and assertive with a touch of sweetness. It’s also one of the booziest cocktails around, comprising gin, Campari, and sweet vermouth — nothing but alcohol, essentially. It’s the centerpiece of a new menu of four offbeat Negronis at San Francisco’s kitschiest rock ’n’ roll Italian restaurant, which toys with the classics like nowhere else.

Given Emmy’s hearty menu of fettuccine Alfredo and five-layer “Cadillac” lasagna, owner Michael Irish saw a certain logic in priming diners’ palates. 

So he played around. After a friend introduced him to a “pizza spritz,” an effervescent, low-alcohol drink with notes of tomato and oregano, he had a template.

Irish took tomato gin — yes, such a thing exists (opens in new tab) — and tomato vermouth, and combined them with a basil eau de vie and herbs, topping it all off with a splash of Lambrusco. The finished product is a curveball best enjoyed with a salty appetizer, like Emmy’s rosemary-and-hot-honey prosciutto zeppole. The kitchen beefed up the food menu with a couple of classic dishes just for this purpose. “Our new eggplant parm with this spaghetti Negroni is really good,” Irish says. “There’s just something about fried food and really cold sugar.”

Not everything on the new Negroni menu drinks like a dare, though. There’s a classic one, made with Mediterranean gin and topped with a thick limoncello foam. And Emmy’s is set to unveil more Negronis in the coming months, including a Parmesan version made by steeping cheese rinds in gin for 15 days. 

To Irish, the important thing is the ratio. If you’re making cocktails at home, balance is important, but in a restaurant, the opposite applies. “I like imbalance between ingredients,” he says. “It’s more compelling. It’s hard to put your finger on.”

A staff favorite is the Negroni frappé — a slushie, in other words, prepared with the standard gin and sweet vermouth, plus Amaro Meletti, orange juice, Crème de Noyaux, and a grilled orange garnish. A bit of kitchen chemistry is involved, as Irish turned the noyaux (an amaretto-esque liqueur distilled from cherry pits) into a fire-engine-red gel that’s swirled around the inside of the glass, barber-pole-style. 

Customers’ familiarity with the Negroni is what allows Emmy’s to experiment and get weird, Irish says, adding that the gel delivers a jolt of flavor, color, and texture, the way chamoy bumps up a margarita. “I’m keeping it Italian-ish with the amaretto flavor,” he says. “And I just love a swirl.”