The Rum House

The Rum House is a Caribbean taqueria and rum bar at 3128 Magazine Street, open daily from 11am to 10pm, and it has been on that stretch since 2009. The bar is stocked with a couple of hundred rums, the kitchen does island-style tacos, and chef Terri Savoie runs it. All of which makes the non-alcoholic list an unlikely thing to find here, and a genuinely interesting one, because it did not come from the bar alone.

The three zero-proof drinks are a collaboration with Fleurty Girl, the New Orleans clothing and gift company founded by Lauren Haydel, and they are named the way that partnership implies. The Heaux Ranch Water is non-alcoholic Free Spirits tequila with lime juice and soda water, sold under the line "heauxld the booze". The Fleurty Faux-Rita is described as all of the spicy kick with none of the hangover — non-alcoholic tequila, lime, agave and jalapeños. The Teasequila Sunrise is Free Spirits tequila with orange juice and grenadine, with the tagline all of the sparkle and none of the stumble. All three are built on the same non-alcoholic agave spirit, which is a sensible choice for a bar whose expertise is elsewhere: rather than assemble a scratch programme it does not have the bench for, it picked one credible bottle and built three familiar drinks properly around it. Haydel's own reason for doing it is the one that carries: she said she was thrilled to see alternative options in a city where alcohol is everywhere, which is as concise a statement of the problem New Orleans poses to a non-drinker as anyone has managed. The naming is unmistakably local and a little arch, and it changes the social register of ordering — asking for a Heaux Ranch Water in a room full of rum drinkers is a different act from asking for a mocktail. Prices are not published; the bar's own website is behind a security check that blocks automated access, so its current menu could not be read remotely.