We had sat down for dinner and ordered our wine when I noticed something interesting nearby. It looked like a mixologist’s set up. With a smoking gun.

Walked up there and soon met with the mixologist himself – Kenneth Salas Marin. He took me thru his special for the day. He had a Negroni that he had aged for a month. And before serving, he smokes it. The interesting part is instead of smoking it with wood – like hickory, maple, cherry etc, he burns candied dry fruit !!! Never seen this before.

The drink had a perfect length and palate!!

As we kept talking, I found out that Kenneth is from Guanacaste in Costa Rica. Literally from next door to the JW Mariott we stay in. Turns out he was the FB manager there.

I went back to my blog to a trip and showed him a picture of Sharmila and myself with our friends Sunil and Ananya at Nau Bar in that hotel in 2013. Kenneth immediately recognized the bartender who was serving us drinks!!

Talk about a small world!