The Sacred Vortex Teahouse & Kombuchery

David Kovatch and his wife Julie Moran took the Lorain Avenue building that Platform Beer Co. had used as its original Ohio City taproom — one of the addresses that defined Cleveland's craft beer boom — and reopened it in late summer 2024 as a room where nothing served contains alcohol. The symbolism was not lost on anyone locally. Kovatch already ran Sacred Waters in Lakewood, which he opened in 2022 as Ohio's first kava bar; the Sacred Vortex is the larger, more ambitious expression of the same idea, with a lengthy bar, soft seating, communal high-tops and a substantial patio. Cleveland Scene readers voted it Best Alcohol-Free Bar in both 2025 and 2026, with Sacred Waters as runner-up and Verbena third — the whole podium, in other words, belongs to rooms that opened in the last four years.

The menu is built around functional drinks rather than imitations of cocktails. Kava is poured by strain — Vanuatu, Tonga, Fiji, Solomon, Samoan and Purple Temu — and also mixed into longer drinks such as a piña colada of pineapple, orange juice, coconut and oat milk. The kombucha is brewed on site, including a version fermented from kratom tea, and it anchors mixed drinks like the Moscow Mule of ginger, lime and kombucha. Other named builds include the Lake Erie Breeze of pineapple, mango, passionfruit and coconut, and the Lavender Serenity of blackberry, lavender and lemonade. Botanical sodas, drinks built on adaptogens and nootropics, coffee and a broad loose-leaf tea list fill out the rest; food is limited to vegan snacks and outside food is welcome, with nearby restaurants filling the gap.

Programming is much of the draw. Live bands, open mics, karaoke, yoga, meditation and creative-writing workshops run through the week, and the bar keeps genuinely late hours — 2am Tuesday through Saturday — which is the practical argument for it. Kovatch frames the whole thing as community infrastructure rather than a beverage business: these are safe spaces for people to come and build community, he told Cleveland Scene, and that is what the business is about.