Understory

Understory sits in the Sky Deck at Del Mar Highlands Town Center, and it is themed on the understory itself — the layer of the forest that lives beneath the canopy, in the shade of everything taller. That ecological conceit runs through the room and, more usefully, through the drink names, which are drawn from butterflies, birds and plants. The format is unusual and worth understanding before you go: Understory is a bar rather than a restaurant, and guests order food from the surrounding Sky Deck restaurants and bring it to the table, pairing it with cocktails made tableside. That makes it a genuinely flexible destination for a group with different appetites.

Within the wider programme the bar keeps a small, deliberate non-alcoholic section built with the same care as the full-proof list. The signature is Boisduval's Marble — named for a butterfly — which combines blue lavender and black tea with lemon, kava, non-alcoholic Creole bitters and an aquafaba fizz for texture. That drink is a good illustration of what separates a considered zero-proof build from a poor one: black tea supplies tannin, the Creole bitters supply the aromatic bite, and the aquafaba supplies the weight and foam that alcohol otherwise provides, so the finished drink has structure rather than just flavour. Alongside it sit the Lustrous Copper and the Crimson Fruitcrow. San Diego Magazine's Kelly Davis singled out the same drink when covering the county's no-ABV options. One note for readers in recovery: the Boisduval's Marble contains kava, a mildly sedating South Pacific botanical that is alcohol-free but psychoactive — worth asking about if you would rather avoid it, since the other two builds do not use it. Open daily, late on Fridays and Saturdays. Del Mar Highlands sits well north of the city proper, so this is a North County destination rather than a San Diego one, and the Sky Deck format means a group can eat across several kitchens and still drink together at one table.