Cloak & Dagger

Cloak & Dagger occupies a corner site on West 11th Street in the heart of Tremont, a short walk from Lincoln Park, and reads as a warmly lit private study: leather-bound books, antiques and heavy furniture, low light, the kind of room Cleveland Scene has described as combining ease with expectation. The bar changes its entire menu on a schedule and publishes each one as a numbered volume — the current edition is Book 22, "Whiskey Bent & Hellbound" — so regulars track the room by book number rather than by season. Everything served, drinks and food alike, is vegan and made from scratch in house; it is one of the very few serious cocktail bars in the city where that is the default rather than an accommodation, which by itself makes it the easiest booking in Tremont for a mixed group with dietary constraints.

The non-alcoholic side is run as part of the same programme rather than bolted on. Three or four drinks on each book are available spirit-free, listed and priced alongside the rest rather than tucked into a footnote, and Cleveland Magazine's 2026 mocktail roundup singled the bar out for the care involved. The current benchmark is the Smaller Acts at $16 — coffee, hazelnut and a pinch of sea salt built into something closer to a dessert cocktail than a soft drink, where the texture and the salt do the work alcohol usually does in carrying bitterness and length. Because the list turns over with each book, the specific zero-proof builds change; what stays constant is that there are always several, and that they are made to the standard of the whiskey drinks the bar is known for.

The room opens at 4pm six nights a week and runs to midnight, or 1am on Fridays and Saturdays, with the kitchen closing at 10pm and happy hour from 4pm to 6pm early in the week.