Smoky desires: get the hookah up from several local lounges

By John Chock Contributing Writer Friday, February 10, 2006

The ancient art of smoking sweet tobacco through a hookah — or water pipe — traces its roots to India by way of the Middle East. Today hookah smoking enjoys worldwide popularity, and cities like Rome and Los Angeles boast lavish hookah dens that glitter with beads and braziers and command waiting lists for low tables ensconced as marital bowers.

In the greater Stanford neighborhood, you have a choice between hookah in a silk tent and hookah without the Orientalism. A small handful of lounges between San Jose and San Francisco cater to a local population of hookah aficionados growing in number and connoisseurship.

Your closest options are also your least opulent. Small venues distill the experience to its essence — the opportunity to savor fruit-scented tobacco in the company of friends.

“It has its own aura,” explains Emad Ibrahim, manager and owner of Off the Hookah in Sunnyvale. “It’s part of the culture, and it’s part of social gathering.”

Off the Hookah opened two years ago as an annex to Ibrahim’s Dishdash restaurant on Murphy Avenue. Six nights a week, the lounge offers diners a chance to unwind in a muted space with one of 30 flavors of tobacco, ranging from the traditional honey, mint or apple to Napa Grape and Wacky Watermelon. Some are served with pieces of fruit roasting atop the pipe, and a short menu of shawarmas and baklava tempts patrons.

Ibrahim recommends the lemon-mint tobacco and suggests pairing the hookah with Turkish coffee, mint tea or one of several Armenian, Lebanese and Turkish ales. At his establishment, a hookah costs between $13 and $20, can be shared by two people and must be smoked through a disposable mouthpiece. The water pipes are sterilized after each use.

On Fridays and Saturdays, the lounge becomes a club with a DJ, $10 cover and required reservations. But on weeknights a much more subdued atmosphere invites quiet gatherings.

“Hookah bars can be laid back,” said sophomore Anne Marie Barrette, who enjoys the weeknight calm at Off the Hookah. “It’s usually a pretty casual experience.”

Kan Zaman, the San Francisco hotspot, is by all measures a more elaborate affair.

“Kan Zaman is an extremely stylish venue,” senior Sudeep Roy attests. “They have great drinks and fantastic Arabic music.”

The Haight Street lounge also features belly dancers on certain nights of the week, but Roy — who is from Italy — says that American hookah bars are generally less heavy-handed about exoticizing the Middle East.

“I think this might be because in Europe, Arab people feel the need to sell their exotic identity to attract the locals to their bars,” he explains. “Here, because of the diversity that already exists, there might not be that same need.”

Roy and his friends also enjoy Tarboosh, a hookah lounge in Redwood City with a live Arabic singer, as well as the Hookah Nites Cafe in San Jose.

Despite widespread and growing popularity, hookah bars are beginning to meet with considerable opposition from the anti-smoking lobby. Though water pipes may filter out some of the tar in tobacco smoke, hookah smoke in particular has been shown to contain nicotine and carcinogens, and a 45-minute session may be the equivalent of smoking between two and 15 cigarettes. The American Cancer Society links hookah smoking to several types of cancer and periodontal disease.

For many, moderate consumption tempers the risk.

“It’s not very bad for your health,” says sophomore Nada Boutros, who hails from Dubai. “You don’t usually smoke the entire hookah, and you usually share it as well.”

In California, hookah lounges are similar to cigar bars and tobacconists in the eyes of the law, and are restricted to patrons older than 18.

Hookah, at least for the time being, has a social mystique unlike that of marijuana or cigarettes, as it’s neither psychoactive nor proven to be habit-forming. As such, it’s a moralized kind of smoking, a fact which may account for much of its popularity.

“If you smoke hookah, you’re not a smoker,” Ibrahim says. “It has a social ambiance.”

“I think it can serve as a good alternative to drinking excessively,” Roy says, noting that although he feels a “temporary buzz” after smoking a hookah, driving home is never a problem. “More than going to smoke the hookah, I go to enjoy the company of friends, the music and the general atmosphere.”