Fizzy's Fountain & Liquors

Fizzy's Fountain & Liquors opened in March 2020 — timing that would have finished most bars — and survived to become one of the more distinctive rooms in Omaha. It is in Little Bohemia, the South 13th Street district, and the concept is a classic American soda fountain rebuilt for adults: booths with vintage rotary phones you use to place your order, a retro fit-out, house-made sodas, mocktails, boozy milkshakes and diner food including a fried bologna sandwich and a short rib melt.

The reason it grades well for alcohol-free drinking is structural rather than a matter of any single drink. At a soda fountain, the soda is the product. The house sodas here are the thing the bar is known for and the thing it makes itself, which means a non-drinker ordering one is ordering the signature rather than the substitute — the exact inversion of the usual bar experience, where the alcohol-free option is whatever was left over. The mocktail list sits alongside them.

There is one caveat that has to be stated plainly, because the format invites the wrong assumption. Fizzy's is 21-and-over. A soda fountain with milkshakes on the menu sounds like somewhere to bring a family, and it is not — the door policy is adults only, which is a disappointment worth discovering here rather than on the pavement outside with children in tow.

The hours are the other constraint and they are tighter than most: closed Monday and Tuesday entirely, 5pm onwards Wednesday through Friday, with a split weekend service that adds 11am to 3pm on Saturday and Sunday.

This entry records no signature drinks. The house sodas rotate and the mocktail list is not published in a readable form, so what is documented here is the standing premise, which is well attested by Omaha's local press.