Spiritless

The Polished Pigeon is San Diego's second dedicated alcohol-free bar, open in East Village since February 2026 and describing itself as a non-alcoholic temperance lounge, coffee bar and social club. Nothing on the premises contains alcohol. The drinks run to three printed sections — nine functional zero-proof builds from $13, six house specials at $15, and six spirit-free classics at $15 including an old fashioned, a manhattan and a whiskey sour built on non-alcoholic bourbon — plus non-alcoholic beer and wine and a full coffee menu from eight in the morning. It is women-owned and queer-owned, and the calendar is as much of the offer as the drinks: live music, an open-stage drag show, a women's recovery group and a Sunday afternoon social all run in the same room. Coffee and the functional list are served Tuesday and Wednesday until four; the full bar runs Thursday to Saturday until ten and Sunday until eight.

Bar 'Cino is an Italian bar and restaurant on Newport's Washington Square, and it does something almost no other venue does: it prints the mocktails as the drinks, then offers to make them alcoholic for an upcharge. Four year-round non-alcoholic builds sit on the menu at $7 to $12, three of them made from shrubs and fresh juice and one built on the Spiritless range. Open daily from 11:30am.

Barrel Bar & Grill sits on Whiskey Row, the block of West Main Street that holds Louisville's bourbon-tourism distilleries, and is the bar and grill attached to the Louisville Comedy Club. Its zero-proof list is the most locally rooted in the city: the Zero Proof Old Fashioned is built on Kentucky 74, the non-alcoholic bourbon made in Louisville by Spiritless, so the signature Kentucky drink is served here in a genuinely Kentucky alcohol-free form rather than as an imported substitute. Alongside it sit the Pineapple Upside Down Cake, built on caramel, ginger and grenadine, and the Cinderella — orange and pineapple juice with ginger ale, grenadine and bitters.

Group Therapy Pub & Playground sits on Falls Street in Greenville's West End, near Falls Park, and it is an activity bar as much as a drinking one — games and a playground alongside the pub. Its alcohol-free entry is the Not Your Grandpa's Old Fashioned, built on Spiritless bourbon, which puts it among the small number of Greenville rooms stocking an actual non-alcoholic spirit rather than improvising with juice. Open 11am to 10pm through the week and to 1am on Friday and Saturday, seven days with no closed day, which makes it the most reliably available room in this guide after the kava bar.

Proof on Main is the restaurant and bar of the 21c Museum Hotel on West Main Street, open since 2006 and a fixture of Louisville dining, with a bar holding more than 75 Kentucky bourbons. Its non-alcoholic programme is among the deepest in the city and is built on stock rather than improvisation: the bar carries the full Lyre's range plus Spiritless Kentucky 74 and Jalisco 55, the Louisville-made non-alcoholic bourbon and tequila, and NKD LDY de-alcoholised gin, and it makes its own ginger ale and tonic water in house. Effectively anything on the cocktail list can be built alcohol-free, and the bar also understands half-measures for anyone reducing rather than stopping.

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.

The Guild House is Cameron Mitchell Restaurants' farm-to-table dining room on North High Street in the Short North, and was awarded One Michelin Key in 2024. Its beverage menu carries a printed section headed ZERO PROOF, which is what separates it from the many Columbus restaurants that will improvise something on request. The section runs six deep: Mionetto alcohol-removed sparkling wine from the Veneto by the glass or bottle, an Orange Spritz built on a spiritless aperitif and the same Mionetto, a Citrus Ginger made with Seedlip Grove 42, lime and candied ginger, a Blackberry Smash of blackberries, pomegranate and fresh citrus, an Espresso No-Tini using Lyre's coffee originale with fresh espresso, brown sugar and cinnamon, and a rotating Athletic Brewing non-alcoholic beer. Prices sit between $7 and $11.

The Pine Room is a neighbourhood restaurant in historic Harrods Creek, on River Road north-east of Louisville, and it keeps one of the better-stocked non-alcoholic back bars in the metro. Rather than a single token bottle it carries both of the Louisville-made Spiritless expressions — Kentucky 74, the non-alcoholic bourbon, and Jalisco 55, the non-alcoholic tequila — which means the two drinks most people actually want, an old fashioned and a paloma, can both be built properly here without alcohol. The paloma is the one the city's zero-proof coverage names. Dinner runs Tuesday to Sunday with weekend brunch from 9am, and the room sits close enough to the Ohio River to make the drive worthwhile.

The Publican is the European beer-hall-inspired restaurant in Fulton Market known for its raw bar, heritage pork and house charcuterie, and its drinks list carries a named non-alcoholic section called High & Dry. Two built drinks sit under it at $12 each: What's French for "Pineapple", made with Giffard's spiritless pineapple and a house lime cordial, and Fleur de Sangre, which combines Giffard elderflower with a house lemon cordial and San Pellegrino Aranciata Rossa. A non-alcoholic hop water from Fair State Brewing Cooperative is listed at $8 within the beer list itself. Note that the bar offers an optional 5mg THC shot as a $7 add-on and stocks THC sodas separately; the High & Dry drinks are free of THC unless that add-on is requested.

1Watson is the rooftop bar at the AC Hotel San Antonio Riverwalk on Soledad Street, and its named non-alcoholic drinks are the Pina Breezy and the Spicy Pal No Ma — the latter a zero-proof play on a Paloma, which is the right instinct in Texas, where grapefruit and salt are already the local drinking grammar. It runs late for a hotel rooftop, to midnight midweek and 1am at weekends, and adds a third downtown rooftop option for anyone not drinking, in a district where visitors substantially outnumber locals. Weekend brunch service from 10:30am extends the window further, and it is a few blocks from both other rooftops in this guide.

A seventh-floor rooftop kitchen and bar atop The Restoration hotel in downtown Charleston, serving modern American Lowcountry food alongside 360-degree views of the historic district. The bar carries a standing set of zero-proof cocktails built with the same approach as its spirited drinks, including options adapted from classics like the Negroni and the French 75. Mocktails on the menu have included the Apple Patch, Beet-i-ful, The Fake ID, and Green Queen.

Volare is a long-running Italian restaurant on Frankfort Avenue in Clifton, named Best Italian Restaurant by readers of Louisville Magazine three years running, with a seasonal menu built on locally sourced produce and house-made pasta. Its place in a non-alcoholic guide rests on one thing done properly: the bar builds Spiritless Manhattans, using the Louisville-made non-alcoholic bourbon Kentucky 74 in place of rye or bourbon. A manhattan is a spirit-forward, stirred, undiluted drink — the hardest category to render without alcohol and the one most bars refuse to attempt — so a restaurant offering it as standard is making a real claim. Dinner runs seven nights from 4:30pm.