August 6, 2010
It's All Request Cocktail Recipe Friday with thanks to Nancy Taylor Robson.
"Mine is a Pear Bellini I had in Edinburgh last year with one of my
longest-term (not oldest) dearest friends, Anna. Anna, who is Welsh, and
I were roommates in a big old house of flats in London before either of us
was married. I was Anna's only bridesmaid and she would have been mine the
following year, except she was too pregnant to fly. I went over last
October to spend a week and we made a foray into Scotland's capital to buy
books and visit her daughter, who was about to deliver Anna's first
grandchild. We stopped for cocktails at a third-floor bar that overlooks
all the sandstone rooftops of Edinburgh where we could see the sun set
rose and gold while we sipped, chatted, and flirted with the very adept
waiter, who got a big tip.

Pear Bellini

Put a tablespoon of pear puree in the bottom of a BIG glass. Add a
cube of vanilla sugar, and a little splash of pear brandy, then fill with
Champagne."

This is Olorosso, 33 Castle Street in Edinburgh. Camilla is a regular, because it is easy for her wriggle away from the rest of the royals, and come down here to sneak a cig while enjoying her Bellinis. Charles moons about the view, and why wouldn't he? No monstrous carbuncles here!

“The most touching epitaph I ever encountered was on the tombstone of the printer of Edinburgh. It said simply: ''He kept down the cost and set the type right.''”
Gregory Nunn