Brooklyn Kava

Brooklyn Kava opened on Suydam Street in Bushwick around 2015 as one of the borough's first two kava bars — the other closed in 2018, leaving this one as the original and, by most accounts, still the defining one. It is a full-service cafe rather than a bar-shaped room, a short walk from the Myrtle-Wyckoff subway hub, serving traditional kava alongside proper coffee and a range of teas, and it stays open late. One of its longtime kavatenders once summed up the early years neatly: for the longest time, he thought, people had no idea what they were doing there. That has changed — Bushwick now has a small cluster of kava bars, and this is the one they all followed.

Two practical things need saying, and neither is a reason not to go. The first is that its website is dead: brooklynkava.com returns a Squarespace notice saying the account has expired, which we verified directly rather than taking on trust. That is not evidence of closure — a lapsed hosting bill looks identical to a closed business from outside, and we have been burned both ways. Here the other signals point the right way: the Instagram account is substantial and maintained, and third-party listings were still being updated in the middle of 2026. Treat it as trading, but confirm hours on Instagram rather than from a search result. The second is the botanical question that applies to every kava bar. Kava itself is psychoactive — that is the point of it, and the reason the room works as an evening out without alcohol. But an older directory listing also describes Brooklyn Kava serving kratom, in hot and iced teas and in mocktails, offered by red, green, white and yellow vein. We could not confirm that against the venue's own current menu, because there is no current published menu to check, and no dosage guidance or age policy appears anywhere we could find. If you are avoiding kratom specifically, ask at the counter before ordering — the staff here have a long reputation for explaining exactly what they serve.