Cassis

Cassis sits on Beach Drive NE, the waterfront strip that is downtown St. Petersburg's main dining address, looking across to Straub Park and the marina. It is a French brasserie in the full sense — all-day service, a long menu, a patio that is the point for most of the year — and it occupies the kind of position where a restaurant can coast on the view rather than the drinks list.

It does not. Cassis is one of very few venues on that strip to give non-alcoholic drinks a permanent, named section of the menu instead of a token mocktail produced on request. The list includes a non-alcoholic sparkling Spanish rose, which matters more than it sounds: on a waterfront patio where the default order is a glass of wine, having a proper sparkling option in a proper glass is the difference between joining the table and being visibly exempted from it. The built drinks run to the Mocking Ember — non-alcoholic whiskey with ginger syrup, lemon and ginger beer — and a Harvest Mojito made on Owen's cucumber-mint with lime, blueberries and mint.

I Love The Burg singled the restaurant out in January 2024 for exactly that permanence: the mocktail list gets its own entire section of the menu. A section is a commitment. It has to be printed, stocked, trained on and defended against the menu redesign, which is why so few restaurants bother and why the ones that do tend to keep doing it.

Two practical points. This is a full-service French brasserie with a substantial wine programme, so the alcohol-free list is a real part of the offering rather than its character. And Beach Drive is busy year-round — book, particularly if the patio is the reason you are going.