Lunarium

The problem with being a non-drinker in most cities is not the drinks, it is the hours. Cafés shut at three in the afternoon and bars open at four, so the part of the evening when everyone else is out is exactly the part with nowhere to go. Lunarium is Spokane's answer to that, and it is almost the only one left.

Dorian Karahalios and Aimee Clark opened it in 2021 in the former Atomic Threads Boutique on North Monroe Street, in the North Monroe District, and built it as a late-night lounge rather than a daytime café that stays open a bit longer. It runs 3pm to midnight from Wednesday to Saturday and 3pm to 9pm on Sunday. The offer is slow-bar coffee — including Vietnamese coffee — tea by the pot, house-made craft sodas and jam, scratch-baked pastries and cookies, and a real dinner menu built on gourmet grilled cheese, avocado toast and savoury scones. There is a stage for live events and a conference room, so the space is used for readings, music and work as much as for sitting.

The framing on its own site is a fair summary of the room: come read a book, write a book or sketch up a storm once the day is done. That is a description of a third place, and third places that operate at 10pm without a liquor licence are genuinely rare.

A note on how this entry is graded and worded. Lunarium does not describe itself as an alcohol-free venue, and this directory does not put that label on a business that has not claimed it. What is verifiable is that its published drinks list is entirely non-alcoholic — coffee, tea and craft sodas — and that it keeps evening hours no café in the city matches. After Patera Temperance Lounge closed, this is the closest Spokane has to a room where the whole menu works for a non-drinker.

Closed Monday and Tuesday.

One practical caution about the North Monroe District: it is a driving neighbourhood rather than a walking one, roughly two miles north of downtown along Monroe Street, so this is not a stop you fold into an evening on Main Avenue. Treat it as the destination. The reward is a room where nobody is drinking around you at eleven o'clock at night, which in Spokane is now close to unique, and where the kitchen is still sending out food when most of the city's cafes have been dark for eight hours.