Ground Level Lounge

Ground Level Lounge sits at 1538 Makaloa Street in the Ala Moana district, minutes from both Ala Moana Center and the western edge of Waikīkī, and trades in full as Ground Level Lounge & Hawaii's Luxury Hookah. The format is a hookah lounge that also operates as a kava bar, and no alcohol is served on the premises. Its practical value in a guide like this comes down to opening hours. Honolulu's fully alcohol-free venues are overwhelmingly daytime businesses — cafés, juice bars and kava rooms that close by seven or eight in the evening — which leaves a real gap for anyone who wants to be out late without drinking. Ground Level runs 9am to 1am Sunday through Thursday and 9am to 2am on Friday and Saturday, matching the closing time of the bars around it.

The caveats need stating up front rather than left for a visitor to work out, because this site's readers include people in recovery and the two things on offer here are not neutral. Hookah is the primary business, which means tobacco smoke in an enclosed room for the whole visit — a material consideration for anyone with respiratory issues, and for many people simply not what they are looking for in an evening out. The kava, meanwhile, is psychoactive and mildly sedating, in the same category as the 'awa poured at 'Awa Hou and Fiji Kava. Neither is alcohol, and for a great many people who have stopped drinking that is exactly the point — but describing the venue as a sober bar would overstate it. The honest description is the one this guide applies to the kava lounges of Davie, Florida: a genuine alcohol-free room, open late, on terms you should understand before you go. Taken on those terms it fills a slot in Honolulu that almost nothing else does.