Bula Kafe

Bula Kafe has been open in Historic Kenwood since 2009, which makes it St. Petersburg's original kava bar and one of the oldest in the United States. Its lineage runs back further still: it traces to Nakava, North America's first kava bar, and its founder is from Vanuatu — the archipelago where kava drinking is a civic institution rather than an import. That provenance shows in what is served. The kava is noble varietal from Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, prepared and poured in a nakamal, the Ni-Vanuatu term for the space where kava is drunk communally.

The context matters as much as the room. St. Petersburg is often called the unofficial kava capital of the United States, with dozens of kava bars across Pinellas County, and Bula Kafe is the venue that started it — the reason a mid-sized Florida city has more kava bars than most countries outside the Pacific. It has taken Best of the Bay honours repeatedly. Alongside the kava it serves locally roasted coffee, matcha and ethnobotanical teas, and it runs from 7am to 2am most nights and to 3am at weekends, which makes it one of the few places in the region genuinely open across the whole day and night without alcohol.

The honest caveat belongs here as at every kava venue, and this one is well placed to make it: kava is alcohol-free but not inert. It is mildly sedating, psychoactive, and has documented case reports of liver injury; many Florida kava bars also pour kratom, which acts on opioid receptors with real dependence and withdrawal risk. Nothing served here contains alcohol, and that is a different claim from nothing served here having an effect. For someone avoiding alcohol socially, this is among the best rooms in the country to do it. For someone in recovery from a substance-use disorder, the distinction is worth weighing before walking in — and the staff here, who have been serving kava longer than almost anyone in the country, are the right people to ask about what is in a shell before ordering one.