Zola

Zola is a downtown Spokane institution of the eccentric kind — a live-music bar on Main Avenue assembled out of salvage, with a Ford pickup mounted in the room and a band on most nights of the week. It is not where you would expect to find the most rigorous alcohol-free drinks programme in the Inland Northwest, and that is precisely what it has.

The credit belongs to head bartender Sheldon Moore, who got sober in 2023 and then set about rebuilding the mocktail list from the position of someone who has to drink from it. His diagnosis of the problem is the one every non-drinker recognises: going out, you can only order so many Pepsis, so many Sprites, so many flavoured lemonades. What he wanted instead were drinks with some bitterness to them, something that hits a little harder — the structural quality that makes a cocktail worth ordering slowly rather than draining.

His standards for the category are specific and worth repeating, because they are the difference between a mocktail programme and a garnish. Proper measurements, not free pouring. Good non-alcoholic spirits rather than syrup and soda — Figlia's range is among his preferred bases. And an acceptance that a customer paying cocktail prices for an alcohol-free drink is entitled to the same attention to detail and the same full-mouth flavour that the alcoholic version would deliver.

The result is a list that has grown steadily rather than sitting static, and a bar where asking for something without alcohol does not change the level of service you get. In a music venue, where people are in the room for three or four hours at a stretch, that matters more than it would somewhere you stop for one round.

Zola opens at 4pm and runs to midnight Tuesday through Thursday, 1am on Friday and Saturday, and 10pm on Monday. Closed Sunday. Live music is the default, not the exception, so check the calendar.