ABV

ABV opened in the summer of 2014 at 3174 16th Street in the Mission, founded by Ryan Fitzgerald, Todd Smith and Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud, three long-serving Bay Area bartenders. Fitzgerald and Smith had worked together since 2006 at Bourbon & Branch, where Smith was a founding bartender; Reichborn-Kjennerud ran Dalva and its back room, the Hideout, where the three of them settled on the idea. Imbibe Magazine named ABV its 2015 Bar of the Year, writing that it "may have first opened its doors last summer, but the seed of the bar were sown several years ago." In 2022 ABV placed No. 39 on the inaugural North America's 50 Best Bars list, the only San Francisco bar to appear on it. The bar is open 4pm to 2am daily and runs its kitchen until midnight, which makes it one of the more reliable late options in the neighbourhood.

The menu's structure is what makes ABV dependable for someone who is not drinking. Rather than a single catch-all list, it is broken into sections by strength, with standing "LOW ABV" and "0% ABV" runs that function as permanent architecture rather than seasonal goodwill — the zero-proof section has been on the menu for years and survives each redesign. The 0% ABV cocktails are $14 and currently comprise the N/A Negroni (house non-alcoholic aperitif and charred grapefruit tonic), the Flightless Bird (n/a aperitif, orange juice, lemon juice and salt), the Green Dream (tarragon, lemon, ginger and tonic), Jumpstart (carrot, ginger, turmeric, lemon and soda) and the Passionfruit Fix (lime, passionfruit and a salted rim). The house-made non-alcoholic aperitif anchoring two of them is the reason the N/A Negroni reads as a negroni rather than as a bitter soda, and it is the piece of the programme that would be hardest for another bar to copy. Lagunitas Hop Water at $5 and Lagunitas IPNA at $7 cover the beer slot, and Leitz dealcoholized sparkling rosé is poured at $15. Everything is made to order.