Lava Kava

Lava Kava sits on Washington Avenue in East Deering, a little outside Portland's tourist centre, and it is the first kava tea bar Maine has had. Every drink it serves is alcohol-free: kava prepared traditionally, kratom, herbal teas and the house's own blends, in a room set up as a lounge rather than a counter.

What makes it the most important venue in this guide is the clock. It opens at 5pm and runs to 10pm seven days a week. Portland's alcohol-free options are otherwise almost entirely daytime — Tandem's two cafes close at 1pm, Vena's shop shuts at 5pm, RSVP is a bottle shop. Everything that stays open into the evening is a bar. That leaves a sober resident or visitor with a genuine gap between dinner and bed, and Lava Kava is the only thing in the city that fills it with somewhere to actually sit.

A word on what kava is, because it matters and the marketing rarely says it plainly. Kava is a root from the Pacific Islands, prepared as a cold water infusion, and it is mildly psychoactive — relaxing and slightly numbing on the tongue. It contains no alcohol, but it is not inert, and this venue also serves kratom, which is a stronger and more contested substance. That distinction is worth understanding before you go: this is a night out without alcohol rather than a guaranteed substance-free space, and for someone whose sobriety excludes all intoxicants it may not be the right room.

For everyone else — designated drivers, the sober-curious, people taking a month off, anyone who wants to be out at nine on a Tuesday without a drink in their hand — it is the answer Portland otherwise lacks. The Washington Avenue stretch has become one of the city's more interesting corridors, so it pairs with dinner nearby rather than requiring a trip of its own. For a visitor without a car it is a manageable walk or a very short ride from the Old Port, and it is the one address in this guide worth planning an evening around rather than fitting in around something else.