Fort Oak

Fort Oak sits on Fort Stockton Drive in Mission Hills, in a mid-century building that used to be a car showroom, and it is the restaurant where chef Brad Wise's live-fire cooking is at its most formal — a hearth at the centre of the room, dry-aged steaks, whole fish and a serious raw bar. The group's own description calls it an ode to the fire and the sea.

The drinks list gives non-drinkers a printed Spirit Free heading with five entries, which is more than most restaurants at this price level bother with. Adventura, at fourteen dollars, is the one built from scratch: aplós arise — a hemp-free botanical non-alcoholic spirit — with lemon, lemongrass, pandan and soda, which is a genuinely aromatic drink rather than a sweetened juice. Beside it sits St. Agrestis' Phony Negroni at fifteen, the Brooklyn-made bottled aperitif that has become the default good answer for anyone who wants something properly bitter, and a NON1 sparkling at fifteen, served with salted raspberry and chamomile, from the Australian producer that makes wine alternatives for restaurant lists.

The last two cover the categories a cocktail list usually forgets. Athletic Brewing's Upside Dawn golden ale is eight dollars, and Golden State's dry and mighty is a ten-dollar alcohol-removed cider — worth knowing because cider is the hardest of the three drink categories to find without alcohol in a restaurant.

The practical notes are about timing. The restaurant is closed on Tuesdays, opens at four the rest of the week, and runs to nine on weeknights and ten on Friday and Saturday. There is a happy hour early in the evening and an oyster night on Mondays. As with the rest of the group's rooms, the spirit-free section is refreshed along with the main cocktail list, so the two house builds are the part most likely to change between visits; the bottled products tend to stay. This is a licensed restaurant with a well-chosen alcohol-free shelf rather than a destination for non-drinkers specifically, and it works best for a mixed table.

The building is worth a word, because it explains the room. Fort Oak occupies a mid-century car showroom, and the conversion kept the height and the glass, which makes it one of the brighter dining rooms in a city with a lot of dark ones. The hearth is in the middle rather than hidden in a kitchen, so the cooking is visible from most tables. If you are coming specifically for the alcohol-free list rather than dinner, the bar and the raw bar are the places to sit, and the early-evening happy hour is when the room is quiet enough to talk to the bartender about what else they can build.