My mom would query me, do you drink alone? As if it were sinful or symptomatic of an underlying problem and may lead to addiction. My response: I live alone, do I need a companion to drink? If I have guests, I am more likely to indulge in more than one cocktail, and that may lead to trouble or an after-morning headache! Follow along and discover the Corpse Reviver 2, a cocktail concoction for post tippling relief! For deeper meaning of the actual word Cocktail, do mosey to Online Etymology Dictionary! .

My go to Friday supper is Champers and Popcorn, the perfect pairing. Microwave fresh kernels in a small brown bag, melt butter, add a smidge of Himalayan Rock Salt or Sea Salt from your travels- everyone buys salt when they travel don’t they? One should, it eats up absolutely zero real estate in your baggage, makes lovely gifts and never gets stale! Pop the bubbly, nothing more satisfying. Served in a proper bowl, with linen napkin, dress it up!

When I travel, I frequently dine alone in elegant restaurants. I am certainly not going to miss the world’s best restaurant in Bangkok because I would be sitting alone. As it turned out in BKK at Gaggan, which had been voted No.1 for four years as Asia’s 50 Best Restaurant, the concierge mentioned there was a new Chef’s Table and would I like to see it and decide where to dine ..yes, please! In the end, I met other travelers and we were thrilled with the theatrical chef presentations, all 25 courses! Often in Europe, a hostess will offer me a stack of magazines, which I decline, my travel journal and camera are the perfect companions…I’m a copious note taker. Many bartenders have taught me various methods to make my favorite cocktail, a Rye Manhattan. Dine and sip at a bar and you will always learn restaurant secrets, be served petite bites of chef’s delectable cheese or a bartender’s treasured port. There is much to be learned at the bar, dining and drinking alone is never boring or lonely!

Digital drinking, zoom cocktails during pandemic doesn’t provide much inspiration for me. I would rather be in a foreign country and absorbing local culture.

Zoomable Pandemic Cocktails fill pages of newsletters, in looking forward to a forthcoming escape, planned pre-pandemic, to Paso Robles for the Bruce Munro Filed of Light at Sensorio.

I am moseying my way down the coast and settling in at the newish Hotel San Luis Obispo. Owned by the same peeps of Hotel Healdsburg, their cocktail page offers a weekly concoction, my first question to the bartender at the roof top High Bar, is there a personal inspiration for this drink: Corpse Reviver No.2… The San Luis Obispo Mission Cemetery is blocks away, if there is a secret, I intend to learn it!

Brief research yields that the Corpse Reviver family of cocktails are sometimes drunk as alcoholic hangover “cures”, of potency or characteristics to tongue in cheek be able to revive even a dead person. Corpse Reviver No. 2 is a classic, juniper-heavy London dry style. Faintly bitter fortified Lillet wine and a dash of absinthe are also said to settle a queasy stomach, be forewarned: four of these taken in swift succession will unrevive the corpse again.

Yield: makes 1 cocktail. Ingredients
• 1 oz. gin
• 1 oz. Cocchi Americano or Lillet Blanc
• 1 oz. Cointreau
• 1 oz. fresh lemon juice
• 1 dash absinthe
• Orange peel, for garnish
Instructions

1. Shake all ingredients together in an ice-filled cocktail shaker; strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with orange peel.

Cheers!