Alcohol-free chat: restaurants with a good selection of drinks 0.0

Whether by necessity or by will, the fact is that not drinking alcohol is starting to cease to be a rare elderly, as some of the best restaurants in Spain confirm. There are establishments that aren't convinced about offering commercial zero-calorie juices, soft drinks, or wines as an alternative to alcohol. The high amounts of sugar or additives these drinks contain can conflict with haute cuisine, where everything is measured to the millimeter.

Thus, they believe their carefully curated culinary offering isn't complete without successful zero-alcohol beverage options made by the establishment itself. The results of the experience have been satisfactory for both the restaurants and their customers, to the point that the non-alcoholic offering is increasingly in demand, and some diners are coming specifically to try it. We spoke with Michelin-starred restaurants in Barcelona, ​​Valencia, Madrid, and Bilbao.

"We tailor the menu to diets, intolerances, and allergies... and why don't we do the same with wine?" asks Rodrigo Briseño, head sommelier of the Barcelona-based Disfrutar, considered one of the best restaurants in the world. He explains that they have "a lot of respect" for wine, because behind each bottle there is an entire production process, "both joyful and painful," and they wanted to bring that knowledge to their non-alcoholic clientele as well.

In 2020, the restaurant developed its own dealcoholization technique for existing wines, which they can offer with a residual alcohol content of between 1.5% and 4%. They have the white Wairau Reserve from the Saint Clair winery in New Zealand, which is a Sauvignon Blanc, and the red Bruto from the Bruto Vinícola project from the Juan Piñero sherry winery, which is made from Palomino Fino and Pedro Chimneys.

For now, Disfrutar doesn't plan to make its dealcoholized wines purely zero-alcohol, but it does offer alcohol-free welcome waters. Using another technique, they add natural aromas to sparkling waters, such as ginger, cucumber, hibiscus, coffee, and Lulo, a fruit common in South America, which is acidic and citric. They have also had it for years mocktails, which are non-alcoholic cocktails.

When chef Rodrigo de la Calle opened the restaurant El Invernadero in Madrid's Guadarrama Mountains in 2015, he had customers who didn't drink because they were driving. Since he wanted to offer "healthy haute cuisine," he extended that idea to the liquid side. "We wanted someone who took care of themselves by eating, to do so by drinking at the same time," he recalls. So, they started with non-alcoholic cocktails based on fruits, vegetables, and smoothies.

Through research, he delved into 0.0 or near-0.0 probiotic drinks, and now offers seventeen alcoholic beverages that don't change seasonally. Some can also be sampled at De la Calle's Virens in Barcelona. "We're chefs making drinks": from a cane honey and pine mead to an apple kefir reminiscent of cider, a beet kombucha that resembles a sparkling rosé, or an end-of-meal infusion containing up to seventeen fresh and dried herbs and flowers, which "says that."

A couple of years before moving the restaurant to Madrid (2018), they already offered the option of pairing. "At the national level, we were pioneers in pairing probiotic non-alcoholic beverages with gastronomic value," says De la Calle, and now claims that 30% of the clientele orders it, some of whom combine alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. "We started preaching in the wilderness, and now when you offer kombutxa, few people don't know what it is," he celebrates.

For their menus, at the Valencian restaurant Fierro, chef Carito Lourenço and chef Germán Carrizo—both Argentinian—have always featured homemade non-alcoholic beverages since they opened in 2015. "They fit the concept," says Lourenço. They started with a shared table where not everyone always wanted to drink alcohol, so not having non-alcoholic options would have been "excluding, when the single table wanted to include."

They started with kombuchas and now they have coffee kefir, tepache of purple corn or grilled beetroot juice. Furthermore, even if the pairing is with alcohol, some dishes on the menu are accompanied by a small portion of a non-alcoholic beverage – this is made known without the risk of anyone regretting having chosen a completely 0.0 pairing. A dish of red chard and Dénia shrimp is served with an infusion of red tea and chutney of strawberries, while the first three snacks They arrive with a cocktail made from fish broth.

In total, they have between nine and eleven drinks that vary depending on the availability of ingredients. The reception has been "amazing," Lourenço assures. "25-30% of our consumption is non-alcoholic," he adds. He emphasizes that the most popular options are those that combine non-alcoholic drinks, and some customers come to the restaurant specifically to try the non-alcoholic offerings and return because "they find it striking, different." They are now also serving horchata-based drinks and are developing new ones with nuts, which they hope to offer this fall.

The idea dates back to 2012, shortly after opening Nerua in Bilbao, at a time when 0.0 wasn't as prevalent in restaurants. When it came to promoting his culinary offering, chef Josean Alija was clear that the option of pairing the tasting menu without alcohol had to be offered: "It stems from the desire to satisfy people who don't drink alcohol for whatever reason." It also relates to an intrinsic aspect of his cuisine, for which he prepares the stocks and sauces. "If we are artisans and we create our own cuisine, why not extend it to the world of non-alcoholic beverages?" says Alija.

They change the menu every season and have developed around 40 non-alcoholic drinks available depending on the season. They're called essences and are made with fruits, vegetables, herbs, or spices, or a combination of these. These include elderberry and raspberry juices, chickpeas with lemongrass, white asparagus, ginger and orange blossom, quince, rosemary and lemon, beetroot and hibiscus, pear and ginger, or apple and white tea. These drinks are in demand: "As long as there's more, we'll have more," assures Alija, who also offers the option of pairing part with alcohol and part without.