Box St. All Day

Box St. All Day occupies a corner of Hemisfair, the redeveloped park at the edge of downtown San Antonio built around the Tower of the Americas, and it trades as a brunch and all-day cafe rather than a bar. Its alcohol-free drinks are a named menu section, not an improvisation, and the bar works with Ritual Zero Proof — one of the better-established non-alcoholic spirit ranges — to build cocktails including a zero-proof classic margarita.

The named drinks are the Topa Chica, Endless Summer, Cabana Cooler and a Hibiscus Sparkler. The hibiscus is a smart inclusion in a Texas context: agua de jamaica is already part of the local drinking vocabulary, tart and deeply coloured, and it holds up against heat and sun far better than a sweet mocktail does.

What gives Box St. its particular value here is the clock, and it is worth spelling out. San Antonio's best alcohol-free drinking is oddly distributed: Hash, the only fully spirit-free bar, closes at 7pm and shuts entirely on Wednesday and Thursday. Isidore and Mixtli are dinner-only. Fermenteria opens Thursday. Almost nothing serious is available in the morning — except here, from 9am, seven days a week.

For a visitor staying downtown, that combination of location and hours makes this the most practical entry in the guide. Hemisfair is a short walk from the River Walk and the convention centre, the park itself is pleasant to sit in, and a properly built zero-proof drink at ten in the morning is not something San Antonio otherwise offers. Note that it closes at 4pm, so it is genuinely a daytime venue rather than an early-evening one. If you need somewhere after work, Double Standard or Idle Beer Hall are the closest equivalents with real zero-proof menus.