Guud Kava

Guud Kava is a fully alcohol-free kava bar inside Downtown Container Park, the open-air retail and dining complex built from repurposed shipping containers at 707 Fremont Street, in the middle of the Fremont East bar district. Kava deserves a plain description here, because the people most likely to seek out a bar like this are the people who most need to know what they are ordering: it is a psychoactive botanical drink from the Pacific Islands, made from the root of the kava plant steeped in water, traditionally drunk socially in place of alcohol. It contains no alcohol whatsoever, but it is mildly sedative and mildly intoxicating on its own terms — a meaningful distinction for anyone whose recovery rules out intoxicants generally rather than alcohol specifically. Guud Kava's stated purpose is to bring the island culture and community of kava to a wider audience, as a relaxing and stress-free alternative to drinking.

Where a traditional kava bar serves the infusion straight in a coconut shell, Guud Kava takes a different route into it: the shop infuses an array of fruit juices with kava, using only natural flavours and quality ingredients — no artificial colours, flavours or sweeteners — to balance the root's famously earthy, peppery taste for people who have never had it before. That extends past the counter into a retail line, with the same kava-infused syrups, pre-bottled infused juices and capsules sold in the shop and shipped from the company's website. Reviewers consistently describe a clean, comfortable room and staff who will walk a newcomer through the whole experience, including what kava tastes like, how it feels and how much to start with, and the apple soda kava comes up repeatedly as the drink regulars order. Sitting where it does, among the bars and restaurants of Container Park and Fremont East, it is one of very few places in that stretch of downtown where every single thing on the menu is non-alcoholic.