Lyre's in Indianapolis, IN

The Ball & Biscuit opened on Massachusetts Avenue in June 2010 and is generally credited as Indiana's first craft cocktail bar. It was founded by local attorney Trevor Belden with bartender Zach Wilks, who later left to build the Wilks & Wilson syrup line, and takes its name from the 1930s ribbon microphone nicknamed the ball and biscuit — vintage mics and music gear are part of the fit-out. For a bar of that vintage the non-alcoholic list is unusually developed: seven named zero-proof drinks stand alongside the full-proof menu rather than in a footnote, including the Spritz AF built on Lyre's Italian Orange and Aperitif Rosso with Fre sparkling brut, the Twist of Fate, the New Fashioned and the floral Whole Garden.

BODHI is a 21-and-over Thai craft cocktail bar and bistro at the far end of Massachusetts Avenue, run by Taelor Carmine alongside her mother Nicky Carmine and grandmother Pen Phojanasupan, both of whom spent years in Thai restaurant kitchens. It is women-owned and family-run, with a pan-Thai menu built from recipes passed down through the three of them. The bar treats zero-proof as a build rather than a substitution: the Water Lily Dessert layers Lyre's Dry London Spirit and Fre Rosé over coconut water, strawberry shrub, lychee jelly and soda, and the rotating Secret Garden leans on seasonal fruit and vegetables. Seedlip appears in the seasonal list. The kitchen closes an hour before the bar does.

The Fountain Room is a Wisconsin-style supper club in the Bottleworks District, opened in the summer of 2022 by the father-and-son restaurant team Perry and Blake Fogelsong after a pandemic-era trip north. The room is Art Deco jazz-age — velvet banquettes, chandeliers, a reel-to-reel machine — and OpenTable and People named it one of America's fifty most beautiful restaurants. The food is supper-club canon: pickled relish trays, prime rib, house desserts. Non-alcoholic drinks get their own printed "No ABV" section rather than a line at the bottom of the cocktail list, running to the Crouching Tiger, Circle City Sober, a Cherry Burlesque built on cherry, lime, honey syrup, ginger beer and mint, and an alcohol-removed Sauvignon Blanc by the glass.

16-Bit is a 21-and-over retro arcade bar on East New York Street downtown, where the cabinet games are free to play and the money is made at the bar. That model happens to make it one of the easier nights out in Indianapolis for someone who is not drinking, because the reason to be there is the arcade rather than the round. The non-alcoholic list is longer than most bars manage and every drink is named in the same register as the cocktails: Kissed By A Rose is built on Seedlip Garden 108 with hibiscus, lemon, rose and mint, Gym Class Zero runs desert pear with lime and tonic, and Pinky and the Brain, Optimus Prime and Lisa Simpson fill out the simpler end.