Wild Sage Bistro

Wild Sage has been one of Spokane's better dining rooms for years — contemporary American cooking on West 2nd Avenue downtown, white tablecloths without stiffness, and a bar that does more than pour wine for the tables. It earns its place here on the strength of three drinks that are printed on the menu, named, and made from ingredients rather than from bottles.

The Spicy Sage Lemonade is the house signature and the one that gives the restaurant its name back: freshly squeezed lemon, jalapeño and organic sage leaves, which lands somewhere between a shrub and a sour and carries real heat. The Pineapple Mojito is built on caramelised pineapple — an actual technique, not a syrup — with fresh orange, organic mint and soda. The Blackberry Limeade muddles whole blackberries with fresh lime and simple syrup and lengthens it with soda.

What those three have in common is that a cook has to make them. Caramelising fruit, muddling berries and slicing jalapeño are kitchen jobs, and a restaurant that sends them out on a Tuesday has committed real labour to the non-alcoholic list. That is the practical test this directory applies to a fine-dining room, and it is a harder one to pass than printing the word "mocktails" at the foot of a page.

The restaurant was picked out by Trending Northwest among a small set of Spokane rooms doing genuinely inventive work in the category, alongside The Boneyard — good company for a dining room rather than a bar.

One of the easiest venues in this guide to actually visit: Wild Sage serves 4pm to 9pm every day of the week, including Sunday and Monday, when several of Spokane's better alcohol-free lists are dark.