DENMARK on High

DENMARK opened in 2014 on the second floor of 463 North High Street, in the Yankee Trader building that had just come out of a three-year restoration and now trades as Yankee on High. The building is the traditional gateway to the Short North from downtown, and the bar occupies what had been a furniture showroom, with windows looking across to the Columbus Convention Center. The room is deliberately undistracted — no televisions — and the house line is that everything is made from scratch: bitters, infusions, syrups and shrubs are produced in-house rather than bought, which is the reason the cocktail list carries as many unfamiliar ingredients as it does.

The non-alcoholic offering is modest in length but genuine in construction, and it sits on the same printed menu as the cocktails rather than being held back for anyone who asks. Not A Dream is the more ambitious of the two: a non-alcoholic gin base built out with fruit purée, coconut cream and a mix of lime, pineapple and orange juice into something closer to a tiki drink than a spritz. The Cucumber No-Jito is the lighter option, lime juice and mint syrup lengthened with cucumber soda, and reads as a proper long drink rather than a soft one. Both are priced well below the full-proof list, which runs from around $13 for the shaken and refreshing band up to $16 for the spirit-forward stirred drinks. Beyond the two builds, the bar keeps a short beer and wine list at $8 and $10 respectively. DENMARK also runs small-group cocktail classes, hands-on sessions in which guests make two drinks of their choosing and work through the fundamentals — a format that works as an evening out in its own right. Opening is Wednesday through Saturday from 5pm.