Martina

Martina opened in 2018 on Upton Avenue South and gave Linden Hills its first cocktail bar, in a neighbourhood that until then had run on ice cream and bakeries. It was Daniel del Prado's first restaurant of his own and the beginning of a group that now includes Rosalia next door, Porzana in the North Loop and several others. The food blends Argentinian and Italian cooking; the bar was built by Marco Zappia, previously of Lawless Distilling and Grand Cafe, on a technical premise that turns out to matter for non-drinkers: Zappia designed the drinks around roughly fifty percent dilution from non-alcoholic ingredients, against the thirty percent typical of a cocktail bar, which means the house style was never dependent on spirit alone to carry a drink.

That shows in the zero-proof column, which sits inside the cocktail menu at $12 rather than in a separate section, and which rotates with what is in season. The current three run in different directions. Tropical is the most straightforward — passion fruit, mango and lime under carbonation. Apollo is the most interesting: it uses a non-alcoholic berry amaro against masala chai and lime, borrowing the bitterness and spice that a real amaro would bring and then rebuilding the length with tea. Lemongrass works ginger, galangal and lemon verbena into a carbonated build that reads as Southeast Asian rather than Italian, which is where the tourism board's description of the list leaning "toward the tropics and Southeast Asia" comes from. Beyond the house drinks, Martina pours ISH sparkling rose by the glass and stocks Gruvi's Juicy Dayz non-alcoholic IPA at $6. The restaurant is licensed and its wine and cocktail programme is the main event — this is not an alcohol-free room — but the spirit-free drinks are made with the same attention and are priced within a dollar of their alcoholic equivalents. Dinner runs nightly, with weekend brunch.