What I’m Drinking

Absente Cocktail

Opaline, 7450 Beverly Blvd., Hollywood. $9.

Benedictine, bitters, creme de menthe

and Absente

*

“I assumed it wasn’t the real thing because it’s not legal,” Alexandra Robertson says of the Absente Cocktail offered at Opaline. Aficionados of altered states know that absinthe, the drink of choice for writers and artists in fin de siecle Paris, was banned in 1915 for allegedly causing brain damage and insanity. Robertson ordered the cocktail, made with a modern -- and legal -- variation on absinthe, and enjoyed it. “It smells like it tastes,” she says of the emerald-hued, 110-proof liquor. “Anise.”

-- Chris Rubin