Alcove

Alcove occupies the ground floor of 50 Lovejoy Wharf in the West End, directly beside TD Garden and North Station, and is one of the few restaurants in that stretch of the city with a genuine waterfront patio rather than a street-facing terrace — the deck looks out over the Charles at the point where it meets the harbour, which makes it a pre- and post-event room for the Garden as well as a neighbourhood restaurant. The kitchen describes its cooking as coastal New England, working through line-caught seafood, farm-fresh vegetables and locally sourced meats, and the wine programme is substantial enough that the restaurant bottles a Pierre Ferrand cognac under an Alcove Series label for its own cocktails. The Boston Globe included Alcove in its January 7, 2025 round-up of twelve spectacular spots for mocktails, singling out the price point and the use of non-alcoholic beer in the builds.

The alcohol-free drinks are printed on the cocktail page under a spirit free heading rather than tucked at the back, and they are priced at $11 to $13 against $16 to $19 for the full-strength list. Queen's Bee is the cheapest at $11, a light build of botanicals, honey and lemon. The Spiced Tamarind Margarita is $13, using tajin, orange and ginger, and is the most assertive of the group. Ginger Shandy at $13 is the one worth knowing about: it combines lemon with Athletic Brewing's Free Wave non-alcoholic hazy IPA, and can be ordered in pitchers for four, which is unusual — most restaurants will not commit a shared format to an alcohol-free drink. The kitchen also files a Lucano Libre at $13 under that same spirit-free heading, but it is built on Amaro Lucano, an Italian amaro of roughly 28% ABV, so it is not an alcohol-free drink despite where it sits on the menu — worth knowing before ordering from that section. A genuinely spirit-free Raspberry Lemonade is listed at $11 among the frozen and specialty summer sips. Behind the cocktails, two non-alcoholic beers are stocked at $7 each: Athletic Brewing's Free Wave from San Diego and Best Day Brewing's Kolsch from Sausalito, both at 0.5% ABV. Alcove opens at noon on weekdays and 11am at weekends, running to 10pm daily.