Bellhop

Bellhop is on East Grand Avenue in the East Village, and it describes its own aesthetic as more classy tiki than cheesy tiki — elevated versions of the classics, a serious craft beer list, and a room that takes the format seriously rather than ironically.

The detail that earns the listing is Don's Mix. It appears in Sandy Beaches, alongside blue coconut water, lime and cinnamon, and anyone who knows tiki will recognise it immediately: Don's Mix is the two-parts-grapefruit-to-one-part-cinnamon-syrup blend created by Donn Beach, the man who invented American tiki drinking in the 1930s, and it is the backbone of the Navy Grog and the original Zombie. It is made in-house or not at all.

A bar putting its own Don's Mix into a drink with no rum in it is telling you something specific: the alcohol-free build is coming off the same station, with the same components, as the drinks it is proudest of. That is the opposite of the usual arrangement, where the mocktail is assembled from whatever is nearest the soda gun.

The Beachbreeze is the more straightforward of the two — pineapple, passionfruit, coconut, lime and cherry — and it is the one to order if you want the full tiki experience without the rum. Both were documented by Des Moines' tourism board in January 2026.

Tiki also does the presentational work this directory keeps returning to. In a room where every drink arrives in carved ceramic under a hedge of mint and fruit, nobody can tell which glass has alcohol in it, and nobody asks.

The hours are narrow: 4pm to 2am on Thursday and Friday, 2pm to 2am on Saturday, and closed Sunday through Wednesday. This is a weekend bar, and a late one.