Bitter & Twisted Cocktail Parlour

Bitter & Twisted occupies the ground floor of the Luhrs Building, a 1920s downtown tower that once housed Arizona's Prohibition-era attorney general — a piece of history the bar has never been shy about using. It opened in 2014 under Ross Simon and became, quickly, the most decorated cocktail room in the state: a top-ten finalist for Best U.S. Cocktail Bar at the Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards, and a fixture on national lists ever since. The menu arrives as a thick illustrated book, which sets the tone — this is a bar that treats drinks as a subject rather than a product.

What makes it matter to a non-drinker is proportion. The team reckons roughly 60 percent of the full cocktail list can be built without alcohol, and rather than parking two sweet options at the back of the menu, the bar has worked up non-alcoholic versions of a dozen or so of its staples. The Nada Colada is the piña colada rebuilt; Miss Nightingale is fizzy with hibiscus, sage and cinnamon; the Rhubarb-Ba-Arandas works hibiscus juice, rhubarb and strawberry sherbet; RUM DMC layers a zero-proof spirit with lime, guava, grapefruit-cinnamon syrup and a passion fruit foam; and Hasta La Vista, Berry! balances zero-proof mezcal against Martini & Rossi's non-alcoholic aperitif with a triple-berry shrub and soda. There is even an NA Pornstar Martini, which is the sort of thing bars usually refuse to attempt without alcohol.

DiningOut Phoenix put it plainly in May 2026: the zero-proof versions here more than stand up against the alcoholic counterparts. Practical notes — the bar runs Tuesday to Saturday and closes Sunday and Monday, it fills up after work and stays busy, and it is a full cocktail bar rather than an alcohol-free room. The point is not that alcohol is absent but that its absence costs you nothing.