Gin Gin's

Gin Gin's occupies 345 Summer Avenue NW, a block off the main Bridge Street strip on the West Side, and trades as a neighbourhood cocktail bar and kitchen rather than a destination cocktail room. Its own tagline — "There's always time for a good time" — sets the register, and the venue turns up regularly on local date-night lists. Hours run Monday through Thursday 4pm to 11pm, Friday 4pm to 11:30pm and Saturday 3pm to 11:30pm, closed Sunday.

The zero-proof offer is modest in size and specific in kind. Three crafted spirit-free cocktails sit on the standing menu — made by the bar, rotating, and not individually named in the sources available, so they are not listed here as signature drinks. The documented item is the canned St. Agrestis Phony Negroni, which is worth explaining because it fills a gap most non-alcoholic lists cannot. Zero-proof drinks skew sweet and fruit-forward, because sugar and acid are the easiest things to build with once the spirit is gone; genuine bitterness is much harder, and it is exactly what a negroni drinker is looking for. The Phony Negroni, made by the Brooklyn amaro producer St. Agrestis, is built on bitter orange and gentian and lands close enough to the original to work as a substitute rather than a consolation. Stocking it is a small decision that tells you something about the bar's intent, in the same way that Buffalo Traders buying Little Saints does. For a guest who does not drink, Gin Gin's is best understood as one stop on a West Side circuit rather than a whole evening: it is a few minutes from Drip Drop Cocktail Room on Bridge Street, which has the deeper named list, and from The Knickerbocker, which brews its own alcohol-free beer.