Polite Provisions

Polite Provisions opened in 2013 from the San Diego hospitality group CH Projects, in a 1920s apothecary-style room with a long marble bar near the North Park and Normal Heights border, and it has carried James Beard and Tales of the Cocktail recognition for most of the time since. After a closure tied to a liquor-licence suspension it reopened in early 2025 with a reworked menu organised into five sections, one of them a dedicated Sans Alcohol list, under beverage director Alicia Perry — who framed the return as bringing back "our new cocktail menu, inclusive of 30 new offerings and a variety of non-spirited options." That a bar of this stature rebuilt its list with a standing zero-proof section rather than a token pair of drinks is the useful signal here.

The zero-proof builds lean directly into the room's soda-fountain heritage, which is the smartest thing about them: an apothecary bar with a housemade-soda tradition already has the technique for good non-alcoholic drinks, and does not need to fake body with sugar. Daisy's Soda Pop combines apple spice, pomegranate and lime with soda; Gabe's Painless Killer works passionfruit, coconut, pineapple and lime into a tiki register. Alongside those sit brand-built drinks — a Cinnamon Cherry Cola on Pentire, and a Cacao Strawberry on Feragaia, the Scottish non-alcoholic botanical spirit — and some of the list is served as ice cream floats, which is both a genuine period detail and a format almost nobody else offers a non-drinking adult. Hours run to 2am seven nights a week, so this functions as a proper late bar rather than an early-evening stop, and a non-drinker can stay for the whole night with something in hand that was made rather than opened. For a bar that has held national recognition for over a decade, that is a meaningful signal about where the category now sits.