Bern's Steak House

Bern's Steak House has been on South Howard Avenue since 1956 and is, by most measures, the most storied restaurant in Florida. It is known for dry-aged beef cut to order, a wine list that has run to hundreds of thousands of bottles held in its own cellars, and the Harry Waugh Dessert Room upstairs — a warren of private booths built from old wine casks where diners are moved after the main meal. It is the kind of institution where the ritual is as much the point as the food.

That matters for a non-drinker in a particular way. A restaurant defined by one of the world's great wine programmes is, structurally, the hardest possible room in which to not drink: the entire experience is organised around a bottle, the sommelier is central to the service, and the person declining is conspicuous. Bern's answer is a dedicated "Zero Proof" section on the bar list built on Ritual Zero Proof spirits, so the alternative is a made drink rather than an apology. The current builds are the Lil' Miss (dark cherry, cinnamon, ginger ale), the Sole Sunrise (Ritual tequila alternative with orgeat, tangerine, lime and grapefruit) and the Watermelon Crawl (Ritual aperitif with watermelon, lime, mint and honey).

Three named drinks is not a large list by the standards of a dedicated zero-proof bar. In the context of a seventy-year-old steakhouse whose reputation rests on wine, it is a deliberate accommodation, and it is what lets someone join a table at one of the country's great restaurants without spending the evening with a glass of soda.

Practical notes: reservations are essential and often booked well ahead, the dessert room is a separate seating after dinner, and prices are what the reputation implies. This is emphatically a wine restaurant with a zero-proof option, not an alcohol-free venue.