Union Jack Pub

Union Jack Pub has been part of the Broad Ripple furniture for decades — a British-themed pizza pub on Broad Ripple Avenue, in a neighbourhood whose reputation is otherwise built on late bars and a strip of nightlife that is not friendly to anyone avoiding alcohol. It is on this list for one drink, made well. The Elderflower Garden uses Seedlip Garden, the pea, rosemary, thyme and spearmint expression of the London non-alcoholic distillate, over an elderflower simple syrup and tonic. That is the correct construction for a gin-and-tonic substitute: the botanical distillate does the aromatic work that gin would, the tonic brings the quinine bitterness, and the elderflower keeps it from tasting thin. It is one of four venues on this list pouring Seedlip, and Indy Maven named it in its round-up of the city's best mocktails.

The practical value here is the hours and the format. Most of the credible zero-proof lists in Indianapolis are in evening bars that open at 4pm or 5pm; Union Jack opens at 11am on weekdays and 10am at weekends, serves pizza all day, and takes families. For someone not drinking, a pub you can go to at lunchtime is a different and often more useful proposition than a cocktail bar you can only reach after dark.

One point of confusion to head off. Union Jack Pub ran a second, older location in Speedway near the Motor Speedway for 41 years, and that one has closed permanently — it still appears in circulating guides and on map listings. The Broad Ripple pub at 921 Broad Ripple Avenue is the one trading. Note the street number: some published guides give 924, which is the opposite side of the road. Broad Ripple is a mile north of the SoBro Orangily bottle shop up the Monon Trail, and Cholita is two doors along the same block, so an alcohol-free afternoon in this neighbourhood is straightforward to assemble.