Kava DSM

Kava DSM opened in 2021 at 300 West Martin Luther King Jr Parkway and holds a distinction worth stating plainly: it was the first kava bar in Des Moines, and it remains the anchor of the alcohol-free scene in a state that has very few dedicated rooms of any kind. It was founded by Sarah and her husband Ben together with David Tracy of Northgate Marketing, and the format they landed on is a three-way hybrid rather than a specialist bar — part coffee shop, part kava bar, part eatery.

That breadth is a sensible answer to the problem of running an alcohol-free room in a mid-sized Midwestern city, where there may not be enough dedicated kava drinkers to fill a room on their own. The food side is substantial: smoothie bowls, gluten-free waffles, gelato and six ice cream flavours. The drinks side runs organic coffee, smoothies, a mocktail programme, and kava. Plant-based milks are available across the coffee and smoothie menus and the kava mocktails are finished with vegan whip, which makes this one of the better-equipped vegan-friendly rooms in the city as well as one of the few alcohol-free ones.

Kava itself deserves description for anyone encountering it here for the first time, since Iowa has little exposure to it. It is a herbal preparation made from the ground root of Piper methysticum, a shrub native to the Pacific islands, infused in water and drunk socially. It contains no alcohol. Its effect is calming — traditionally used to ease restlessness, anxiety and sleeplessness, and also for muscle relaxation — and it is mildly sedative rather than intoxicating in alcohol's sense. It tastes earthy and bitter and numbs the lips and tongue on the first sip, which surprises most people once and then stops mattering.

The hours are the one limitation worth planning around. Kava DSM opens at 8:30am and closes at 9pm Monday through Thursday, running to 10pm on Friday and Saturday and closing at 7pm on Sunday. That is a cafe's schedule rather than a bar's, so it works well as a daytime and early-evening destination and does not answer the late-night problem the way the larger Florida and Colorado kava rooms do. For downtown Des Moines, though, it is the reliable answer: a room where the entire menu is alcohol-free by design, open every day, with enough food to make an evening of it.