Manchester's Hanover Street Corner Now Runs From Morning Coffee to a Zero-Proof Nightcap

There are two storefronts at the corner of Hanover and Elm, and both run out of one kitchen. In the morning, The Moka Pot, a coffee shop at 8 Hanover Street, opens in the room that used to hold City Hall Pub. In the evening, the same kitchen cooks for Without at 889 Elm Street. Without is the city's first and only fully non-alcoholic cocktail bar.

One owner group runs the space as a daytime cafe and a nighttime restaurant, and neither half depends on selling a cocktail with liquor in it. So downtown now has a place that works for a 7 a.m. coffee, a pre-show dinner and a post-show drink, and you don't have to order alcohol at any of them.

One kitchen, two businesses on opposite shifts

The Moka Pot opened in February 2026. Its online ordering page lists hours of 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Without came a few months later. WOKQ's roundup of August restaurant openings puts its opening date at August 12, 2026.

Co-owner Dan Haggerty laid out the arrangement to Manchester Ink Link back in May, before Without opened. The two are separate businesses that share a kitchen. The cafe would run 7 to 4, and Without would open at 5. On event nights, food from one side can be ordered on the other. Haggerty and Nick Carnes built Without themselves. The same article describes them putting in a 70-foot patio on Hanover Street overnight and redoing the interior in greens and bronze patina tones.

The 5 p.m. start was the plan as described in spring. Before you head over for dinner, check Without's Instagram or withoutnh.com for that night's hours.

What Without actually serves

This is a full restaurant, not a juice bar bolted onto a cafe. Without's site lists scallion pancake tacos with ground pork, beef sliders, popcorn Korean chicken with mac salad, and poke bombs. The menu leans on native Hawaiian and South Pacific flavors. Manchester Ink Link credited the drinks to Angelica Belo and the food to Joshua Heu, a native Hawaiian cook. Early dishes included pan-fried kalo and cassava with chimichurri.

The drinks get the same treatment. At a May pop-up, the bar poured a Star Gazer with blackberry, honey and black sesame, and a Ripple Effect made with a house strawberry kiwi shrub and Szechuan white peppercorns. The planned menu also included an espresso martini built on oolong tea. Haggerty told the outlet that apart from one or two zero-proof spirits, the bar makes everything by hand.

The room is small. In a syndicated Union Leader report from July, Haggerty put the count at 26 seats. If you're bringing a group on a show night, plan around that number.

He explained the concept plainly to Manchester Ink Link:

"We are just a restaurant/cocktail bar that doesn't serve alcohol. It's not kava, it's not an alternative. It's just drinks without alcohol. Hence, Without."

The daytime side has its own calendar

The Moka Pot is also more than a 7-to-4 coffee counter. According to Manchester Ink Link, it hosts chess club, poetry nights, comedy and coffee nights. It also holds a beer and wine license for its evening events. So the corner as a whole isn't alcohol-free. Without is the zero-proof half, and the cafe's event nights work under different rules.

Music is the cafe's best-known series. Live From The Countertop has kept going into the fall. Hippo's music listings had Matt Litzinger playing The Moka Pot on Thursday, October 1, at 7 p.m., with $5 admission at the door. On nights like that, the shared kitchen matters. You can catch a set on the cafe side while the bar side is open with food and drinks a few steps away.

Why a zero-proof bar landed in Manchester this year

Haggerty told Manchester Ink Link he spent years working out the concept and scouting locations. During that time he was running two other businesses, Stashbox and Industry East. He also argued for the city in particular: "If there's one city in New England that could use it, I would say it would be Manchester." He pointed to how many of downtown's nighttime options center on alcohol.

Statewide numbers back up the timing. NHPR reporting, republished by Business NH Magazine on September 10, 2026, said NH Liquor and Wine Outlets more than quadrupled their non-alcoholic offerings earlier this year. Non-alcoholic sales went from $41,914 to $607,693 between 2025 and 2026. The same piece cited a 2025 national Gallup survey that found the share of adults who drink had fallen to the lowest rate since the study began in 1939.

Without isn't the only Manchester business moving in this direction. The same NHPR story covered Rumi Kabob House, a family-run Afghan restaurant in the city. Its head chef is owner Sip Woodod's mother, and Woodod has soft-launched a weekend late-night cafe built around teas, coffees and desserts. Late-night Yemeni cafes in New York gave him the idea. He plans a handful of mocktails, but the focus is on drinks you can sip through a long conversation, starting with his mother's cardamom milk tea. "We just want people to come hang out, spend 5 to 10 bucks on a latte or a matcha or a pot of tea and hang out for a couple hours," Woodod told NHPR.

The story also named Gnomies in Concord, a cafe, dry bar, board-game lounge and art venue, along with Dry Cellar in Portsmouth, which it called the state's first non-alcoholic bottle shop. Put together, Without fills the Manchester spot in a statewide pattern. It's the downtown, full-menu, sit-down version of what other New Hampshire cities have started opening.

Planning a show night around Hanover Street

The Palace Theatre is at 80 Hanover Street, so the corner sits at one end of the street the theater shares. The Palace's official site lists two smaller sister venues: the Spotlight Room at 96 Hanover Street and the Rex Theatre at 23 Amherst Street. This year's fall and holiday calendar gives you plenty of nights to plan around.

Fiddler on the Roof opens Friday, October 23, and runs across three weekends. That gives you more than one chance to try the full evening in order:

1. Eat early at Without. Scallion pancake tacos and sliders are meant for sharing, which helps when you have a curtain time. Check the night's hours on Instagram first and count on 26 seats.
2. Walk up Hanover Street to the Palace for the 7:30 holiday performances, or head to the Rex on Amherst Street for the December shows.
3. Afterward, come back to the corner if Without is still serving, and finish with a zero-proof nightcap. That way the drive home is easy for everyone in the car.

The matinee changes the order. A Celtic Christmas at the Rex starts at 2 p.m. on Sunday, December 6, inside The Moka Pot's posted 7-to-4 window. For that one, start with coffee on the cafe side. Either way, the corner's two shifts cover both kinds of show.

Planning a Fiddler night, a December matinee, or just a lazy morning coffee on Hanover Street? I'm always glad to swap downtown recommendations. If you're thinking about how downtown fits into your next move, or just want to compare notes on the city, reach out to Darcy Mantel. Let's Connect.