Bowood by Niche

Bowood by Niche opened on November 4, 2021, when Gerard Craft's Niche Food Group took over the much-loved former Café Osage space inside Bowood Farms, the Central West End garden shop on Olive Street. Craft — winner of the 2015 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest — turned the plant-filled corner of the nursery into a daytime café built on local ingredients, with a greenhouse-style dining room and leafy patio that quickly became one of the neighborhood's signature gathering places.

The beverage menu gives non-drinkers a dedicated zero proof section rather than an afterthought. Five NA cocktails, each $10, mirror the house list: the NA Blackberry 57 (NA gin, blackberry, lemon, NA sparkling) is the alcohol-free answer to the bar's Blackberry 75, joined by an NA Cucumber Gimlet (NA gin, lime, cucumber), an NA Cranberry Margarita (NA tequila, cranberry, lime, sugar), an NA Cafe Martini (NA tequila, espresso, honey), and an NA Bloody Mary. The NA beer picks are just as deliberate: Best Day Brewing's kölsch-style or West Coast IPA from California pours alongside the NA version of hometown favorite 4 Hands City Wide. Melinda Cooper, Niche Food Group's beverage and bar director, curates the non-alcoholic offerings across the group's restaurants, and it shows in how seamlessly the zero-proof list sits beside the mimosas and espresso martinis.

St. Louis Magazine featured Bowood in its January 2025 guide to non-alcoholic cocktails in the city, pointing readers to its 'hefty selection of boozeless beverages' — a lineup that has since grown from a trio of zero-proof cocktails to five. Expect a brunch-hour crowd: the café runs daily from 8am to 2pm, with a morning happy hour Monday through Thursday from 8 to 10am, and the combination of seasonal brunch plates, pastries, and greenhouse light keeps tables busy on weekends. Settle into the garden-shop greenery with an alcohol-free Blackberry 57 in hand — it's daytime drinking, minus the alcohol, done unusually well.