Violet's

Violet's sits on the corner of Clement Street and 24th Avenue in the Outer Richmond, a stretch of the city where the drinking options run mostly to long-standing Irish bars and where a full cocktail programme is unusual. The restaurant changed hands and reopened under new management, keeping the room's bar-forward layout and adding a kitchen that leans on San Francisco standards — cioppino, fried chicken, weekend brunch — rather than on anything more fashionable. It is a short walk from Ocean Beach Cafe, which makes the western end of Clement one of the few parts of the city where two venues with serious alcohol-free lists sit within a few blocks of each other.

The non-alcoholic drinks are set out under their own heading, The Pure Pour, and cost $14, which is level with the $14 to $15 charged for the full-proof cocktails — a detail that says more about how seriously a bar takes the category than any amount of menu copy. House Finch is built on Giffard's aperitif syrup and Mionetto's non-alcoholic aperitivo with passion fruit, vanilla, lime and tonic. Paradiso Beach is the tropical entry, using Giffard orgeat and Giffard coconut with grapefruit, lemon and cinnamon. The Venetian Spritz combines Mionetto's aperitivo with Giffard aperitif and club soda for a lower-sugar aperitivo-hour drink. A Phony Negroni and a Falso Amaro round the section out for anyone who wants bitterness rather than fruit. Below the cocktails, the beer list carries Athletic Brewing's IPA at $8 next to Original Pattern and taco truck lagers. The restaurant serves dinner from 5pm every night, with brunch service from 10am on Saturday and Sunday. Two of the five drinks — the Phony Negroni and the Falso Amaro — are aimed squarely at the bitter end of the spectrum, which matters in a category that usually defaults to fruit and sugar, and the presence of a named house build on Giffard orgeat and coconut shows the bar is treating its non-alcoholic syrups as cocktail ingredients rather than as sweeteners. For the western half of the city it is the deepest zero-proof cocktail list outside Ocean Beach Cafe.