Navy Strength

Navy Strength opened on 30 March 2017 in Belltown, from Anu Apte and Chris Elford, and Seattle Met's line on opening night still holds: tiki bar is a woefully incomplete descriptor for it. The conceit is that the drinks list travels — it embraces a new set of international flavours every six months, and the first destination was India, chosen in homage to Apte's heritage. It took Best New American Cocktail Bar at the 2018 Spirited Awards at Tales of the Cocktail, which is the industry's own verdict rather than a listicle's. The food is generous bar cooking: a $19 nachos platter built to share, sliders at $7 apiece including a teriyaki-glazed spam musubi, Pacific Northwest oysters at $4.50 with a tepache mignonette, and a $28 charcuterie board borrowed from sister shop Vinnie's. It opens Wednesday to Saturday from 4pm, later at weekends, and it is 21-and-over.

For a non-drinker the important fact is structural rather than lyrical: Navy Strength always keeps non-alcoholic drinks on the menu, printed under their own heading, rather than treating them as a request. There are three, all $12, and they rotate as the travel list rotates: the Sober Saturn, the Mint Sour and the Pom Pom. The bar describes them the way it describes its cocktails — the Sober Saturn as bright, zesty and passion fruit; the Mint Sour as easy-drinking, light and yummy; the Pom Pom as fruity, refreshing, bubbly and chuggable. That last word is doing more work than it looks like, because chuggable is exactly what a non-drinker needs in a room where everyone else is on a second round. One honest limitation: unlike Rob Roy up the road, Navy Strength prints only those tasting notes and no ingredients, so if you need to know what is actually in a drink — for an allergy, or because you want to avoid a particular non-alcoholic spirit — you will have to ask at the bar. There is also a Mindful Boilermaker at $12, a non-alcoholic IPA with a shot of Pathfinder amaro, but it is billed at 0.5% ABV rather than zero.