This Chattanooga restaurant sells mezcal distilled with chicken
Little Coyote’s pechuga program turns novelty into customer loyalty
June 2, 2026
There’s a rather obscure corner of the world of agave spirits where meat is part of the distillation process.
For pechuga mezcal, a whole chicken, or sometimes other meat, is hung in the still during the third distillation, cooking the meat and allowing the juices to drip into the alcohol.
“I don’t know of any other distillate that involves protein,” said Erik Niel, chef and co-owner of Little Coyote in Chattanooga, Tenn., where pechuga mezcals are a cornerstone of the beverage program.
The restaurant itself, which opened in late 2023, offers Texas-style barbecue and house-made tortillas, both of which go nicely with agave spirits. Niel and his wife, Amanda, also operate Easy Bistro & Bar and Main Street Meats, where the bar programs are focused on brown spirits. But visits to Oaxaca, Mexico, turned him on to agave spirits in general and mezcal in particular.
As he delved into pechuga thanks to some sharp liquor salespeople, he saw a way to win over customers and encourage Chattanooga’s many bourbon fans to try something new.
“Fascination with the process led me to taste it, which led me to buy it, which led me to put it on the bar,” he said.
It turns out that pechuga mezcal is now made with a variety of hanging proteins, from rattlesnake to jamón Ibérico, along with fruits, nuts, and spices in the liquid itself, similar to how botanicals are used in gin.
Niel’s even had mezcal made with mole-spiced chicken.
Does it taste like chicken?
“I think if you’re tasting a pechuga and in your mind you want it to taste like that thing, you’re going to make that leap,” Niel said.
But it doesn’t really; it’s more a question of mouthfeel.
“The texture might have a little more glycerol kind of fattiness to it,” he said. “There’s no fat in it, because it’s distilled, but there’s a component that varies from sanguine to fatty to rich.”
Niel sells them at a premium, but not a super-premium: Anywhere from $8 to $20 per ounce, depending on what he pays for them.
“The great thing is, unlike whiskey, it’s not going to be $100 an ounce. There’s amazing mezcal for $140 in the store, but that’s kind of where it tops out; there’s no $1,000 bottles of mezcal that I know of.”
He doesn’t have a lot of pechuga on-hand for logistical reasons.
“I wouldn’t say we have a large pechuga program by any means, because there’s not a ton of them out there,” he said. “The beautiful thing, and hard thing, about mezcals is that they’re only in small batches when they’re made like this. So there’s not one that’s just constantly on the back bar. At any given time we may have two or three of them, but they don’t last long.”
That scarcity, and their point of differentiation, make them a great sales tool, Niel said.
“Servers and bartenders can make pitches to guests all the time, and sometimes it just comes off like Charlie Brown’s teacher — just sort of background noise. But generally when you get a pechuga conversation going and somebody bites, or they at least tune in, you’ve at least got them for four or five seconds.”
And then putting the drink in front of them does the rest of the work.
“We’re not buying bad pechugas, so when we put it down on the table, it tastes good,” Niel said.
“At that point, we’ve built a modicum of trust, and then with the next step we can build a little bit more … and the next thing, we’ve got a customer who believes we know what we’re talking about, and that we’ll take care of them, and we’re practicing hospitality.”
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]
Follow him on TikTok and Instagram: @foodwriterdiary
About the Author
Bret Thorn
Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News
Senior Food & Beverage Editor
Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality.
Hi is responsible for spotting and reporting on F&B trends across the country for both publications.
He is the co-host of a podcast, Menu Talk with Pat and Bret, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities, and other experts in foodservice operations.
From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.
He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN.
A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.
He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.
Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.
He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.
A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends.
Bret Thorn’s Experience:
Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989
Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986
Email: [email protected]
Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary
TikTok: @foodwriterdiary
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