Bar 'Cino

Bar 'Cino occupies a corner of Washington Square in the middle of Newport, doing wood-fired Italian food and a proper bar programme, and it is worth the trip from Providence for one detail of menu design. On most drinks lists the cocktails are the drinks and the mocktails are an afterthought in a box at the bottom. Here the four non-alcoholic builds are simply listed as drinks, with the note 'make it a cocktail ($14.)' beside them. The alcoholic version is the modification. It is a small piece of typography that changes the experience of ordering entirely.

Three of the four are built from scratch ingredients rather than substitutes. Lambrufaux — the name a play on Lambrusco — runs a house blackberry shrub with lemon and soda, the vinegar giving it the tannic grip a red-wine spritz would have. The Bright Side is an orange shrub with lime, cranberry and ginger. The Spicy Pal-No-Ma is the paloma with the tequila simply removed and the gap filled with work: grapefruit, lime, a spicy simple syrup, fresh jalapeño and a sea-salt rim. All three are seven dollars, which is roughly half what a comparable drink costs in Providence.

The fourth, Rumor Has It, is the one built on finished non-alcoholic product — Spiritless white cane and Spiritless coffee with vanilla, cream and fresh espresso, an espresso-martini analogue at twelve dollars. Spiritless is one of the better American distilled-then-dealcoholised producers, so this drinks closer to the original than most.

Bar 'Cino sits inside the Providence-Warwick metro but has its own Newport character — Washington Square is the civic heart of the old colonial town, and the room fills with a mix of locals and visitors from late morning onward. A note on published lists: Rhode Island Monthly credited this bar with a Don't Call Me Shirley and a Pearly There. Neither is on the current menu; two of the four have rotated since. The four above are what was pouring when we checked.