Espresso mojito at Cocoandre by Christina Hughes Babb
Last summer I spent a weekend drinking all the drinks in Bishop Arts — all the non-alcoholic drinks, that is — for this story.
Recalling the early 2000s, before I shelved the spirits, I figured I would get some eye rolls from bartenders when I asked for a “mocktail.”
To my pleasant surprise, a culture shift seems to have taken place in the past 20 years, and a new world has opened up for those of us who, for whatever reason, choose no-booze bar cruising.
As Trey Roland, former bartender and sales representative for a line of nonalcoholic spirits told us, “All the best places in the world, cocktail-wise, have equity on their menus dedicated to non-alcoholic cocktails.”
Some bar managers said they dislike the term, “mocktail,” but only because they actually take pride in their zero-proof creations.
“We are not mocking anything. Here you’ll have something that engages with your senses and feels like a classic cocktail without any alcohol being involved in the process,” Roland added.
Here’s a reel of Andrew Rodriguez, one of the younger family members at Cocoandre, serving up an icy espresso mojito on a scalding hot day.
While I was working on this, a fellow teetotaler Andrea Benningfield, an East Dallas resident who lived in Oak Cliff for 15 years, was thinking about the same thing. She just started the @dallas_0_proof page on Instagram.
“I started the page to chronicle my journey of finding alcohol free beverages in Dallas,” she says in a post that she gave us permission to quote.
“If you’re sober curious, in recovery, abstain for medical reasons, or just don’t want to drink alcohol every time you go out … follow … I gave up alcohol a couple of months ago. But I still enjoy having an interesting beverage at dinner or a bar,” Benningfield says. “Many other cities here in the states and around the world have a variety of spirit-free options on their menus. But I’ve only found a handful of establishments in Dallas with zero proof menu items.”
Message her through the page with suggestions, or email me, and maybe together we can continue to expand our lists throughout each Advocate neighborhood and the city.
Screen shot from Advocate video of Laura Palmer, Miss Judy and Chai Soda from La Reunion
In case you missed it in the last issue, here is my booze-free bar hopping story in full.
