Bloomsday

Bloomsday is a small wine bar and all-day cafe on South 2nd Street near Headhouse Square, named for the day on which Joyce's Ulysses is set. It is exactly the sort of room where being the non-drinker is usually a thin experience: the whole proposition is a curated list of natural wine, and the alternative is normally a soda.

What makes it worth listing is a pricing decision. Bloomsday runs its non-alcoholic drinks at six dollars, at happy-hour price, permanently — not as a Dry January promotion that vanishes in February, but year-round and at all hours. That is rare enough to be the headline. A great many bars produce an excellent zero-proof list in January and quietly retire it; a standing price signals that the drinks are part of the business rather than a seasonal marketing exercise.

Cuddles on the Beach pairs pomegranate with orange, tart against sweet. More interesting is the house-made ginger beer, and the distinction between ginger beer and ginger ale is worth knowing: ginger ale is a flavoured soda, while a true ginger beer is fermented from fresh ginger and carries genuine heat and a cloudy body. A bar that makes its own is producing something with more bite than anything that comes out of a bottle, and it works as a drink in its own right rather than as a mixer.

The fridge covers the beer drinker properly too — Well Being's non-alcoholic IPA, Collective Arts Hazy at 0.5% and Athletic's golden ale, which is three genuine choices rather than a token can.

The hours are worth planning around, because this is not a late room: closed Monday and Tuesday, four to nine on Wednesday and Thursday, four to ten on Friday, and a long Saturday from ten in the morning to ten at night. Sunday is a morning-only service, closing at two. It suits an early evening or a weekend afternoon rather than a late night out.