Four Walls

Four Walls sits inside The Joseph on 4th Avenue South, and finding it is part of the point — Nashville Scene's description is the accurate one: hard to find within the hotel but not a speakeasy per se, the sort of place where grabbing a drink is an event, with an ambiance that is civilised, proper lighting, and volume levels appropriate for easy conversation. In a city whose downtown is dominated by broadway bars competing on loudness, that last detail is the whole proposition. The menu runs in numbered volumes rather than seasons and is currently on Volume 5. Lead bartender Lawson Ballinger's approach, in the bar's own words, is to treat each drink like a scene — layered with unexpected ingredients, tactile presentation, and moments of interaction designed to unfold slowly across an evening.

The alcohol-free section is worth describing carefully, because it does not work like anyone else's. It is headed Mocktails | Alcohol-Free Experiences, and instead of listing finished drinks it lists ten flavour profiles and asks you to pick one: bright and zesty, rich and indulgent, herbaceous and fresh, spiced and warm, tropical and fruity, floral and aromatic, savoury and umami, sweet and silky, playful and effervescent, or complex and robust. Each carries three describing words — velvety, creamy, frothy for the rich one; earthy, vegetal, satisfying for the savoury — and then the instruction is simply to leave the rest to them. There are two reasons this is better than a fixed list. It removes the awkwardness of asking a bartender to improvise, which is what most non-drinkers have to do; and it puts the alcohol-free drinks on exactly the same footing as the bar's Elevated Highballs, which are presented in the identical format one page earlier. A non-drinker orders the same way everyone else does. Two practical notes: no price is printed against the mocktail section, which is the one gap, and if you would rather have a beer, the bar keeps Untitled Art's Italian-style pilsner at $8 and Athletic's Run Wild IPA at $9. Note also that the bar's own site links an older Volume 3 menu; the hotel's copy is the current one.