Seviche, A Latin Restaurant

Anthony Lamas opened Seviche on Bardstown Road in 2005 and has spent two decades making it one of the fixed points of Louisville dining — a Latin restaurant built on ceviche, Southern produce and a genuine cocktail programme, run by a chef who has been a James Beard Award semifinalist and a recurring television presence. The room sits in Deer Park, the stretch of the Highlands where Bardstown Road is restaurants rather than bars.

For a non-drinker the useful thing here is not a printed list — it is the kitchen's raw materials and the staff's willingness to use them. A Latin bar runs on muddled herbs, fresh citrus, agave and fruit purées, all of which are already prepped for the cocktails; the alcohol is one line item rather than the structure. So the standing non-alcoholic mojito is a real drink — mint muddled to order, lime, sugar, soda — and the more valuable offer is that the bartenders will build something bespoke if you tell them what you like. That is a different proposition from a bar with three fixed mocktails, and often a better one: you get a drink built for your palate rather than the one drink the bar decided non-drinkers want.

It is worth being straightforward about the limits. Seviche does not stock a deep bench of non-alcoholic spirits the way Proof on Main does, so a spirit-forward alcohol-free drink is not really on offer here; what you get is fresh, bright and built from produce. Dinner runs seven nights from 5pm, to 9pm most nights and 10pm on Friday and Saturday, and reservations are sensible at weekends. This is also one of the better entries in the guide for a group where only one person is not drinking, because the food is the reason everyone came.