Dry January in Cleveland: Where to Drink Alcohol-Free

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

LBM is a Norse-themed neighbourhood cocktail bar and kitchen on Madison Avenue in Lakewood's Birdtown, open since 2017 and run by co-owner and bartender Eric Ho. It has kept a deliberate non-alcoholic cocktail programme since the day it opened, which in Cleveland made it an early adopter by several years: the spirit-free drinks are named and presented like any other cocktail, built on Ritual and other zero-proof spirits with the bar's own syrups, with Athletic Brewing and Untitled Art non-alcoholic beers in the fridge behind them. It runs to 2:30am at weekends.

UnBAR Cafe is a Black-owned cafe and evening hangout on Larchmere Boulevard, opened on 20 January 2020 by Melissa Garrett-Hirsch and built explicitly as the social experience of a bar without the drinking. A mixologist who specialises in non-alcoholic work makes the drinks; the rest of the menu runs to espresso, smoothies, soup and light, health-conscious food. The interior is deliberately domestic — green and purple walls, positive art, inspirational quotes lettered where you will read them — and the room programmes comedy, game nights, karaoke and poetry, staying open to 10pm Thursday through Saturday.