The Tavern

The Tavern occupies a corner of North Main Street in the Brady Arts District, Tulsa's downtown arts quarter, and it does the two things a restaurant needs to do to be genuinely useful to a non-drinker: it has written a mocktail menu of its own, and it keeps zero-proof beer in the fridge.

Those are different needs and it is unusual for a restaurant to meet both. A mocktail menu serves the person who wants an occasion drink, something constructed and interesting, and it is what makes a birthday dinner feel like a birthday dinner. Alcohol-free beer serves the person who just wants what everyone else is having without any fuss, and it is what makes a Tuesday feel normal. Restaurants that carry only one of the two are answering half the question.

The Tavern has been picked out in local news coverage of Tulsa's growing sober-friendly scene as an example of the shift, alongside Nothing's Left's non-alcoholic brewing — the argument being that it is becoming easier to go out and feel included as more businesses add mocktail menus and zero-proof beer and wine.

This entry records no signature drinks. The mocktail menu is not published in a form that could be read for this guide, and this directory does not print a drink name it has not seen, so what is recorded is the standing structure rather than the current list. Ask for the mocktail menu by name; it exists.

The hours are broad and consistent: 11am to 11pm Sunday through Thursday, 11am to 1am on Friday and Saturday, seven days a week with no closed day. It is a two-minute walk from Saturn Room and Shuffles, which makes the Brady district the most practical base for an evening out in Tulsa without drinking.