Civil Libation

Civil Libation is a bistro on General Booth Boulevard, inland from the Virginia Beach oceanfront, and it does something with its drinks list that is worth more than any single recipe: it prints the alcohol-free options as their own named section, headed 'dry libations'.

That sounds like formatting. It is actually the whole problem solved. The hardest part of ordering without alcohol in an ordinary restaurant is not the absence of good options — plenty of bars can make something decent — it is the transaction: catching the server's attention, explaining, waiting while they check, then accepting whatever comes back. A named section removes all of it. You read, you choose, you order, exactly as everyone else at the table does, and nothing about the exchange marks you out.

The drinks themselves carry the same tone as the rest of the menu, which is presented as a flowchart — Giggle Juice, I Don't Give a Fig, Purple Rain — and Coastal Virginia Magazine notes they are built on seasonal ingredients rather than a fixed set of syrups. The naming matters more than it appears: calling them 'dry libations' rather than 'mocktails' frames them as drinks in their own right, and a good number of people who have stopped drinking will tell you the word mocktail is itself part of the problem.

It is also, straightforwardly, one of the few substantial alcohol-free offerings on the Virginia Beach side of Hampton Roads. The region's depth is concentrated in Norfolk — Ceremony, Only You, Gershwin's — so a venue holding up the beach end has extra value for anyone staying near the oceanfront. Hours run from 4pm Tuesday to Friday, with 10am openings at weekends for brunch; closed Mondays. Being inland on General Booth rather than on the oceanfront strip, it also draws locals rather than holiday crowds, which makes it a calmer room than anything on Atlantic Avenue.