Le Lounge

Le Lounge is the bar inside No Vacancy, an eight-room boutique guesthouse on the corner of 17th and Wyandotte in the Crossroads Arts District. It is genuinely hard to find on purpose: from the looks of the red brick building tucked off of 17th and Wyandotte Street, KCUR wrote, you would have no idea that there was a guesthouse with a chic hotel bar inside it. The room leans into that discovery. At first, the same piece noted, you might feel like you have wandered into a very chic house party in the 1990s — but that is the charm of it. Rather than a conventional bar with a rail and stools, service happens around a marble-covered island with the bartenders working in the middle of it, which KCUR likened to a beehive, bottles and glasses spread around them. It is a small, warm, deliberately residential space rather than a hotel lobby bar, and it is open to the public even though most people walking past do not realise it exists.

The non-alcoholic offering is short but properly made, and KCUR singled it out when surveying where to drink well without alcohol in Kansas City. The Sober Lush is the house zero-proof cocktail, built on grapefruit and citrus with jalapeño for heat — sharp and savoury rather than sweet, which suits a room where most of the list runs spirit-forward. Alongside it the bar keeps Athletic Brewing's golden ale, so there is a non-alcoholic beer option for anyone who would rather hold something familiar. Two practical notes worth having in advance. Service runs Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm and Friday and Saturday from 4pm, closing at 1am, so it is an evening venue with no daytime trade. And the venue does not maintain a working page of its own — the direct link that used to serve Le Lounge now returns an error — so hours and drinks are best confirmed through the guesthouse's main site or by asking on arrival.