No Hard Feelings

The single most useful thing a bar can do for a non-drinker is stay open late. Sobriety does not come with an early bedtime, and the hours between midnight and two are when a city's alcohol-free options collapse to nothing. No Hard Feelings, on Broad Street in downtown Chattanooga, runs to 1am Monday through Wednesday and 2am from Thursday through Sunday — later than anything else in this guide.

It also keeps a real non-alcoholic spirit behind the bar. Seedlip Garden 108 is the herbaceous expression of the range, built on peas and hay with spearmint, rosemary and thyme, and it is the one that actually works in a gimlet because the vegetal, green character does the job juniper would. The bar's Blackberry Basil Gimlet is offered built on it with blackberry syrup and lemon, which means the alcohol-free order is the same cocktail off the same menu rather than a separate, sadder drink brought out afterwards.

That structural point is worth spelling out because it is the difference between accommodation and inclusion. A bar that hands a non-drinker a different menu has marked them out; a bar that builds the house cocktail without the gin has not. NOOGAtoday flagged this specific substitution in its guide to non-alcoholic drinking in the city.

The room itself is a proper late bar — dark, loud enough, and busier after eleven than before it — which is either the appeal or the warning depending on what you are looking for. If you want a quiet drink, come at five; if you want to still be out when everyone else is, this is the only realistic option in the metro.

Weekend opening moves an hour earlier, to 4pm on Saturday and Sunday.