Vesper

Vesper opened in September 2020 at 924 Garrett Street in Glenwood Park, just off the BeltLine, from owners Damien McGee and Jon Tilley. The concept is James Bond, pursued further than a theme bar usually bothers to: hunter-green walls, jewel-toned velvet, mid-century lines, and a name taken from the Vesper martini Ian Fleming invented in Casino Royale. Opening a cocktail bar in September 2020 was its own kind of gamble, and the room has outlasted the circumstances.

What earns it a place here is the zero-proof section, which the bar calls 00 Proof — the Bond usage, and a signal about how it is treated. This is not a courtesy list of juice. Nearly every drink on it is anchored by a Ritual Zero Proof non-alcoholic spirit, with a few built on Lyre's, meaning the drinks are constructed from a spirit base the same way the alcoholic list is. Named options include the Not So Stormy, the Bonito, a zero-proof Old Fashioned, the Slo Gin Fizz, a Paloma and a Nigroni.

The Old Fashioned and the Nigroni are the tell. Both are spirit-forward, bitter, stirred drinks with nowhere to hide — no citrus, no sugar, no bubbles to cover a weak base. A bar that puts those on a zero-proof menu is making a claim about its NA spirits and its own technique, and it is the kind of claim most bars quietly avoid by offering only shaken, fruit-driven drinks. Bitterness is the hardest quality to reproduce without alcohol and the one that makes a drink read as adult.

The kitchen serves American and Spanish-leaning tapas built for sharing, indoors or on the patio, and the bar opens daily at 5pm. For a non-drinker this is an ordinary cocktail bar that happens to have done the work — which, on a night out with friends who are drinking, is often exactly what is wanted.