From Liver Transplant to Sobriety: A Bartender’s Quest to Make Philly’s Best N/A Cocktails

Nikki Graziano, owner of Bar Palmina / Photograph by Katherine Kunz

Behind the Line is Foobooz’s interview series with the people who make up Philly’s dynamic bar and restaurant scene. For the complete archives, go here.

When Nikki Graziano had a life-saving liver transplant in 2022, it changed everything. Newly sober after years of drinking, Graziano was often unimpressed by the zero-proof cocktails she ordered from bars. She didn’t miss getting drunk, but she did miss having a beautiful drink made for her. So she turned to the world of non-alcoholic spirits and got her hands on a cocktail shaker, using the culinary know-how she learned from her Italian-American grandmother to make beautiful drinks for herself.

While her grandmother’s drink of choice was simple — vodka with lemon and a single ice cube — Graziano came up with more complex creations, including flavors like elderflower, fennel, Earl Grey and sumac liqueur (she’s used the latter as a substitute for raspberry syrup in a cocktail inspired by the Clover Club).

After tinkering with the drinks at home, Graziano began mixing zero-proof cocktails at pop-ups around Philly and hosting classes like one at Wallace Dry Goods, where she taught people (including me, sober during my pregnancy) how to make a non-alcoholic Negroni using ingredients like yuzu and orange blossom.

Starting August 10th, she’ll serve N/A cocktails for more people to enjoy at her own place: Bar Palmina, a non-alcoholic watering hole that’s coming to Fishtown at 1306 North Front Street, a stone’s throw from Pizzeria Beddia, Laser Wolf and Front Street Cafe.

Here, Graziano shares her journey from becoming sober to opening her own business, what people can expect from Bar Palmina and the charming story behind its name.

I’m from … Rochester, New York. I was a pretty creative kid who was always — I’m not going to say getting into trouble — pushing the boundaries.

I went to school at … the Rochester Institute of Technology. I went to college for photography and I minored in mathematics. It’s weird, but I love math and problem-solving.

After college … I moved to Seattle for a year, then came back East and lived in New York for nine years, doing retouching for big beauty advertisements. Then I experienced a sexual assault and kind of turned to the bottle and kept to myself about it. I didn’t tell anybody. I completely just went inward. For about five or six years, I was just drinking myself to death and not really taking care of myself at all. I lost my job. I lost my apartment. I left New York and moved to Philly with a plan to do my own retouching while living in a cheaper, less intense city.

When I moved to Philly … COVID happened, which was obviously hard on everybody. I turned more to staying inside and not talking to anybody and drinking. Then, I found myself in the ER in August 2022. I had end-stage liver failure, severely in withdrawal, and that led to being in the hospital in the ICU for a few weeks. Then I had a liver transplant and a whole new life.

I came out of that experience and realized … I was really unhappy working in retouching. Morally, making women look impossibly perfect — all of it — I was against it.

Bar Palmina’s Brown Dog N/A cocktail / Photograph courtesy of Bar Palmina

Before I got into bartending … I wanted to go to culinary school and get into food, but then, playing with that idea more, I didn’t really want the debt. I thought I could start working from the bottom up, but I couldn’t really afford to live on a dishwasher salary.

At the same time, while I’m debating this, I was a brand-new baby sober. I had no interest in drinking for the sake of feeling drunk. But I thought there had to be something better flavor-wise than soda, coffee and tea.

I got into bartending because … I refused to believe that I couldn’t have a nice drink that would feel like a gift that somebody put effort into making. I started playing with these N/A spirits, and I was kind of underwhelmed. I found that they really do need culinary help. You need to do more with them than just pour them the way you would an alcoholic drink, so I started just doing it on my own. I just wanted a better drink.

I was happy with what I could make at home, but every time I would go out, it was still the same thing. A lot of the drinks at places I would go to were like sugar bombs. It seemed like they were just using the same recipes that they would for an alcoholic drink.

At the same time, I was still recovering. I’m on the couch watching TV a lot. I’m still learning how to walk. I’m still in rehab trying to get my physicality back, and Shark Tank is on all the time — and I think, “There’s a business opportunity here. How is nobody doing this?”

My vision for Bar Palmina is to … create a safe space for people who don’t drink, whether they’re in recovery or they’re just taking a month or even the night off.

I want it to be a place where you can hang out with your friends, like a second home you can go to that doesn’t revolve around drinking. I like the idea that you can swing into your neighborhood bar and know the bartender, and they know you by name. For me, that does not have to be linked to alcohol consumption.

The bar is named after … my grandmother. She went by Palma or Pam her entire life, and then when she passed, my family found her birth certificate. Her name was Palmina and no one knew this. She had five kids, and nobody knew this. I love that she had a little secret her whole life. I also think it’s a very pretty name, and it just seemed appropriate.

A collection of zero-proof spirits behind the bar / Photograph courtesy of Bar Palmina

She taught me how to cook and more than just how to follow a recipe. She’s your typical Italian-American immigrant grandmother. I’d ask her, “Oh, how much salt should I put in?” Or like, “How many tomatoes are we using?” And the answer was always, “You’ll know, it will feel right.” She really taught me how to pay attention to cooking and learn the craft of it.

The drinks I’m most proud of making include … the Brown Dog. It was the first drink that I feel like I mastered. I was a whiskey girl, so it was just so nice to taste something that was reminiscent of whiskey without all the bad parts of drinking too much whiskey. It’s named after my puppy because after I made it, I was like, “Oh, this is the color of my dog.” So that was pretty close to my heart. It’s like my first child, I guess.

Another drink I’m proud of is the Maryam, named after the late Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani. It’s like a Clover Club, but instead of using a raspberry liqueur, I made a sumac liqueur. It’s smooth and silky, and I thought it was delicious. That’s definitely going to be on the menu at Bar Palmina.

And then I’m still working on one drink, but it’s really hard. My grandmother always drank vodka with a squeeze of lemon and one ice cube. She was so consistent with it that I feel like if I’m going to name this bar after her, I have to come up with something that is her drink. Vodka just tastes like alcohol and starch, so how do you make it non-alcoholic? I love the challenge, so I haven’t really let it go. I think I’m actually getting pretty close to it now. That’ll be on the menu as soon as I feel good about it.

Walk inside Bar Palmina and you’ll find … a bar and a lounge area. There’ll be couches, accent chairs, coffee tables and side tables for more of a living-room vibe than a restaurant vibe.

The aesthetic will be … pretty neutral. I just want to have a nice space that feels comfortable but isn’t so over the top that you can’t focus on the drinks or interacting with the people you’re with.

I’m going for an Italian, old-world clayish kind of off-white. But also a little bit of that mosaic tile, American speakeasy, Prohibition-era kind of vibe — and then there’ll be Scandinavian furnishings. And a fun bathroom. It sounds a little hectic, but we’ve made these sketches, and I’m pretty happy with how it looks. Hopefully it doesn’t come across as a little too much.

Opening my own bar, I’m most looking forward to … having a place that’s exactly what I would want to go to — and I’m probably pickier than a lot of people.

Also, having people socialize without drinking. When I had friends and family for the pop-up, it was a room full of people socializing without alcohol, and you wouldn’t know it walking by. It wasn’t a normal alcohol bar. Like, people know how to socialize without alcohol. I think people just don’t realize how easy it can be. So I’m excited to see that again.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.