Cease and Desist Book Club

The entrance is a bookcase. Cease and Desist Book Club opened downtown on North Washington Street as a speakeasy for people who like books as much as bars, and the fit-out follows through — shelves to the ceiling, low light, a small room that seats fewer people than want to be in it on a Friday.

The drinks carry the conceit. A vanilla saffron old fashioned is the most-praised thing on the list; a Bananas Foster and a Spring Cleaning show the range. Crucially for this guide, the bar keeps non-alcoholic drinks built to the same theme rather than a generic pair of mocktails bolted on, so someone not drinking is handed something that belongs to the room. That is a small distinction with a large effect: the experience of a themed bar is the theme, and being excluded from it is what makes a soda water feel like a consolation.

This listing is graded three and records no signature drinks. The bar's non-alcoholic list is not published online in a form that could be read for this guide, and one aggregator's description of it could not be independently corroborated — a caution earned the hard way elsewhere in this city, where a directory credited another Spokane restaurant with "sophisticated zero-proof pairings" that turned out to be soda and lime-ade. What is well attested is that the mocktails exist and are made to the theme; ask at the bar.

The hours are the strongest practical argument for it. Wednesday through Saturday the room runs 4pm to 2am, Tuesday to midnight, and Sunday and Monday from 5pm to 11pm — seven days a week, and later than anywhere else in this guide. For anyone who does not drink but does want to be out at midnight in downtown Spokane, the options are this and very little else.