Krave (Seaboard Station)

Krave is Raleigh's dedicated alcohol-free bar, and since Umbrella Dry Bar closed it is the only one in the city. It trades on North Person Street a short walk from Seaboard Station, and it keeps proper bar hours — midnight Sunday through Thursday, one in the morning on Friday and Saturday — which is what separates a real alcohol-free venue from a coffee shop that shuts at six.

The bar serves kava, and it is worth saying clearly what that means. Kava is a root traditionally prepared in the South Pacific, ground and steeped and served in a shell, and it produces a mild, calming, sociable effect. It contains no alcohol whatsoever. It is nonetheless psychoactive in its own right, and anyone on medication, pregnant, or managing liver health should check with a doctor before drinking it. For people avoiding alcohol it is a genuine substitute for the ritual of a drink in hand; for people avoiding everything, the Triangle's zero-proof cocktail lists are the better route.

Alongside the kava, Krave pours an extensive tea programme — ancient and exotic roots and teas, as the bar puts it — and the room is built for lingering: dim light, ambient and world-lounge music, a deep seating area at the back. It is the sort of place where a group can sit for three hours without anyone ordering a second round of anything, which is precisely the experience the Triangle otherwise lacks. Krave's sister room in Carrboro is a separate venue with its own listing, and the company — founded in 2015 by UNC Chapel Hill alumna Elizabeth Gardner, and describing itself as an exotic tea oasis serving premium kava products across North Carolina — also runs a Greensboro room outside this metro; this Raleigh room opened in August 2022 as the third. The site does not publish a full drinks list, but it describes the kava as ground aged root from the South Pacific served with no additives, and the yerba mate collection as thirteen varieties from four countries — North Carolina's largest.