The Daily Kitchen & Bar

The Daily Kitchen & Bar sits on West Cary Street in Carytown and built its identity around clean, health-conscious cooking well before that became a category. The drinks follow the food: several house mocktails built on sodas, kombucha, and non-alcoholic beer kept in stock rather than grudgingly located on request.

Its value to someone who is not drinking is less about the sophistication of the drinks than about the room. In a cocktail bar, the alcohol-free order is a small act of self-identification — the server registers it, sometimes the table does. In a restaurant where a good proportion of the customers came specifically for the wellness-oriented menu, ordering a kombucha is the least remarkable thing happening at any given table. For anyone in early sobriety, or simply tired of explaining themselves, that anonymity is worth more than an elaborate zero-proof cocktail served with a raised eyebrow.

The kombucha is worth its own note, because it does something most mocktails cannot. Fermentation gives it acidity, tannin and a faint funk — the structural qualities that make an alcoholic drink interesting — so it stands up to food across a whole meal rather than becoming cloying halfway through. It is the closest thing on most menus to a genuine wine substitute at dinner.

Hours are the practical advantage: 11am to 9pm on weekdays and from 10am at weekends means brunch, lunch, afternoon and dinner are all covered, which is unusual among Richmond's alcohol-free-friendly venues, most of which are either daytime shops or evening bars. It sits a short walk from Lolita's and from Point 5, so the three together make a workable Carytown afternoon. For a visitor with one day in Richmond and no interest in drinking, that block of West Cary Street is the single most efficient thing to plan around.