The Friesian Gastro Pub

The Friesian Gastro Pub opened on the Michigan Street corridor in 2018 and has settled into the role of a genuine neighbourhood room — casual enough for a quick plate, equipped for a date night or a long sit with friends. The kitchen updates its menu weekly with globally-inspired selections and keeps an unusually deep vegetarian and vegan roster for a gastropub, while still smoking its own bacon and baking its own carrot cake. It sits in Midtown, close to the Michigan Street medical corridor, which gives it a steady mixed trade of hospital staff, students and residents rather than a purely nightlife crowd.

The pub earns its place in an alcohol-free guide on the architecture of its drink list rather than on a single headline drink. Its published drink menu is split into Cocktails, Drafts, Wine, Cans, Liquor, Sake and Sparkling — and Non-Alcoholic Beverages, given equal billing as its own section rather than appended as a footnote. That distinction is the difference between a bar that will make you something and a bar that has already decided what it serves you. The builds themselves are composed drinks at composed-drink prices: the Cherry Apple Tonic combines Fruitbelt apple tonic with Luxardo maraschino cherry syrup and vanilla simple syrup, finished with a Luxardo cocktail cherry, at $8; Matcha Millions puts matcha green tea with coconut milk and strawberry puree in a glass rimmed with basil sugar, at $7; and a blueberry-and-honey build runs lavender syrup, lemon juice and lemonade at $5. Coffee, tea, juices, soft drinks and non-alcoholic beer fill out the rest. The pub trades 3pm to 10pm Monday through Thursday, 3pm to midnight Friday, noon to midnight Saturday and noon to 8pm Sunday. One practical note: two different phone numbers circulate for the venue in online directories and its own site does not settle the question, so book through the website or Tock rather than by phone.