Leopold's Books Bar Caffe

Leopold's Books Bar Caffe is exactly what its unwieldy name says: a bookshop with a café counter and a bar licence, on Regent Street in Greenbush, near the western edge of the University of Wisconsin campus. The combination is not a gimmick — the books are for sale and worth browsing, the coffee is made properly, and the room is arranged so that reading alone at a table for two hours is normal behaviour rather than something that needs explaining.

That is the whole argument for it as a non-alcoholic destination, and it is a strong one. The hardest part of not drinking is not usually the drink; it is that the social venues available are all organised around drinking, so a non-drinker either performs at a bar or stays home. A bookshop that is open until midnight every single night, and from 10am six days a week, solves that without needing to be alcohol-free. The named drinks hold up too: the Leopold's Scarlet Mule sets hibiscus and sage against ginger beer and orange bitters — bitters being the detail that separates a built drink from a soft one — and a pomegranate sage spritz runs alongside it. Madison Eats Food Tours singles out the spritz; City Cast Madison names the mule.

Practically: it is on the Regent Street side of campus, walkable from the UW stadium area and an easy bus ride from downtown, and the midnight close every night is genuinely unusual for anywhere in this guide that is not a bar. It does serve alcohol, so this is not a sober space — but the centre of gravity is the books and the coffee, and the proportion of the room drinking on any given weeknight is low. For a solo visit, or for a first sober outing where a bar feels like too much, this is probably the best recommendation in Madison.