Mint Mark

Mint Mark built its reputation in a small room on Winnebago Street on Madison's near east side, doing a short, precise menu of shared plates with a bar programme that took itself seriously without being solemn, and has since moved to a larger space at 1874 East Washington Avenue in Emerson East. The move is worth knowing because older listings and several guides still point at the Winnebago address.

The zero-proof drinks are among the most consistently cited in Madison. "What Is This, A Titleist?" and "Narrow Straits" both sit on the standing menu, and the names tell you something real about the programme: they are written in the same voice as the cocktails, which in practice is the clearest signal that the alcohol-free drinks were developed alongside the rest of the list rather than appended to it. City Cast Madison names both in its guide to the city's best non-alcoholic cocktails, and the venue appears in Visit Madison's own round-up of high-end kitchens running zero-proof menus, alongside Merchant and Heritage Tavern.

The structure of the day is the practical selling point. Mint Mark runs coffee service on weekday mornings from 7am to 2pm, dinner from 5pm, and keeps the bar open until 2am Monday through Saturday. Very few venues anywhere in this registry cover that span, and for a non-drinker it means one room can be the morning coffee, the dinner and the late drink — which removes the awkward part of a night out, where everyone else moves on to a bar and you decide whether to follow. It sits about a mile north-east of the Capitol along East Washington, an easy walk or a short bus ride from the Square, with Public Parking on East Johnson roughly halfway between.