Kava chameleons

A drink that is a revered part of Pacific culture is under threat from US-grown crops and heady new mixes.

- PETE MCKENZIE

"All right, we're back with the CokePepsi challenge," said Jeffrey Bowman as he stood behind the counter at The Nak, his kava bar in Boca Raton, Florida. Oversized tiki heads grimaced from a nearby wall as he raised a small red bowl of purple-brown liquid and toasted four Americans who sat along the counter opposite him. "Bula, bula. American kava."

Together, they downed their mix of Coke and kava, a psychoactive drink that has long been fundamental to Indigenous culture in the Pacific. "Damn, that's not so bad," said one man, who made a thumbs-up gesture towards the camera, with which Bowman was filming, later posting the clip to social media. "It lightens the kava." One woman in full denim smiled nervously. "I like it," she said. Another woman in a Yosemite tank top enthused: "It makes it taste creamier."

"See! America!" said Bowman. Later, after trying a Pepsi version, he decided, "The CocaCola does make a superior kava product. That's all from American kava today. You should really try some American Coca-Cola and Pepsi in your kava while you're making it: it works out great."

Depending on your perspective, this experimentation with kava was either brilliant American innovation or a form of cultural blasphemy. That is a tension with which Bowman, a sturdy middle-aged Floridian, is intimately familiar.

After founding America's first kava bar in 2001, he has become a leading proponent of kava consumption, helping drive the drink much closer to the US mainstream. Yet his advocacy has often involved things that people in the Pacific find uncomfortable, like liberal use of exaggerated and stereotypical tiki, the addition of flavours to the kava such as cola mixers, and the sale of addictive drugs alongside (or, it appears, in) kava.