Kindrid Kava

Kindrid Kava opened on 8 June 2026 at 2024 West Schaaf Road, and it is a genuinely new arrival rather than an established venue this directory had overlooked. Its owner, Amber Atkinson, has described it as a botanical cafe focused on community, connection and non-alcoholic gathering, and the early reception in Old Brooklyn has been that of a neighbourhood gaining a room it did not previously have.

Its location is the most significant thing about it for anyone using this directory. Northeast Ohio's kava scene, which local public radio has covered as a genuine regional trend, has until now been suburban — Sacred Waters Kava Bar on Detroit Avenue in Lakewood, and Kava Sol out east in Willoughby. Kindrid is the first to sit inside Cleveland's own city boundary, on the south-west side, which makes the difference between a car journey and a walk for a large number of people.

The format is a cafe rather than a nightlife venue, and the hours reflect that: 8am to 9pm on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, extending to 11pm on Friday and Saturday, an 11am to 3pm Sunday, and closed on Tuesday. Check before travelling on a Tuesday. Kava and coffee run side by side, which is the pattern that works best in rooms serving a residential neighbourhood — the same counter answers a morning coffee and an evening alternative to the pub.

Kava is worth explaining for a Cleveland audience, where the drink is still new to most people. It is made from the ground root of Piper methysticum, a shrub native to the South Pacific, infused in cold water and drunk socially across Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga and Samoa for roughly three thousand years. It contains no alcohol whatsoever. It tastes earthy and bitter, numbs the lips and tongue on the first mouthful, and is mildly sedative — relaxing and sociable rather than intoxicating in the way alcohol is. It also displays reverse tolerance, meaning regular drinkers usually need less rather than more, so a first visit rewards taking it slowly across an hour or two rather than treating a shell like a shot.

Beyond the drinks, the room programmes wellness sessions — breathwork and sound events have run here since opening — which places it closer to the community-space end of the kava spectrum than to the late-night bar-substitute end. For Old Brooklyn, Brooklyn Centre and the near south-west side, it is now the local answer to wanting somewhere to sit in the evening that does not revolve around alcohol.