Callie

Callie occupies a corner of Island Avenue in East Village, a few blocks from the ballpark, and cooks Mediterranean food built around a wood oven and a long list of dips. The reason it belongs in this guide is a drinks menu that treats alcohol-free drinking as three categories rather than an afterthought: N/A cocktails, N/A wine and N/A beer, each printed in the same type and position as the full-strength equivalents.

The five cocktails are the substantial part, all at sixteen dollars — the same price as most of the alcoholic list, which tells you where the effort goes. Green Flash is built on Pentire Adrift, the Cornish botanical spirit, with cucumber, lime and soda. Falsarita uses Almave, the agave distillate made without alcohol, with lime and palo santo. Dapper in Damask runs Feragaia, a Scottish distilled non-alcoholic spirit, against pomegranate, rose water, lemon and grapefruit soda. Petulant Giuseppe is built on a non-alcoholic Amaro Lucano with orange, lemon and orange bitters, which gives it the bitterness most zero-proof lists lack. A fifth, the Social Spritz, is listed in the same section on a bitter Italian aperitif with passion fruit and lemon.

The wine section is unusually good for a restaurant this size. Lyre's Classico Grande sparkling and a Leitz alcohol-removed pinot noir from the Rheingau are both poured by the glass at sixteen and seventeen dollars, so a non-drinker at a table ordering wine is not stuck with sparkling water. On beer there are two from Best Day Brewing at eight dollars, the Electro-Lime Mexican-style lager and the West Coast IPA, both brewed in California.

Practically: the dining room runs Tuesday to Sunday from five until ten and the bar stays open until eleven, which makes it usable for a drink without a full dinner. The restaurant adds a four percent service surcharge to every check to fund wages and health benefits for its full-time team, which it states plainly on its own menu. Reservations are the safer route at weekends.

One thing to weigh before booking: the pricing. At sixteen dollars, the non-alcoholic cocktails cost within a dollar or two of the alcoholic list, which some readers will find hard to justify and others will read as the point — the same spirits budget, the same labour, the same glassware. The ingredients behind them are genuinely expensive imports rather than syrup, and the section is priced as though the kitchen expects people to order from it rather than apologise for it. The food is built for sharing, with a run of dips, house pita and a five-course family-style option if you would rather the kitchen decide.