A new drinking fad is taking hold across the boot: barmen are turning gourmet Italian food into crazy cocktails. If the thought of sipping cheese, onions or chilli peppers sounds disgusting to you, try one of these concoctions and you’ll be amazed to find they are delicious.

Milan’s cool rooftop Armani Bamboo Bar offers a blue cheese daiquiri with a tiny morsel of Italian gorgonzola (on the verge of having maggots) that is shaken to squeeze out the juice. Just a delicate flavour lingers on your taste buds after each sip.

Caprese Mary, a bloody Mary variant, replicates the well-known caprese salad: it’s a mix of mozzarella foam, fresh basil and tomatoes.

Tokio spritz is made with Aperol (Italy’s top aperitif), wasabi and fresh ginger and is served alongside mozzarella braids and swordfish sandwiches. For dessert, the tiramisu martini is a heavenly, blissful drink.

At Rome’s Co.So Bar (via Braccio da Montone 80, no website), in the lively Pigneto neighbourhood, there’s a wild pasta drink prepared by mixologist Massimo D’Addezio. The carbonara sour uses all the ingredients of the Eternal City’s speciality dish: a bacon-and-vodka sour infusion, egg white, black pepper and a piece of dried spaghetti called Zito, which is used as a straw.

In Turin, at Smile Tree, mixologist Dennis Zoppi’s extravagant mare e monti starter is a shot of vodka and a mix of olives, onions and chilli peppers served in a ceramic oyster half shell on ice, topped with truffle caviar. “You sip it from the corner where truffle lies,” says Zoppi, “and it triggers a flabbergasting result that teases the palate, pushing you straight to dinner.”