The Usual

The Usual has anchored the cocktail end of Fort Worth's Near Southside since well before zero-proof drinking became a category, and the way its non-alcoholic list is presented tells you how the bar thinks about it. Rather than a courtesy line at the bottom of the menu, the NA drinks occupy their own printed section titled "Practical Choices (NA)," named for the drink at its head, and they are built and priced alongside the spirituous list rather than beneath it.

Four builds carry the section. Practical Choices combines Lyre's London Spirit with lemon, molasses and sage. Great Obsession is the most ambitious of the four, layering Lyre's non-alcoholic gin with a non-alcoholic verbena aperitif, lemon, Earl Grey and a non-alcoholic IPA — a stacked, bitter-leaning drink of the kind that usually only exists in alcohol. Fire Adjacent works Black Ginger non-alcoholic spirit against lemon, honey-ginger syrup and chicory pecan bitters, and La Curandera finishes with Lyre's Spiced Cane, Earl Grey, orgeat and smoked sea salt.

This is a working cocktail bar with a full spirits program, not an alcohol-free room, and the NA drinks sit at the upper end of the price list rather than the bottom. What it offers a non-drinking guest is parity: an order that arrives looking and tasting like everyone else's, in a room where the bartending is the reason people come. The bar keeps late hours by Fort Worth standards, running to 2am Thursday through Saturday.