Lawrence Hall

Lawrence Hall is a food hall at 4609 Butler Street in Lawrenceville, in an 1890s building that has been a theatre and a car dealership in its previous lives, and it took Brett Minarik, Phoebe Fraser and Adam Harvey five years of renovation and red tape to open it in April 2024. Fraser's account of getting there is worth repeating: along the way they had many opportunities to stop, to give up the ship, but there was something in all of them that said keep going. It holds four independent restaurants, a Leona's ice cream shop, seating for 225 and a mezzanine over the whole operation, with a full bar called Dear James — named for Captain James Lawrence, whose dying order at sea gave the neighbourhood its name.

Dear James is the reason this belongs on any serious alcohol-free list, because the bar did something almost no venue does: it hired a non-alcoholic beverage consultant to build the programme. That consultant is Katrina Tomacchio, who spent years advising Boston-area bars and restaurants on zero-proof drinks before moving here, who gave up alcohol herself five years ago, who bills herself as Pittsburgh's Mocktail Queen, and who — with her husband Anthony — owns two of the hall's own tenant restaurants. Her design principle is the clearest statement of the case anyone in this city has made: you have to think about the guest experience first, so the guest walks away feeling as much thought, care and effort went into their mocktail as would go into a cocktail. The rest of it is the argument in full — when a bar programme excels in the non-alcoholic arena, it shows people they do not have to feel like they are missing out just because they are not drinking; you can still go out, still meet your friends for drinks, and order something that is not glorified soda or a Shirley Temple. The drinks use hyper-local sourcing, house-made syrups and original recipes. One documented example gives the flavour: the Capture of The Chesapeake, a campfire espresso martini of cold brew, Lyre's coffee and white cane spirits, graham cracker syrup and non-alcoholic aromatic bitters, served with a torched marshmallow. The menu rotates by season and is published only through the bar's ordering system, so treat that as an illustration rather than a promise.