Seedlip in Cleveland, OH

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.