Alden & Harlow

Alden & Harlow opened in 2014 at 40 Brattle Street in Harvard Square, in the below-street space that had long housed Casablanca, and made its reputation on chef-owner Michael Scelfo's vegetable-forward small plates at a moment when that was still unusual — the Wall Street Journal cited the restaurant in an October 2014 piece on modern menus shifting focus to vegetables, and its burger has been written up repeatedly as one of the country's notable off-menu orders. Scelfo has since added The Longfellow Bar upstairs in the same building, and the two operations share an address and a kitchen sensibility. The restaurant serves dinner nightly and brunch at weekends. Meet Boston's January 2026 zero-proof guide observed that Alden & Harlow approaches zero-proof beverages from a culinary perspective, with drinks that incorporate both sweet and savoury elements, roasted or herbal notes and layered acidity, sometimes pulling inspiration directly from the kitchen.

That description is borne out by the printed Mocktails section, which runs three house drinks and avoids the standard route of substituting a commercial zero-proof gin into a classic template. Soft Light is $10 and combines ube coconut water with ginger, lime and pineapple soda — nutty, faintly earthy from the purple yam, and the mildest of the three. Golden Smoke is $9 and is the one that best demonstrates the kitchen influence: the passionfruit is cold-smoked before it goes into the glass, then lengthened with honey, lemon, tonic and soda, so the drink carries a smoke note that non-alcoholic drinks usually cannot reach without a spirit. Mocking Bird is $10 and the most bitter and structured of the set, built on lapsang souchong tea with Giffard non-alcoholic aperitif, mango, lime and demerara. All three sit at roughly half the price of the restaurant's full-strength cocktails, and all three are listed on the same menu rather than requiring a request. The list rotates with the seasons alongside the food, so specific drinks change; what persists is the method of building them from tea, smoke, roasted fruit and vinegar rather than from bought-in substitutes.