Best Mocktails in Cleveland, OH
Cleveland's alcohol-free scene has two centres of gravity, and neither is downtown. Ohio City holds the anchors: Verbena Free Spirited in Hingetown — Molly Cheraso's fully alcohol-free cafe, bottle shop and dry bar, the first of its kind in the city — and The Sacred Vortex a mile west on Lorain Avenue, an alcohol-free teahouse and kombuchery in the old Platform Beer taproom that Cleveland Scene readers have voted the city's best alcohol-free bar two years running. Amba and Jukebox sit on the same few Hingetown blocks with printed zero-proof lists of their own. The second cluster is the Detroit Avenue strip in Lakewood, where Sacred Waters (Ohio's first kava bar), Humble Wine Bar's Phony Negroni, Crumb & Spigot's Sober Clover and LBM — running an intentional non-alcoholic cocktail programme since 2017 — sit within a few hundred metres of each other. The cocktail depth is real elsewhere too: Cordelia on East Fourth Street rebuilds its cocktails with Lyre's and Seedlip, Tremont's all-vegan Cloak & Dagger keeps several spirit-free drinks on every menu it prints, and Douglas Katz's Zhug in Cleveland Heights numbers its N/A cocktails alongside the full-proof ones. Kava is a bigger part of the picture here than in most US cities, and it is worth knowing that those rooms — Sacred Waters and Sacred Vortex — also serve kratom and other psychoactive botanicals, which is a different proposition from a zero-proof bar.
20 verified venues · 17 with named NA cocktails on menu · Not in Cleveland? Mocktail bars near you →
Named NA cocktails on the menu
These Cleveland venues list specific non-alcoholic cocktails on their published menus.
- NA Program Strength: 5 of 5?
Verbena Free Spirited opened in July 2023 at 1434 W. 29th Street, the Hingetown storefront that previously housed Cleveland Tea Revival, and remains the first gathering space in the city to be entirely alcohol-free. Founder Molly Cheraso reassessed her own relationship with alcohol during the pandemic, found that the non-alcoholic products she wanted were not sold anywhere in Cleveland, and spent a year researching the category before signing a lease. What she built is three businesses in one room: a daytime cafe of Duck Rabbit espresso, loose-leaf tea and house-made vegan-friendly food; a bar switching in the evening to built free-spirited cocktails at $8 to $9; and a Bottle Shoppe carrying roughly a hundred products — non-alcoholic spirits, de-alcoholised wine, zero-proof aperitifs and functional drinks. Some bar builds use kava-based ingredients, which the menu labels.
Signature NA drinks- La Verbena
- Lavender Haze
- Shark Bite
- Kava Limonada
- Cin Cin
- Ghia Affogato
- NA Program Strength: 4 of 5?
LBM is a small, deliberately eccentric cocktail bar at 12301 Madison Avenue in Lakewood's Birdtown, and Cleveland Scene's description has held up for years: best described as weird but good, not for everyone, but earning a deep well of respect for having a personality, a point of view, and the nerve to carve out an eccentric niche. Co-owner and bartender Eric Ho co-founded the Cleveland chapter of the US Bartenders Guild and works with real technique — measuring out acids to the hundredth of a gram, milk-washing tea infusions to cut the astringency. The menu runs in themed volumes, and its non-alcoholic cocktails get their own printed heading rather than a footnote: three at $10 each. Sacred Ashes builds tamarind, cardamom and chipotle against wildflower honey and rosewater; Amethyst runs chicha morada — Peruvian purple corn — with pineapple, clove, cinnamon, apple and lime; and Sigil is the autumnal one, with cider, maple, chicory, chocolate, hazelnut and orange peel. Non-alcoholic beer runs $6–$7. Open from 4pm, to 2.30am on Friday and Saturday.
Signature NA drinks- Sacred Ashes ($10)
- Amethyst ($10)
- Sigil ($10)
- Best Day Electro Lime, NA ($7)
- Lagunitas Hoppy Refresher ($6)
- NA Program Strength: 5 of 5?
The Sacred Vortex is an alcohol-free teahouse, kombuchery and kava bar on Lorain Avenue in Ohio City. David Kovatch and his wife Julie Moran took the building that Platform Beer Co. had used as its original Ohio City taproom — one of the addresses that defined Cleveland's craft beer boom — and reopened it in late summer 2024 as a room where nothing served contains alcohol; the symbolism was not lost on anyone locally. Kovatch already ran Sacred Waters in Lakewood, Ohio's first kava bar, and this is the larger, more ambitious expression of the same idea, with a lengthy bar, soft seating, communal high-tops and a substantial patio. It serves kava by strain, kombucha brewed on site, botanical sodas, adaptogen drinks, tea and coffee, plus named alcohol-free mixed drinks, and runs to 2am most nights. Cleveland Scene readers voted it Best Alcohol-Free Bar in 2025 and 2026. Kava and kratom-based drinks are part of the menu.
Signature NA drinks- Lake Erie Breeze
- Lavender Serenity
- Moscow Mule (kombucha)
- Piña Colada kava mocktail
- NA Program Strength: 5 of 5?
Sacred Waters is an alcohol-free ethnobotanical bar on Detroit Avenue in Lakewood, and the room that started Northeast Ohio's kava scene. David Kovatch opened it in 2022 as Ohio's first kava bar, with Mike Young and three further partners, after encountering kava while travelling and coming home to look for a space; it traded earlier as Muddy Waters Kava Bar, which is how some older listings still refer to it. Kovatch has been sober for more than a decade. It pours kava by the shell and by origin — Vanuatu, Tonga, Solomon Isle — alongside cold-brew kava lattes, spritzers, a kava mule, responsibly sourced botanical teas and coffee, and stays open to midnight or 1am seven nights a week. NOTE: it also serves kratom, kanna and blue lotus — psychoactive botanicals rather than alcohol substitutes, and worth knowing before you go.
Signature NA drinks- Vanuatu kava shell
- Solomon Isle kava shell
- Cold-brew kava latte
- Kava mule
- NA Program Strength: 4 of 5?
Zhug opened on Cedar Road in the Cedar Fairmount district of Cleveland Heights in 2020, the eastern-Mediterranean concept from Douglas Katz — one of the most influential chefs in Cleveland over the past twenty-five years, and the man behind Fire in Shaker Square before it — now operated with Todd Thompson under the Edgewater Hospitality banner. The cooking runs through hummus, wood-grilled vegetables and mezze built around the Yemeni chilli-herb sauce the restaurant is named for, and the dining room does dinner six nights a week, closing Sundays. Its drinks list gives non-alcoholic cocktails a permanent place in its own numbering rather than a separate mocktail box: two N/A builds on Ritual and Monday zero-proof spirits, a rotating pair of house gazoz — Israeli-style fruit-syrup sodas — plus non-alcoholic beer and sparkling rosé.
Signature NA drinks- Zhug N/A No. 2 (Ritual gin alternative, lemon, jade, chardonnay vinegar)
- Zhug N/A No. 3 (Monday NA whiskey, jalapeño, hibiscus, lemon, ginger beer)
- Gazoz No. 8 (sparkling pear shrub, cardamom)
- Gazoz No. 10 (sparkling blueberry, lavender, lemon)
- NA Program Strength: 4 of 5?
Amba sits on West 28th Street in Hingetown, the compact Ohio City block that also holds Verbena and Jukebox, and is the Indian-influenced restaurant in Douglas Katz and Todd Thompson's Edgewater Hospitality group — the same operation behind Zhug in Cleveland Heights. Chef Cameron McCaulley runs the kitchen, and the cooking works through spice, acid and fermentation rather than heat alone, which turns out to be the same logic driving the drinks list. Three named non-alcoholic builds sit as a standing section, each written out with its ingredients the way the cocktails are: the cumin-and-black-salt Nimbu Masala, the colour-shifting Blue Bergamot, and the Spiced Nectar at $13 on a citrus-forward zero-proof spirit. Best Day Brewing's non-alcoholic kölsch is $7 alongside the full-strength taps. Dinner only, Monday through Saturday.
Signature NA drinks- Nimbu Masala (cumin, lemon, mint, black salt, ginger, soda)
- Blue Bergamot (earl grey butterfly-flower tea, lemon, soda)
- Spiced Nectar (zero-proof spirit, cardamom agave, lime)
- NA Program Strength: 3 of 5?
Jukebox is a bar and restaurant in a corner building at West 29th and Church in Hingetown, a few doors from Verbena, where the record-driven music programming is the identity. Its non-alcoholic offering is unusually broad for a neighbourhood bar: five non-alcoholic beers and ciders including Athletic Brewing's Cerveza Atletica at $5 and BrewDog's Hazy AF at $5.50 — cheaper than the full-strength taps — Surely brut sparkling wine by the glass at $11, and a house mocktail list led by the creamy Harry Nilsson at $9. It opens at 11:30am at weekends.
Signature NA drinks- Harry Nilsson
- Surely Brut (non-alcoholic sparkling wine)
- Cerveza Atletica
- NA Program Strength: 3 of 5?
Heck's Cafe has been serving burgers and American bistro food from a pre-Civil-War building on Bridge Avenue in Ohio City since 1974, which makes it one of the neighbourhood's longest-running restaurants and the original of three locations. The dining room runs back into a glass conservatory. Several mocktails sit on the standing printed menu rather than being made on request, led by a pomegranate-ginger spritz at $10 built on non-alcoholic sparkling wine and a Passion Fruit Picante. It opens at 11am six days a week, which few of the city's zero-proof programmes do.
Signature NA drinks- Pomegranate-ginger spritz (non-alcoholic sparkling wine)
- Passion Fruit Picante
- NA Program Strength: 3 of 5?
Tartine Bistro occupies a small house on Old Detroit Road in Rocky River, the lakefront suburb ten miles west of downtown, and has been the west side's reference French bistro for years — croissants and quiche at the front of the day, steak frites and the rest of the canon at dinner, and a Sunday brunch that fills the room. Service runs from midday Tuesday through Saturday, which makes it one of the few kitchens on this list open across a long afternoon rather than only from 4pm. Its non-alcoholic drinks are seasonal composed builds at $13, the same territory as the cocktails: a Petit Autumn of cider, vanilla, maple, ginger and cayenne finished with apple butter and a bruléed apple, and a Mon Petit Coeur built on alcohol-removed red wine with cider, cinnamon and maple.
Signature NA drinks- Petit Autumn (cider, vanilla, maple, ginger, cayenne, apple butter, bruléed apple)
- Mon Petit Coeur (alcohol-removed red wine, apple cider, cinnamon, maple)
- NA Program Strength: 3 of 5?
Alley Cat Oyster Bar is a waterfront seafood restaurant on Old River Road in the Flats East Bank, pairing New England coastal cooking with a Southern Californian lightness and panoramic views over the Cuyahoga. Its mocktails are shaken and built to order rather than pulled off a soda gun, and they are priced deliberately low: the Kitten's Pajamas, a spirit-free take on a classic bubbly lemonade served in strawberry-jalapeño or blueberry-basil, costs $6 — less than half what most composed zero-proof drinks run in the city. It opens at 11:30am Wednesday through Sunday.
Signature NA drinks- Kitten's Pajamas — strawberry jalapeño
- Kitten's Pajamas — blueberry basil
- NA Program Strength: 4 of 5?
Cloak & Dagger occupies a corner site on West 11th Street in the heart of Tremont, a short walk from Lincoln Park, and reads as a warmly lit private study — leather-bound books, antiques and heavy furniture, low light, a room Cleveland Scene has described as combining ease with expectation. Its drinks and its entire kitchen are vegan and made from scratch. The bar changes its whole menu on a schedule and publishes each one as a numbered volume rather than a list, so regulars track it by book number rather than by season; the current edition is Book 22, "Whiskey Bent & Hellbound". Three or four drinks on each book are available spirit-free, priced and presented like the rest of the list and built with the same technique rather than served as juice.
Signature NA drinks- Smaller Acts (coffee, hazelnut, sea salt)
- NA Program Strength: 4 of 5?
Cordelia opened in 2022 at 2058 East Fourth Street, the downtown block that has carried Cleveland's restaurant reputation for two decades, from chef Vinnie Cimino and co-owner Andrew Watts. Cimino describes the cooking as Midwest melting pot meets modern grandma — a celebration of the region's farmers run through the immigrant home cooking the city was built on — and the recognition arrived fast: Cleveland Magazine named it Best New Restaurant in 2023, Cimino was a James Beard Award finalist, and Food & Wine made him a Best New Chef in 2025. Rather than keeping a token mocktail list, the bar rebuilds cocktails from the main menu using Lyre's and Seedlip and its own syrups, at the same prices as the originals.
Signature NA drinks- 3 Dope Boyz In A Cadillac (Lyre's American Malt, Lyre's Amaretti, apple cider, ginger beer, lemon, candied ginger)
- NA Program Strength: 4 of 5?
Amazonia occupies a converted house on Hopkins Avenue in Birdtown, the small Lakewood district a few streets from LBM, and pairs a cocktail bar with a wood-fired pizza kitchen and a short menu of small plates. The rooms are domestic in scale — you are drinking in someone's front parlour, which is much of the appeal — and the bar leans tropical without tipping into tiki kitsch. Everything on both menus is made from scratch, and the zero-proof drinks get the same construction as the full-proof ones: house-made syrups, Seedlip and Lyre's spirits, and the same smoking and charring work. The alcohol-free Coconut Song is $15, exactly what the original costs. It opens at 4pm daily except Monday, runs to 2am on Friday and Saturday, and is 21-and-over, with an early-week happy hour taking $2 off cocktails and half off pizza.
Signature NA drinks- Coconut Song (zero-proof)
- NA Program Strength: 4 of 5?
Humble Wine Bar is a neighbourhood wine bar on Detroit Avenue in Lakewood serving stone-oven Neapolitan-style pizza and curated small plates alongside a by-the-glass list. A wine bar is the hardest format in which to drink well without alcohol, which is what makes its standing commitment to keeping several non-alcoholic options worth noting. The house benchmark is the Phony Negroni at $10 — Seedlip Spice for the botanical backbone, DHOS Bittersweet for the amaro bitterness, aperitivo rosso for the vermouth weight — stirred and served in the same glass as the original.
Signature NA drinks- Phony Negroni (Seedlip Spice, DHOS Bittersweet, aperitivo rosso)
- NA Program Strength: 4 of 5?
Crumb & Spigot is a gastropub and cocktail bar at 15322 Detroit Avenue in Lakewood, a few doors from Humble Wine Bar and the second room of a Chagrin Falls original. The format is wood-fired pizza with an unusually large share of the menu marked vegan and gluten-free — enough that it works as the default choice for a mixed group rather than as an accommodation bolted onto the end of the list. The bar built its non-alcoholic offering on purpose, the owners describing the aim as providing a different avenue versus just normal cocktails, and the drinks are constructed accordingly. The Sober Clover at $12 is a straight zero-proof reading of a clover club: grenadine, apple cider vinegar, citrus and egg white, shaken hard to a proper foam. Dinner six nights a week, closed Mondays, to 11pm on Fridays.
Signature NA drinks- Sober Clover (grenadine, apple cider vinegar, citrus, egg white)
- NA Program Strength: 3 of 5?
The Fairmount is a long-running cocktail and wine bar in the Cedar Fairmount district of Cleveland Heights, a few hundred metres from Zhug, serving martinis, craft beer, burgers and pizza in a chic but unfussy room with a late-night menu from 10pm. Several non-alcoholic drinks sit on the standing menu, led by the Little Green One at $10 — cilantro, lime, pineapple, mint and jalapeño lengthened with Fever-Tree tonic over a Tajín rim, so heat and salt do the work alcohol would in a spicy margarita. It is savoury rather than sweet.
Signature NA drinks- Little Green One (cilantro, lime, pineapple, mint, jalapeño, Fever-Tree tonic, Tajín rim)
- NA Program Strength: 3 of 5?
Never Say Dive sits on Broadview Road in Old Brooklyn, the largely residential south-west Cleveland neighbourhood that has slowly been gaining bars worth crossing town for, and the name is the joke: it looks like a dive and is emphatically not one. The kitchen runs rotating seasonal dishes and hands the room over to guest cooks regularly — a Cold Noodle Monday Vietnamese pop-up is the standing example — and the bar takes reservations through Resy, which tells you how the place actually operates behind the shopfront. Its non-alcoholic drink comes off the same station as the cocktails: a house strawberry tonic at $9 built from strawberry syrup with cinchona bark, fennel seed and basil, so it carries genuine quinine bitterness rather than sweetness with soda over it. Four non-alcoholic beers sit in the fridge alongside.
Signature NA drinks- Strawberry tonic (strawberry syrup, cinchona bark, fennel seed, basil)
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More NA-friendly venues in Cleveland
These venues have NA programs but haven't published a specific mocktail menu we can quote — call ahead or ask your bartender.
What makes a great mocktail?
A great mocktail isn't just a cocktail with the alcohol removed. The best non-alcoholic drinks are designed from the ground up around the flavor profile, mouthfeel, and ritual of a craft cocktail — without leaning on alcohol as a shortcut.
The signal: named drinks on a published menu, fresh-pressed juices, house-made shrubs or syrups, bitters and tinctures for complexity, and increasingly an NA-spirits section (Lyre's, Seedlip, Ritual, Wilderton, and others) used the same way a cocktail bar uses gin or whiskey. The opposite: an off-menu "we can make something" with no specific drinks, defaulting to soda, juice, or sparkling water.
That distinction is why we rank venues by mocktail menu depth and NA Program Strength rather than treating every "mocktail option" as equal. A bar that lists three named NA cocktails on its printed menu is doing the work; a bar that says "we can probably do something" is not.
Frequently asked about mocktails in Cleveland
17 venues in Cleveland serve named non-alcoholic cocktails on their menu. Top picks include Verbena Free Spirited, LBM, The Sacred Vortex Teahouse & Kombuchery.
A mocktail is a non-alcoholic drink built with the same craft and complexity as a cocktail — fresh juices, infused syrups, bitters, herbal tinctures, NA spirits — rather than just a soda or juice. The best NA bars treat mocktails as a real program, not a placeholder.
Cleveland's alcohol-free scene has two centres of gravity, and neither is downtown. Ohio City holds the anchors: Verbena Free Spirited in Hingetown — Molly Cheraso's fully alcohol-free cafe, bottle shop and dry bar, the first of its kind in the city — and The Sacred Vortex a mile west on Lorain Avenue, an alcohol-free teahouse and kombuchery in the old Platform Beer taproom that Cleveland Scene readers have voted the city's best alcohol-free bar two years running. Amba and Jukebox sit on the same few Hingetown blocks with printed zero-proof lists of their own. The second cluster is the Detroit Avenue strip in Lakewood, where Sacred Waters (Ohio's first kava bar), Humble Wine Bar's Phony Negroni, Crumb & Spigot's Sober Clover and LBM — running an intentional non-alcoholic cocktail programme since 2017 — sit within a few hundred metres of each other. The cocktail depth is real elsewhere too: Cordelia on East Fourth Street rebuilds its cocktails with Lyre's and Seedlip, Tremont's all-vegan Cloak & Dagger keeps several spirit-free drinks on every menu it prints, and Douglas Katz's Zhug in Cleveland Heights numbers its N/A cocktails alongside the full-proof ones. Kava is a bigger part of the picture here than in most US cities, and it is worth knowing that those rooms — Sacred Waters and Sacred Vortex — also serve kratom and other psychoactive botanicals, which is a different proposition from a zero-proof bar.
Venues that publish named non-alcoholic cocktails come first, ordered by menu depth — the more named NA drinks a venue lists, the higher it ranks. Our NA Program Strength rating (1-5) breaks ties and reflects the program overall: 5 means a dedicated NA establishment, 4 an extensive NA menu, 3 meaningful NA options.
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See every verified NA-friendly venue we list — including bottle shops, restaurants, and bars without printed mocktail menus.
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