Dry January in Honolulu: Where to Drink Alcohol-Free

Aloha Beer Company is a brewery and taproom on Queen Street in Kakaʻako, and it keeps a named mocktail list rather than the token soda option most breweries offer. The Cucumber Smash and the tropical Lilikoi Cooler are the two the bar is known for, alongside a house iced tea and a Virgin Mojito. That combination — a working brewery that has bothered to write a zero-proof list — is what makes it useful, because a taproom is the default social venue in most cities and the place a non-drinker is most likely to be stranded. Happy hour runs daily from 2pm to 6pm and brunch at weekends from 10am to 2pm.

Mahina & Sun's is the restaurant and bar of the Surfjack Hotel & Swim Club on Lewers Street in Waikīkī, run by Kānaka Maoli executive chef Erik Leong. It keeps four named non-alcoholic drinks on the list. Mr Brightside is built on a turmeric shrub with lemonade and fresh mint; Limonata is a creamy Brazilian limeade; Tropic Thunder pairs kalamansi with lilikoʻi; and The Pretender is a zero-proof reading of a penicillin, carrying the smoke of the original. That last one is the most technically ambitious non-alcoholic drink documented in Honolulu — smoke and peat are the hardest things to reproduce without whisky.

100 Sails is the main restaurant of the Prince Waikīkī hotel, looking out over the Ala Wai small-boat harbour at the western edge of Waikīkī. Its stated position is that mocktails belong on the same level as the cocktails, and the kitchen backs that with method rather than assertion: the zero-proof drinks are built on house-made syrups and local ingredients, running to ginger lemongrass, hibiscus and ube. Ube — the purple yam that anchors a great deal of Filipino cooking in Hawaiʻi — is an unusual thing to put in a drink and gives it colour and a mild nutty sweetness. Mocktails are included in the daily happy hour rather than excluded from it.

Lucky Belly is a ramen and Asian-fusion restaurant and bar on North Hotel Street in Chinatown, and one of the venues that anchored the district's revival. Its non-alcoholic drinks are unusually well constructed for a restaurant of its size. The Chinatown Swizzle is built on galangal, kaffir lime and lemongrass with drinking vinegar and coconut water — a savoury, aromatic drink that owes nothing to the fruit-and-soda template. The Liliko'i Fizz combines passionfruit purée with spiced almond syrup, fresh mint and club soda, and a hibiscus lemonade sits alongside them. All are priced around $5, well below the cost of a cocktail.

Monkeypod Kitchen by Merriman opened in 2024 inside the OUTRIGGER Reef Waikiki Beach Resort as the centrepiece of an $85 million rebuild of the property. It comes from chef Peter Merriman, one of the founders of Hawaii Regional Cuisine, through his Handcrafted Restaurants group. The mocktail list is a full menu section rather than an afterthought: the Virgin Monkeypod Mai Tai, the Blind Tiger built on hibiscus and lavender soda, and the Green Fevah. Opening daily from 7am to 11pm with happy hours at both 3.30pm and 9pm, it is the most reliably available option in Waikīkī for a table where not everybody is drinking.

SKY Waikīkī is a nineteenth-floor rooftop raw bar and lounge above Kalākaua Avenue, with an open-air deck looking across Waikīkī to Diamond Head. It keeps three named non-alcoholic cocktails as a standing part of the menu rather than as seasonal specials: Dawn Patrol, built on a pineapple jalapeño shrub with lemon juice and soda water; Hapai Happiness, made with yuzu syrup, lime, basil and soda water; and Over the Pali. The shrub in the Dawn Patrol is the notable technique — a vinegar-based fruit syrup that supplies the sharpness a zero-proof drink normally lacks. It runs to midnight on weeknights and 2am on Friday and Saturday.

Vintage Books is a speakeasy and restaurant hidden behind a vintage-bookstore facade on Waialae Avenue in Kaimukī — not Chinatown, as several guides have it. The styling is Prohibition-era with a tropical bend, and the spirit-free drinks are built to the same specification as the rest of the list rather than improvised. The Nogroni is the clearest evidence: Seedlip Garden, Giffard sirop aperitif and Lyre's aperitif rosso, finished with orange oil — three genuine zero-proof products layered to hold the bitterness a negroni drinker actually wants. The Kaimuki Cruise runs lychee, lemon, mango and Sicilian lemonade, and a botanical London Tonic sits alongside them.

Yours Truly is the cocktail bar inside the AC Hotel by Marriott on Bishop Street, in Honolulu's downtown financial district. It publishes a dedicated Zero-Proof section on its own menu — a distinction worth drawing, because a printed section means the drinks are costed, trained and stocked rather than left to whoever is behind the bar. Three named builds anchor it: She's Blushin', made with spiced rich cranberry, lime juice, mint leaves and club soda; Manila Bae, which puts pineapple juice with tamarind syrup, lime juice and citrus syrup; and Stamped Strawberry, muddled strawberry with lime, basil and club soda. Fever-Tree mixers are stocked for simpler orders.