Little Rituals

Little Rituals sits on the fourth floor of a downtown Phoenix hotel block, above the shared lobby of a Residence Inn and Courtyard — an address that undersells it considerably. It has been a James Beard Award semifinalist for Outstanding Bar Program in consecutive years, 2024 and 2025, which puts it in national company, and the room is built for drinking rather than for hotel traffic: a proper bar, a terrace, and a team that treats the menu as a piece of work.

Roughly 40 percent of that menu can be made without alcohol, and the figure is meaningful because of how the bar is set up. Syrups, infusions and foams are produced in house and used across both sides of the list, so an alcohol-free order draws on the same larder as everything else instead of being assembled from what is open. The N/A Paloma is the signature — spirit-free blanco tequila, seasonal grapefruit soda, key lime and a touch of sea salt — and it is joined by an N/A White Grapefruit and Koji Paloma, which brings a fermented, savoury note that almost never appears in zero-proof drinks, and the blackberry-lemon Big City Nights. DiningOut Phoenix listed the bar among the metro's best for a mocktail in May 2026.

It keeps late hours by local standards, running to midnight Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday and to 1am on Friday and Saturday, closing Mondays. The fourth-floor position means a view over downtown, which is a real part of the appeal on a spring evening. As with every bar on this list at this level, it is a licensed cocktail room — the alcohol-free menu is a large, deliberate section of the offering rather than the whole of it, and the room fills with an after-work drinking crowd from about seven.