Four Shells Kava Lounge Is A Laidback Haven For The Socially (& Culturally) Awkward

At this central Auckland lounge, a growing community is rooted through connections built over kava, writes Tyson Beckett.

The ethos of Four Shells Kava Lounge is clear to see. Turning into Victoria Park Market’s cobbled laneway to meet owners Anau Mesui and Todd Henry, I pass their van and spot three words written on the back: Culture, Community and Consciousness.

Inside the brick-lined walls of the lounge, I’m greeted warmly by the couple and invited to do what their growing base of loyal customers do. To take a load off. Sitting on low cane furniture that recalls unfussy beach house decor and the tropics, there’s a lightness to the space that can be felt, even before a shell of kava has been poured.

“There’s no rush here,” Anau says, “If you come and there’s no space, we make space somehow. Some places if you’re sitting too long you feel that they want you to leave, not here. The idea of time and space changes here.”

Changing too, because of the couple’s gentle education, are people’s perceptions of kava - the cloudy drink made from the root of the Piper methysticum plant that has been a mainstay in the ceremonial and everyday lives of Pacific communities for thousands of years. The couple are passionate about correcting misconceptions about the drink and about promoting the benefits of kava for one’s wellbeing.

“It’s not alcoholic,” Todd explains. “Your body is relaxed but your mind stays clear. It’s got anti-anxiety qualities, we say a mild soporific, a sleep aid but it’s not going to make you fall asleep. It’ll help you sleep when you do sleep.

“Nobody drinks it for the taste, but the peppery taste is part of the kava experience. And so is sharing, if we talk about kava as just a drink that’s only half of what it is.”

The Four Shells offering is, in their own words “very simple”. A blackboard lists in chalk a variety of kava, available by the shell or bowl, and non-alcoholic drinks and packaged snacks, which they call chasers. When he encounters a new face Todd will ask if they’ve had kava before - and where.

An awareness and appreciation of kava was part of Anau’s upbringing as a Tongan raised in Aotearoa, but husband Todd, originally from Pennsylvania, came to it later. People have generally been supportive of his championing of the product. “I think people recognise this isn’t just some businessman who wants to get rich off kava,” he says. “I think my strength is taking the way I know kava, which was taught to me by Pacific people and explaining it in a way that Palangis can understand.”

As Anau explains, “As long as what underpins what you do is respect, a love and care for what you’re doing, then the community is generally good.

“We always acknowledge there are all the kava clubs in South Auckland that have held space for decades, there are so many other people who engage with it. we’re not experts here we’re just taking it and doing it in a different way that makes sense to us.”

They might be doing things differently to the rest of the kava community, but they’re also different to their neighbours in Victoria Park. The unfurling shop is nestled amid a mix of exercise studios, offices and eateries. Four Shell’s tucked away locale suits the intentionally tempered nature of the business. “Being a little bit hidden is okay because kava is quiet,” Todd says. “The effects are conducive to staying in one place, talking calmly with people.”

The location wasn’t their first choice, or even their second. “Landlords weren’t open to a kava lounge,” Anau says. “They [Victoria Park] were the only ones that were happy, that would allow it. We went to Grey Lynn, to Ponsonby, Parnell, Kingsland, every landlord stuck up their nose. I guess in 2019, when we came in, they were desperate for tenants. That’s how we ended up here.”

Being a hidden gem has fostered an intentionality among the Four Shells customer base, but it does stand a little at odds with the couple’s quest to put kava on the map. Anau recalls being asked what her motivation was for opening a Pacific-focused business in the city and answering: “We need representation.”

“We just want to see something that looks like us here. You can’t be in the South Pacific and come into town and there’s nothing. The feeling of the shop is celebratory. We’re here to have a good time, to be open to people and provide a space that celebrates all the beautiful things of the culture.”

When you do find Four Shells, its owners hope you’ll experience something that highlights more about kava than it just being a drink. The couple have taken on the lease of the space next door and have fitted it out more sparsely, with traditional mats lining the floor. Referred to as The Fale Talanoa, the house of conversation, the space gets used to facilitate more in-depth discussions such as a recent te Tiriti talk that focused on “the shared whakapapa between tangata moana and tangata whenua as a means of bringing us together”.

The approachable environment is wholly intentional, but they do feel a real sense of duty to teach people about kava “properly”.

Todd admits to getting “slightly frustrated” by narratives that promote kava as an alternative or replacement for alcohol. “I think it does kava a disservice to compare the two on any level. They exist in entirely different spaces, they have different effects. It’s not a replacement for anything, it’s its own thing.”

On the walls of the lounge, signs spell out explicitly that alcohol and kava do not mix. Todd says they set expectations - physiologically and psychologically “kava slows down your body’s processes so your liver isn’t going to be as effective at breaking down the alcohol, but the biggest function those signs serve is that drunk people are obnoxious.”

You won’t find pretention parked up at Four Shells, but you will find variety. “People think it’s just Pacific people who come here,” says Todd. “You’ll get the craziest range of people here: lawyers, musicians ... on a Friday night it will look like the UN in here, people of all different backgrounds, ages.”

Uniting the diversity, Anau says, is a quest for cultural connection. “Identity formation is probably a big thing. For Pacific people, it’s about strengthening. Maybe they’ve been disconnected, maybe they’ve been told they’re not brown enough, that can be a big barrier for engaging with the culture. Other Pacific people are already super proud, and they come to support a Pasifika business.”

Family is a driving force for the couple. Anau’s family immigrated to Auckland from Tonga in the early 1980s, and her parents made their livelihood growing kava in Tonga, importing it into the country and selling it from their Mangere house. Anau’s childhood memories all feature kava: customers knocking on the front door at 1am, her parents patiently packing the powder using old mechanical scales “that were always slightly off and rickety”, or trips travelling back to Tonga soundtracked by the incessant thump of the pounding machine that ran Monday to Saturday from 7am.

When they first opened the shop in 2019 Anau says her parents were perplexed. “For the first two years they kept asking if the shop was dead yet, they couldn’t fathom the idea of other people wanting to drink the kava. It took years for them to understand it. I hope my kids can blow my mind in a similar way.”

Until then she and Todd are focused on broadening and solidifying the place kava holds in the minds of each person who finds their way through the doors of Four Shells.

“We feel like there’s a whole city of kava drinkers here,” Todd says “They just don’t know they drink kava yet.”

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