Melrose Umbrella Co.

Melrose Umbrella Co. has been on Melrose Avenue since 2013, and Time Out's four-star summary is the fair one: a dimly lit watering hole that has kept the good times coming with a fleet of reasonably priced cocktails. Owners Zach Patterson and Austin Melrose set out to build something nostalgic while the craft cocktail revival was still finding its feet, and the room is assembled from genuine salvage rather than reproduction — an 1890s fireplace facing an arched ceiling tiled in New York City subway tile, and a massive 1920s wooden apothecary cabinet shipped across the country and retrofitted into the back bar. Behind it there is a string-lit heated patio with a fireplace and couches. It opens at noon and runs to midnight, later at weekends, and takes reservations through Resy.

The non-alcoholic list is a real nine-item menu split across two printed sections, which is more than most cocktail bars of this vintage manage. Five drinks sit under Non-Alcoholic Cocktails at $15 each, and they lean on Ritual's zero-proof range for three of them: Not Even Smashed is a whiskey-alternative build with blackberry, mint, lemon and elderflower tonic; the Pa-No-Ma is a tequila-alternative paloma with prickly pear, green apple reduction and ruby red grapefruit; the Keto Pepino is a gin-alternative cucumber drink sweetened with monkfruit and finished with celery salt, which is the one to order if you want something savoury. The Valet is the most ambitious, layering Pathfinder with Pentire's Coastal Spritz aperitif and Seedlip Garden 108. The fifth is a canned Piña Margarita or Negroni from I'm Good. The second section, Non-Alcoholic Beers, Bubbles & Beyond, holds four cans at $7 — Athletic Brewing's Run Wild IPA, Deschutes' organic Kernza Golden, and two organic canned cocktails. One note on the menu's own wording: the section subhead promises drinks "pumped full of functional flavors & radical adaptogens", but no adaptogen is named in any of the five ingredient lists, so read that as marketing rather than a disclosed infusion. The Valet's Pathfinder is distilled from hemp seed and its maker states it contains no THC or CBD.