Velveteen Rabbit

Velveteen Rabbit was opened in 2013 by sisters Pamela and Christina Dylag, who took over what Forbes Travel Guide described as the forlorn wreckage of a burned-down furniture store on South Main Street and turned it into a dark, inviting Victorian-era parlour. They kept the fire's burn marks in the room and built around them with hand-stencilled walls, a shattered-mirror wall, mismatched vintage furnishings, velvet-covered couches, moody work by local artists, and a wide satiny wood bar fitted with purse hooks. Christina had worked as a hostess and server and kept an extensive home bar, but had never tended bar professionally before the two of them opened the place; the sisters drew their template from bars they had visited in Portland, Oregon and in Tokyo. It was one of the first cocktail bars in an Arts District that at the time still badly needed rehabilitation, and the sisters ran it as a community room from the start, collaborating with local artists on events and teaching bimonthly beginner cocktail classes built around the French 75, the whiskey sour and the Old Fashioned.

Each seasonal menu is built on fresh produce and house-made botanicals and syrups, poured alongside eight rotating beer taps and a boutique spirits list, with a magical pink outdoor patio off the back. The non-alcoholic cocktails are a standing, clearly labelled section of that menu at $14 apiece, composed with the same care as the full-proof drinks rather than being improvised on request. The current conspiracy-themed list carries four zero-proof builds: The Midnight Idol (verjus, fig and chamomile syrup, thyme, coconut milk, lime, aquafaba, tonic), Resurrection (NA gin, jasmine, blue spirulina, coconut, lemon, iris water, aquafaba, orange bitters), Lemur's Tale (NA tequila, guava, baobab-lychee syrup, vegan lime meringue), and the 27 Club (NA tequila, cilantro-infused NA sauvignon blanc, pear and lime oleo, orange bitters, lime, mint and lemon oil). Earlier builds Shadows in the Garden and The Empress have since rotated off. A spirit can be added to any zero-proof build for a surcharge, and non-alcoholic beer from Athletic and Coors is stocked.