Denver Café & Kava

Denver Café & Kava took over 5501 East Colfax Avenue in Park Hill in early 2026, and its origin story is unusually specific about why it exists. The founding team — Kevin Bloom, Elizabeth Leung, Cam Webbe, Jayden MacDonald and Jack Kestian — did not come from hospitality backgrounds looking for a concept. They met each other as customers at Golden Kava Lounge out in Golden, decided the city proper needed the same thing, and opened one. That is the clearest possible statement of what a kava bar is for: it is a room people go to often enough that they meet each other there.

The hours make the intent concrete. Doors at 7am, close at 2am, seven days a week. Nothing else in Denver's alcohol-free category trades that long a day; it means the same room works as a morning coffee stop, an afternoon workspace and a late-night alternative to the Colfax bar strip it sits in the middle of. East Colfax is a street with a long and specific reputation for drinking, and a venue on it that closes at last call without ever having served alcohol is doing something structurally useful rather than symbolic.

The drinks list is broader than most kava bars manage. Kava anchors it — a South Pacific root, ground and infused in water, alcohol-free, earthy and numbing on the lips, mildly sedative and drunk socially in place of alcohol across Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga and Samoa. Around it sit a proper mocktail programme, coffee, and a notably good range of Chinese and Vietnamese teas, along with herbal botanical drinks and small bites. The tea selection in particular sets it apart from the kava-and-kratom template that most American kava bars follow.

The programming is where it earns the café half of its name. Open-mic nights, local vendor markets and themed parties run through the calendar, and the room is arranged for people to stay in rather than pass through. For anyone in Park Hill, City Park or the neighbourhoods along the eastern half of Colfax, this is now the default answer to wanting somewhere to be in the evening that is not a bar — and, unlike most of the Denver kava scene, it is inside the city rather than out in Lakewood, Golden or Westminster.