Zanti Cucina Italiana

Zanti Cucina Italiana opened its second location in Houston's River Oaks Shopping Center in November 2022, following the original in The Woodlands in 2019. Founder Santiago "Santi" Peláez runs the roughly 7,700-square-foot room on West Gray Street with director of operations Stefano Ferrero and executive chef Hilario Zamora. Zanti holds Wine Spectator's Best of Award of Excellence, granted in 2024 for its extensive Italian-focused wine list.

That award is the useful context for what follows. A restaurant whose reputation rests on a serious wine programme has every commercial reason to steer guests toward the bottle list, and most such places offer non-drinkers nothing. Zanti instead keeps a permanent "Zero-proof" section of four drinks, each at $15 — the same price as the alcoholic cocktails.

The builds are properly constructed. Berry Brezza and Mora di Zanti both use Seedlip Garden, the herbaceous expression built on pea, hay, spearmint, rosemary and thyme; the first takes it into raspberries, lemon and soda, the second into hibiscus, blackberry syrup, lemon and mint. Piccola Rita uses Seedlip Notas de Agave, the tequila-facing bottling, with lime and orange juice.

Senza Fashion is the one that shows the programme is serious. It rebuilds an Old Fashioned on Cut Above Non-whiskey with maple syrup and — critically — non-alcoholic bitters. Standard cocktail bitters run to 35–45% alcohol by volume, so an Old Fashioned made with ordinary bitters is not an alcohol-free drink, however non-alcoholic the base spirit. Sourcing zero-proof bitters costs more and takes effort, and doing it is the clearest signal a bar has thought about who is actually ordering these drinks.

Each January the bar layers Dry January specials over the standing list, including La Mora di Zanti, Marg No Rita, Panoma and Tiki Good. Both DiningOut Houston and KPRC's Click2Houston named Zanti in their January 2026 Dry January round-ups, citing the West Gray address and the Seedlip-based drinks — evidence of a maintained programme rather than a seasonal gesture. Open from eleven most days, to eleven at night on Friday and Saturday.