Starlite

Starlite occupies the top floor of the Beacon Grand, the Union Square hotel formerly known as the Sir Francis Drake, and dates its bar programme to 1928. The room reopened as part of the hotel's restoration with a cocktail list designed by Scott Baird, a San Francisco bartender best known for The Bon Vivants and Trick Dog, and a small-plates menu from Michelin-awarded chef Johnny Spero. The drinks are written as short stories about the city — a Cable Car Redux, a Pisco Punch that nods to Duncan Nichol's lost recipe at the old Bank Exchange, a Baghdad by the Bay borrowed from Herb Caen — served on the 21st floor with panoramic views and an all-vinyl soundtrack.

The non-alcoholic drinks are not an afterthought bolted onto the back of the list. They occupy a named section of the printed menu, The Free Spirited, and are built with the same technique as the full-proof cocktails. The four zero-proof drinks are named for the seasons and priced at $16, against $16 to $22 for the alcoholic ones. Spring is Navarro verjus with lemon, honey, chamomile and club soda. Summer combines passion fruit, lime, vanilla, coconut water, butterfly pea flower and saline. Autumn is jasmine tea with pomegranate, a ginger five-spice syrup, sweet white miso and lemon. Winter uses carrot juice, toasted almond milk, cinnamon, star anise and Meyer lemon. Below them the section lists NON 1, the Australian zero-proof bottling made from whole raspberry, chamomile, Murray River salt, cane sugar and verjus, available by the glass at $16 or by the bottle at $64, and Athletic Brewing's Upside Dawn golden ale at $7. Because the four seasonal drinks change with the calendar rather than sitting static, a returning guest gets a different zero-proof list through the year, which is unusual for a hotel bar of this size. The bar trades Thursday to Sunday only, from 4pm, running to 2am on Friday and Saturday nights, and a 20 per cent service charge is added to every check and shared among the team.