20 January 2026
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Resolutions for a sober start to the new year often lead the teetotaling-curious to the non-alcoholic section of the menu. With fewer people drinking — a response to recent research that rejects the notion that a glass of wine might be healthful and to changes in the culture that sees fewer younger people drinking — that nonalcoholic (NA) section of the menu has evolved.
No longer is it home to a single, sad, zero ABV beer and lonely Arnold Palmer. Today, many restaurants clued into the times have at least half a dozen good options. In fact, some of the best restaurants around the country that pair wines with their multicourse tasting menus are now creating alcohol-free pairings that complement the experience in an entirely new way. The drinks are delicious, and often culinary creations in their own right. They also create a memorable journey that those opting for the wine pairing are missing out on.
Here are some MICHELIN restaurants creating NA drink pairings so good you’ll forget you ever cared about alcohol.
Birdsong – San Francisco, California
At San Francisco’s Two-MICHELIN-Star Birdsong, a pine-flavored matsutake mushroom arrives at the table decorated in pickled spruce tips, pine nuts and pine pollen in honey. Guests are being delivered the essence of the forest. If this were a Robert Frost poem and two roads diverged, most know the wine path. But the alcohol-free trail at Birdsong sees the matsutake complemented with a sweet, no-ABV fermented rice drink called amazake that is combined with matcha tea, kelp water, a balancing makrut lime juice and drops of bitter dandelion oil, enhancing and contrasting with the woodsy flavors of the dish.
Follow the wine path and a floral white wine might accompany spiny lobster served with lacto-fermented and fresh-shaved honey nut squash, fermented habanada (heat-free habanero) juice and pumpkin seed oil. But those on the NA path receive a kombucha made with persimmons and pink peppercorn that reinforce the flavors of the dish.
When Birdsong waitstaff arrives with dessert — such as a pomegranate sorbet with pomegranate seed, finger limes and rose geranium cream all atop aerated yogurt — the more entertaining drink is on the NA menu. Birdsong’s general manager and beverage director Brent Wilson pairs the sorbet with a chamomile and lavender cream soda made with Meyer lemon, chamomile tea and lavender syrup. Wilson puts it into a soda dispenser, charged by an iSi canister, and dispenses it tableside. The flavors and mouth-feel change with each sip as the drink settles.
Oriole – Chicago, Illinois
Migrate across the country to Two-Star Oriole in Chicago to taste one of the first courses: the Opening Bites of Winter Citrus and Raw Shellfish. The dish is paired with a glass of Non “5,”a slightly dry Australian beverage made from unripe Semillon grapes and five additional ingredients — lemon verbena, hibiscus, lemon myrtle, liquorice root and lemongrass. It’s dry-hopped and rounded out with Murray River salt, from the Australian river. General manager and wine director Emily Rosenfeld selected this nuanced alcohol-free wine because of its “tension and acidity.”
When the contemporary American restaurant serves venison loin with black truffle and pickled black trumpet mushrooms, diners receive a glass of Piedmont Nebbiolo. Executive sous chef Colin McHugh, who created the dish, wanted to craft a recipe for a non-alcoholic twin to the Nebbiolo. He found it after simmering juiced red beets and black currants with Thai long peppercorn, green cardamom, fig wood, cinnamon and star anise for three hours. Then McHugh strained and chilled the liquid. With its acidity from the black currants, Rosenfeld explains, it presents similarly to the acidity of Nebbiolo: “The fig wood adds tannins and astringency to match the earthiness of the beets.”
Lazy Bear – San Francisco, California
From birds to bears, Two-Star Lazy Bear pairs their A5 Wagyu seared over almond-wood coals with a drink built from sous vide almond wood bark, nasturtium root and lichen. To balance woodsy aromas and tannins, complex sugar made from wild-foraged flowers, botanicals and conifers is slowly cooked into a syrup. “The result has the complexity of honey, but with more smoke and caramelization,” says lead bartender Ryan Hunt. Served neat, and garnished with smoked Douglas fir, the drink continues the almond wood-smoked flavors present in the Wagyu’s crust, while simultaneously cutting through the richness of the meat.
While the Wagyu-almond-bark-drink pairing is elaborate, their duck à l’orange drink pairing, at first glance, appears lazy: a glass of orange juice. “But the intention was to create the best possible version of that idea through layering and technique,” says Hunt. They juice fresh, red-hued Cara Cara oranges, but deepen the flavors with preserved, year-old blood orange syrup that’s both briny and sweet. For balance, Valencia orange peels are blended, and the essential oils are extracted and salted. This oil is then dotted atop the juice along with fresh and tart zest from the Valencia orange, too. The acidity cuts through the duck fat, while also harmonizing with the duck’s orange glaze.
“Using seasonal Northern Californian ingredients in both fresh and preserved forms,” Hunt says, allows Lazy Bear’s drinks “to hinge on time as an ingredient, capturing flavors at their peak, preserving them thoughtfully, and allowing them to evolve, creating pairings that could only exist within this specific place and moment.”
Shingo – Coral Gables, Florida
At Shingo, a MICHELIN-Starred omakase restaurant in Florida, beverage director and sommelier Kaori Yoshioka merges Japanese tea culture with each bite. Sashimi is enjoyed with roasted barley tea evoking notes of smoky cacao and peanut; unagi (freshwater eel) and caviar is balanced with a savory green tea blended with roasted rice; and the dessert course is enhanced with an organic matcha from Kyoto that strikes a balance between umami and sweetness.
Brutø – Denver, Colorado
Denver’s One-Star Brutø couples caramelized Palisade peaches and a champagne vinegar with a pickled green onion essence in a spiced chutney cocktail. This, paired with a course of local lettuce (with some other flourishes), is both drink and dressing. Bruto’s fennel sour — with juiced whole fennel — is lacto-fermented for three days with green bell peppers and jalapenos. Then a sweet seed tea of coriander, fennel seeds, star anise, allspice and white peppercorn is added. Bruto serves that with a bitter-greens terrine to act as a refreshing complement and palate cleanser.
While most opting not to drink loathe when their only options are a choice between two sodas, today, sodas can be a sensation. Bruto’s sarsaparilla soda, an earthy brew of sarsaparilla root, wild cherry bark, galangal, dandelion root, dong quai and cedar leaf, ferments for two days and is finished with fresh-juiced carrots. When it’s paired with sweetbread and sunchokes, it’s mind blowing, and the drink “pops with brightness from the carrot juice,” says the beverage director Autumn Devine.
Emeril’s – New Orleans, Louisiana
Aaron Benjamin, wine director at Two-Star Emeril’s in New Orleans, loves pairing their banana cream pie with vintage pu-erh milk tea. “The combination pays homage to the many cultures including Vietnamese culture which have a long history in this city.” When Emeril’s duck arrives at the table, it joins a beverage made from crema earl gray, port reduction and tart cherry juice. Interestingly, all of the ingredients are used in the dish and drink. In a nod to Japanese culture, Benjamin combines sobacha, a buckwheat tea, with pineapple, cucumber and wasabi to pair with seafood. The drink delivers flavors of sweetness and earth.
“We are always asking ourselves ‘will a couple having one of each of the pairings feel the [experience] as harmonious or conflicting to each other’?” Benjamin wonders. So far disputes have been limited.
Yingtao – New York, New York
The Yaos, husband and wife owners of One-Star Yingtao, find harmony when coming up with their wine and NA menus. Linette Yao, who is also head of the beverage program, loves the wine pairing, but gets giddy when diners select to drink off the NA menu.
Yao thinks of the vacuum-distilled, alcohol-free Riesling from Germany as something that presents opposing forces. “It’s like Yin and Yang,” she says. It’s paired with a light-colored tuna and mandarin spring roll that sits beside a black-colored sweet potato Bao with truffle cream, and the crisp beverage cuts the fatty bites. From pork Jiao Zi (Chinese dumplings) in a corn and black truffle broth paired with a blended sweet baby corn milk drink that evokes Yao’s childhood to a milk punch peach juice that complements her husband Bolun Yao’s favorite dessert — a coconut cream with quarter-sized slices of rice cake — the NA pairing tells a story at Yingtao that the wine pairing could never compete with.
Hero image: ©Lazy Bear
