High Praise Rooftop Bar

High Praise sits on the roof of the InterContinental San Antonio Riverwalk on East Pecan Street, in the middle of the downtown hotel district. Visit San Antonio names two of its non-alcoholic drinks: Lime in Coconut and Mediodia.

The value here is redundancy, which sounds like faint praise and is not. San Antonio's downtown hotel corridor holds an enormous share of the city's visitors, and a large proportion of any group staying there will include somebody who is not drinking — pregnant, driving, in recovery, on antibiotics, or simply not in the mood. One rooftop with named zero-proof drinks is luck. Two, within walking distance of each other, starts to be a scene. Between High Praise and The Moon's Daughters at the Thompson, a non-drinker downtown has an actual choice of rooftops rather than a single option to hope is open.

Mediodia means midday, which suits a bar that does much of its trade in Saturday and Sunday afternoon light rather than at night.

The schedule is the significant limitation and needs stating plainly: closed Monday through Thursday. It opens Friday at 5pm, Saturday at noon to 10pm, and Sunday noon to 6pm. This is a weekend venue, and a midweek visitor will find it shut. Anyone downtown on a Tuesday should head for The Moon's Daughters, which serves from 7am daily, or Double Standard a few streets away. Within its window, though, the view over the river and the named drinks make it a straightforward recommendation. Saturday afternoon is the best time to catch it, when the room opens at noon and the light over downtown is at its most forgiving.