Kava Chris

Kava Chris is a small, unpretentious kava bar on West Hampden Avenue in Sheridan, inside the Denver metro, run by an owner known to regulars simply as Chris. It keeps the kind of hours that make it genuinely useful rather than merely available: nine in the morning until two the next morning on weekdays, and until four on Saturday. There are complimentary pool tables. It is not trying to be a cocktail bar with kava in it — the menu is deliberately short and priced accordingly, which in a category prone to $14 drinks is worth saying out loud. A single shell of kava, ten ounces, is $8; a double, sixteen ounces, is $15; a specialty kava is $9 and an extract $8. Boba is $2 and a wedge of lime or lemon fifty cents. Seventeen house syrups are available at fifty cents each, running from lavender, peppermint and orgeat to passion fruit, salted caramel and Swiss chocolate, which is how the specialty drinks get built. Food is minimal and cheap: ramen at $2, chips at $1.

Two things to know, one of them a caution. The first is that this is an alcohol-free bar rather than a substance-free one, and it is refreshingly direct about that — the kratom is listed under a heading that says exactly "Kratom Tea", offered in green, white or red at $8 or as an extract at $10, with none of the euphemisms other venues use, no "Mitra tea" or "K-tea" to decode. If you are avoiding kratom you will have no difficulty identifying it here, which is more than can be said for several bars in this guide. The caution is what is missing. We could find no dosage guidance, no strength information, no stated age policy and no health warning anywhere on the bar's website — not on the menu, not on the About page, not on the Contact page. That is a notable absence given that Colorado law requires kratom to be sold only to people 21 and over with photo identification, and that 2025 legislation added further limits on potency and product form. The requirement presumably applies in the room; it simply is not published anywhere a customer could read it in advance. For a first visit, particularly if you are in recovery, ask the staff directly what is in a drink and how strong it is before ordering.