Alley Cat Lounge

Broughton Lane is the alley that runs behind Broughton Street, and Alley Cat Lounge is down a stair off it, in a brick cellar dating to the 1870s. The room is small, dim and built for drinking rather than dining, and it has spent years as the reference point for craft cocktails in Savannah — house-made syrups, sodas, teas and infusions rather than bought mixers, and bartenders with a reputation that travels beyond the city.

The menu is genuinely unusual. It is printed as a newspaper, the Alley Cat Rag, issued in numbered editions and rewritten wholesale each time rather than tweaked at the edges. That rotation is why this listing records no signature drinks: any specific name would be wrong within months, and the bar's own format tells you so. What survives every edition is the commitment underneath it. A drinker can always find at least ten low- and no-alcohol cocktails on the Rag, plus alcohol-free beer and cider — a standing floor rather than a token pair of drinks, and by some distance the deepest running alcohol-free selection at any licensed bar in Savannah.

The bar's own staff frame it as a matter of craft rather than accommodation. Bartender Dheeraj Chatlani, quoted by Savannah Magazine in its survey of the city's mocktail trend, said he liked that the non-alcoholic options at Alley Cat were as enjoyable and thoughtfully made as anything else on the menu — which is the argument this whole category rests on, made by someone who has to execute it on a Friday night.

Practical notes: the entrance is genuinely hard to find the first time, and the bar keeps late hours — 4pm to 1am on weeknights and 2am on Friday and Saturday — but is closed all day Sunday.