Kaona Room

August 18, 2025

Key Info:

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• Location: Miami, FL
• Date Visited: Jan, 2025
• Visited with: 5-6 colleagues from work

Our Visit:

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To truly understand and appreciate our visit to the Kaona Room, you just had to be there. The Kaona Room was once a speak-easy back room of esotico, which served similar drinks but with less theming and flair, but is now closed. Replacing esotico, was a sports bar called Canvas. Writing this now, in August of 2025, I can’t seem to find that this new Canvas location is still open but it appears Kaona is. Some information seems to point that it may now be a backroom inside the Leinster, an irish pub that opened up midway through the year.

I mention this all for the context of the sports bar, which was open all week while the kaona room only opened on specific days. The same owner owned each, and they were part of the same building, but that was where the similarities end. Through a series of mistakes, we made it to the week-of without realizing that the Kaona Room’s limited hours did not include any of the time that would be available during our work trip, and seemed to not be available. Hope was not lost though, as our wonderful operations manager was able to get into contact with the owner, and secured us a reservation!

We were not sure exactly how, or why, but we came to the understanding that the kaona room would be open and we had a reservation. Upon arriving, we had a hard time determining where the entrance even was though as we had missed the bit of research indicating that Kaona was a speakeasy inside of Canvas. After spending a few minutes wondering around inside, we entered to ask the staff there if they knew where the entry was…

This was where the confusion grew by a 1000. We were informed that the same owner owned both bars, but that the Kaona Room was not open that day. We were told that it was only open on weekends, and that we would have to come back then, but that we did have a reservation… to Canvas. We were let down, but at the end of the day the fellowship with colleagues was more important than the location, so we planned to settle down.

Shortly after receiving menus for Canvas, the owner came to our table and informed us that he had an idea, if we were up for it. He opened the Kaona Room just for our group, almost like it was a party room in a larger establishment. This was amazing, and a once in a lifetime experience to get to hang out in the bar that normally is packed to its 40 person limit with just our group of 8 colleagues, but there are more limitations that lead to me not giving it a rating and ranking within the tiki bars that I have visited.

While we were seated within the kaona room and able to enjoy the space, the drink menu that was served was Canvas’, as the bartenders for Kaona were not present and the techniques and ingredients unavailable. Additionally, the showmanship and effects typical were not on display, as like I said it was more of a private room than anything else.

The Drinks

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This section’s a bit different here as the drink menu served was not that of Kaona’s, but due to the location in Miami I was able to order a few daquiri variants that were all well made. It was nice to order them and not be met with confusion about not expecting them to be frozen, as classic daquiris are pretty popular in the area.

Decor + Theming Elements

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The decor inside Kaona room was really neat, and the run-up to the hidden speak easy built anticipation from the get go. Going from a noisy sports bar to a secluded space was neat, and put the escapism front up which was really awesome to see. The fact that we were in the space alone also meant that we had plenty of time to look around and really take in all of the details which would not have been possible in the typical setting.

Tiki Rating Table

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Placing Tiki bars in the table is a bit of a struggle for me, as I have two competing criteria in mind.

• The objective ratings of the drinks recieved, decor etc
• The subjective experience that we had that day, which often comes down to who was with me, the conversation we had etc.

Given the unique circumstances of our visit, I do not think it would be right to give a rating to Kaona room, but based on various online reviews and viewing the space it is a place I’d love to revisit given the opportunity.