The Pine Room

Harrods Creek is an old river settlement on the north-eastern edge of Jefferson County, the sort of place that had a general store and a boat dock before Louisville reached it, and The Pine Room is its restaurant. The building has a history of its own — the room was revived after a fire, and local coverage has framed the reopening as the Pine Room rising from the ashes — and what it is now is a proper neighbourhood restaurant with a serious bar, out where the city thins into the river road.

It earns its place here on inventory, which is the honest measure of whether a bar can actually make you a drink. Most restaurants that claim non-alcoholic cocktails own one bottle of something and improvise around it. The Pine Room stocks both Spiritless expressions made in Louisville: Kentucky 74, the reverse-distilled non-alcoholic bourbon that took Best Non-Alcoholic Spirit at the L.A. Spirits Awards, and Jalisco 55, its agave counterpart. With those two on the shelf, an old fashioned and a paloma — the two drinks a Kentucky bar is most often asked for — can both be built to spec rather than substituted with juice. The paloma is the build the city's zero-proof coverage names specifically.

Practically, this is a destination rather than a walk-in: about twenty minutes north-east of downtown Louisville along River Road, past Harrods Creek's marina strip. Dinner runs Tuesday through Sunday from 5pm, and there is weekend brunch from 9am, which is the easier slot for anyone who would rather not spend an evening in a room where the table is ordering wine. Watch Hill Proper in Norton Commons, which also pours Kentucky 74, is roughly ten minutes further on, and Fleur de Tea — one of only two fully alcohol-free rooms in this guide — is in the same corner of the county, which makes the north-east a more workable alcohol-free afternoon than its bourbon-heavy reputation suggests.