Eatery A

Eatery A is a wood-fired Mediterranean restaurant on Ingersoll Avenue, one of the better-regarded rooms in Des Moines, and it keeps a single documented alcohol-free drink — but a well-chosen one.

The Virgin Pimm's is smarter than it looks. A Pimm's Cup is one of the few classics where the spirit is genuinely secondary: the drink is mostly lemonade, cucumber, mint and fruit, with Pimm's No. 1 contributing a gentle bitter-herbal note at around 25% ABV heavily diluted. Take the alcohol out of a martini and there is nothing left. Take it out of a Pimm's and you still have essentially the same long, herbaceous, refreshing drink. Eatery A's version uses pomegranate, mint, cucumber and lemon, which covers the fruit, the herb and the acid.

That is worth knowing as a general strategy rather than just as a menu item. If you are in a bar with no alcohol-free list and need to order something decent, the drinks to ask for are the ones where the spirit was doing the least work — a Pimm's, a spritz, a mojito, a tiki build — rather than the ones where it was doing all of it.

Des Moines' tourism board documented the drink in January 2026.

This entry is graded three: one named build, no printed zero-proof section verified, no non-alcoholic spirits programme confirmed. What Eatery A adds to the guide is coverage. It serves 11am to 10pm Monday through Thursday, 9am to midnight on Friday and Saturday and 9am to 9pm on Sunday — seven days, breakfast onwards at weekends, with a daily happy hour from 2pm to 6pm. On the Ingersoll stretch alongside Fresko and The Bartender's Handshake, it is part of the most dependable few blocks in the city.