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, Sacred Vortex and Willoughby's Kava Sol — 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
Named NA cocktails on the menu
These Cleveland venues list specific non-alcoholic cocktails on their published menus.
- ★★★★★?
Verbena Free Spirited is a fully alcohol-free cafe, bottle shop and dry bar in the Hingetown corner of Ohio City, opened in July 2023 by Molly Cheraso and the first entirely alcohol-free gathering space in the city. It runs a daytime menu of Duck Rabbit espresso, loose-leaf tea and house-made vegan-friendly food, then switches to a list of built free-spirited cocktails at $8 to $9. The Bottle Shoppe carries 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
- ★★★★★?
The Sacred Vortex is an alcohol-free teahouse, kombuchery and kava bar on Lorain Avenue in Ohio City, opened in late summer 2024 by David Kovatch and Julie Moran in the taproom Platform Beer Co. built its business in. It serves kava by strain, kombucha brewed on site, botanical sodas, adaptogen drinks, tea and coffee, plus a list of named alcohol-free mixed drinks, and it 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
- ★★★★★?
Sacred Waters is an alcohol-free ethnobotanical bar on Detroit Avenue in Lakewood, opened in 2022 by David Kovatch and billed as Ohio's first kava bar. 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 it stays open to midnight or 1am seven nights a week. The room also serves kratom, kanna and blue lotus: psychoactive botanicals rather than alcohol substitutes, and worth knowing before you go. It previously traded as Muddy Waters Kava Bar.
Signature NA drinks- Vanuatu kava shell
- Solomon Isle kava shell
- Cold-brew kava latte
- Kava mule
- ★★★★★?
Zhug is chef Douglas Katz's eastern-Mediterranean restaurant in the Cedar Fairmount district of Cleveland Heights, opened in 2020 and run with Todd Thompson's Edgewater Hospitality. The cooking works through hummus, wood-grilled vegetables and mezze built around the Yemeni chilli-herb sauce it is named for. The 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)
- ★★★★★?
Amba is an Indian-influenced restaurant on West 28th Street in Hingetown from chef Cameron McCaulley, operated by Douglas Katz and Todd Thompson's Edgewater Hospitality — the group behind Zhug. Its drinks list carries three named non-alcoholic builds 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, built on a citrus-forward zero-proof spirit. Best Day Brewing's non-alcoholic kölsch is listed at $7 alongside the full-strength taps.
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)
- ★★★★★?
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
- ★★★★★?
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
- ★★★★★?
Tartine Bistro is a French bistro in a small house on Old Detroit Road in Rocky River, the lakefront suburb ten miles west of downtown, serving croissants and quiche at the front of the day and the bistro canon at dinner, plus a Sunday brunch. 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)
- ★★★★★?
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
- ★★★★★?
Kava Sol is an alcohol-free botanical bar in downtown Willoughby, opened in June 2023 by Lindsay Cronk and Matthew Butler and billed as the first on Cleveland's east side. It pours kava by the shell, with $2 off daily from 3pm to 6pm and all day Saturday, alongside handcrafted mocktails built from house-made syrups, fresh juice and non-alcoholic spirits including Three Spirit and The Pathfinder. Kratom is also served. The room is small, tropical and event-driven, closing to the public early in the week to take private bookings instead.
Signature NA drinks- Speakeasy (Three Spirit social elixir, The Pathfinder, house-brewed elixir, orange, maple)
- ★★★★★?
Cloak & Dagger is a craft cocktail bar on West 11th Street in Tremont, opposite Lincoln Park, done up as a dimly lit private study of leather-bound books and antiques. Its drinks and its entire kitchen are vegan, made from scratch, and the menu is reissued periodically as a numbered book rather than a list — 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)
- ★★★★★?
Cordelia is a restaurant on downtown Cleveland's East Fourth Street from chef Vinnie Cimino and co-owner Andrew Watts, serving what Cimino calls Midwest melting pot meets modern grandma — heritage cooking built around the farmers the kitchen buys from. It opened in 2022, took Cleveland Magazine's Best New Restaurant in 2023, and Cimino was a James Beard Award finalist and a Food & Wine Best New Chef in 2025. Rather than keeping a token mocktail list, the bar rebuilds cocktails from the main menu with Lyre's and Seedlip and its own syrups, at the same prices.
Signature NA drinks- 3 Dope Boyz In A Cadillac (Lyre's American Malt, Lyre's Amaretti, apple cider, ginger beer, lemon, candied ginger)
- ★★★★★?
Amazonia is a bar and wood-fired pizza kitchen inside a converted house on Hopkins Avenue in Lakewood's Birdtown, where everything on both menus is made from scratch. Its 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 — and the alcohol-free Coconut Song is served at $15, exactly what the original costs. The room is 21-and-over, opens at 4pm daily except Monday, and runs to 2am on Friday and Saturday nights.
Signature NA drinks- Coconut Song (zero-proof)
- ★★★★★?
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)
- ★★★★★?
Crumb & Spigot is a gastropub and cocktail bar on Detroit Avenue in Lakewood — the second room of a Chagrin Falls original — serving wood-fired pizza with an unusually large vegan and gluten-free section rather than a token line or two. The bar built its non-alcoholic list on purpose, with 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.
Signature NA drinks- Sober Clover (grenadine, apple cider vinegar, citrus, egg white)
- ★★★★★?
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)
- ★★★★★?
Never Say Dive is a neighbourhood bar on Broadview Road in Old Brooklyn that runs a serious kitchen and a rotating pop-up programme behind a deliberately unpretentious front — the name is the joke, and it takes reservations through Resy. 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)
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, The Sacred Vortex Teahouse & Kombuchery, Sacred Waters Kava Bar.
Looking at the whole Cleveland scene?
See every verified NA-friendly venue we list — including bottle shops, restaurants, and bars without printed mocktail menus.
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