Lucky Star

Lucky Star opened on 6 December 2024 in the lobby of the Star Metals office complex at 1055 Howell Mill Road, from chef Jason Liang and John Chen — the partners behind Brush, the Michelin-starred sushi counter in Buckhead, as well as Momonoki and Momo Cafe in Midtown. It was, for Liang, a reconnection with his Taiwanese roots after years of working in Japanese cooking. The format changes across the day: coffee, pastries and Taiwanese breakfast and lunch dishes from mid-morning, then a break, then a reopening at four or five as a cocktail bar with an à la carte menu and a cocktail omakase option. Co-beverage directors Kirk Gibson and Nik Soukavona run the drinks programme, which leans hard on laboratory method — centrifuge clarification, controlled dilution, house cordials and syrups built from scratch.

The reason it belongs on a non-alcoholic guide is that the method does not change when the alcohol comes out. DiningOut put it plainly in 2026: the techniques do not change based on what is in the glass. Three spirit-free drinks are named on the menu. Bee's Ginger sits on a non-alcoholic gin base with honey, lemon and fresh ginger, a straightforward sour given backbone by the botanical base. Tomato + Tonic is the technical showpiece — tomato clarified until it is water-clear, then lengthened with Fever-Tree tonic, so the drink reads savoury and dry rather than like a juice. Aztec January layers passionfruit and lemon over a house-made mole syrup, using chilli and chocolate bitterness to do the work that alcohol would otherwise do. The drinks are designed to be paired with the kitchen's food rather than drunk in isolation, which is the tell of a programme that treats zero-proof as part of the meal. The bar trades Wednesday through Saturday into the late evening and closes Monday and Tuesday.