Da Kine’s Kava | 1114 W Chapel Hill St, Durham
I can’t feel my throat, the woman beside me just claimed to be 400 years old, and I have no idea how long I’ve been sitting here, but somehow, I’ve never felt more at peace.
It’s a rainy Friday afternoon in June, and no, I’m not smoking DMT in a dingy basement; rather, I’m perched on a stool in Da Kine’s, a cheerful, cerulean-walled kava bar on West Chapel Hill Street that opened last summer in the space formerly occupied by coffee shop Joe Van Gogh.
Da Kine’s is owned by Bull City native and Duke graduate Zoey Best and her husband Brent Waffle, who fell in love with kava while living in Hawaii (Best lived in Hawaii in 2013, and Waffle lived there from 2007-2012). Upon moving back, the duo thought Durham residents would take well to the laidback culture linked to the drink.
“Durham reminds me a lot of Hawaii,” Waffle says. “Community is very important here, and everybody is willing to try new things.”
Waffle says he and Best designed Da Kine’s to emulate the bright, open, and inviting vibe of the bars they frequented in the Pacific Islands.
In efforts to honor Polynesian culture and avoid coming across as a tacky tiki bar, the pair decorated Da Kine’s with personal totems from their travels, like certificates Waffle received while studying the ancient Hawaiian martial art of Lua, a picture of a beach where Best liked to hang out after work, and a wooden ax lined with shark teeth. They tout the business as Durham’s first non-alcoholic kava bar.
As I nurse my Haleakala Sunrise—a mocktail containing kava extract, coconut milk, and lots of tropical fruit juices—I start chatting with Ria Garcia, a fellow customer who paused work on her intricate, psychedelic pen drawing to bid me hello. This is Garcia’s third visit to Da Kine’s, though she’s been drinking kava since 2003—a timespan that seems impossible, I tell her, given how young she looks.
When Garcia goes on to assert that she’s several centuries old, it admittedly takes me more than a moment to realize that she’s joking, but in my defense, I’ve drained a few cups of kava and I’m feeling a little funky: my mouth and throat are numb, my brain is pleasantly foggy, and the normally tense muscles in my shoulders and back are slack.
It’s sort of like being on drugs, but also not: I feel relaxed, in control, and free from the crushing anxiety that usually derails my attempts at socializing.
Kava is made from the powdered root of a shrub that grows in the Pacific Islands. The plant contains compounds called kavalactones, which have a sedative, euphoric effect on the central nervous system when consumed. In its rawest form, kava is just water plus the crushed root, but because its bitter taste can be hard to stomach, most kava bars also offer sweetened mixed drinks made using kava extract.
The menu at Da Kine’s includes traditional kava from Hawaii, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands, half a dozen creative mocktails, and a variety of other stress-relieving products, like tea, CBD edibles, and Kratom.
Kava remains most popular in Polynesia, but the beverage has gained traction in the continental U.S. over the past 20 years, largely due to its viability as an alternative to alcohol.
Kava can “take the edge off” in a way comparable to having a few drinks, but beyond that, consuming it in a communal setting like Da Kine’s can provide sober folks with the social atmosphere they might be missing from typical bars.
“I used to have a problem with drinking, so having kava bars where I can come and talk to people is really cool for me,” Garcia says. “It fills the social void.”
“Da kine” is a Hawaiian Pidgin word that can mean pretty much anything, Best tells me, and is generally used as a placeholder to reference a person, an object, or a concept.
“Being this thing, or that thing, or whatever you need it to be, that’s what we want to exemplify with the bar,” Best says. “We want to provide a warm and welcoming space where you can choose your own adventure.”
For people like Garcia, Da Kine’s can act as an art studio, or an alcohol-free social spot. Others might treat it as a solitary workspace or a venue to get safely, calmly “buzzed” with friends.
For me, Da Kine’s felt like a place where I could be fully present, unbothered by the passage of time. If you told me I’d been sitting at the bar for four hours—or 400 years—I probably would’ve believed you.
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