Bar Margaret

The Village of West Greenville is the old textile district turned arts quarter, about a mile west of downtown, and Bar Margaret is its cocktail bar. The name of its alcohol-free section — Don't Call Them Mocktails — is a small piece of menu writing that carries a lot of information.

The word mocktail has a problem, and bars that take this seriously keep trying to escape it. It frames the drink as an imitation of something else, and it carries the association of sweet, childish, unserious. Naming the section against that is a statement that the drinks are their own thing, and Bar Margaret backs it with construction: non-alcoholic gin and bourbon as bases rather than fruit juice, cut with a sharp house lime syrup, citrus zest and ginger beer.

That choice of two spirits rather than one matters more than it looks. A bar stocking only a zero-proof gin can build the sour and the highball; adding a bourbon alternative opens the whole dark-spirit side — the old fashioneds, the sours with weight, the drinks people order in winter. Very few bars in this directory stock both.

The bar's own framing is that its staff love playing with flavour with or without the alcohol, and the useful implication for a customer is that describing what you like will get you somewhere here rather than getting you a cranberry and soda.

The hours are worth knowing. Bar Margaret opens at noon Tuesday through Saturday — genuinely early for a cocktail bar and a real advantage if you want a drink in the afternoon rather than the evening — and closes at 11pm midweek, midnight on Friday and Saturday. Closed Sunday and Monday, so plan the weekend around it.