I was wandering through the Byward Market a couple weeks ago with a fellow blogger and I saw something out of the corner of my eye that made my head swivel: People sitting on the patio of a Lebanese restaurant smoking big ol’ hookah pipes.
Naturally we stopped and talked to them and asked them what they were smoking. They said it’s called shisha, and it’s a spice. They offered us a hit off the pipe, so my friend tried it and said it tasted kind of minty.
According to Wikipedia, we’d stumbled upon a hookah lounge, and the substance being smoked is flavoured tobacco.
Abu Dani, a regular shisha smoker in Ottawa, shares his tips on how to get the most out of the shisha experience while avoiding nicotine addiction.
If you want to try it yourself, go to the Garlic Corner at 321 Dalhousie.
Oh I do love a good Shisha pipe. We smoked them as often as we could during our honeymoon in Egypt last year. I even brought a small one home with me, with some apple-flavoured tobacco (the most popular in in Egypt). I think I’ll light one up just now…
I learned to appreciate a good shisha when I lived in the Emirates. I had the opportunity to introduce DH and my mum to the pleasure when we travelled to Mostar, BiH, last year; there’s a trippy outdoor bar/shisha garden there that is the epitome of Turkish decadence. It was a night to remember!
I agree with AndrewZrx, double apple is the best flavour.
Don’t have to visit the Emirates, Amsterdam will do. The world is reflected in Amsterdam. It is quite wonderful. (apart from drugs, there is the Van Gogh Reijksmuseum, the Riejksmuseum, the Franz Hals Museum in the nearby Harleem (candlelit on Saturdays back in the day). Everyone is welcome in Holland, as are their “preferences”.
I was just at the Blues Fest last night for Lucinda Williams. My friend and I were beside two empty chairs (we were happily sitting on the ground) when a 34-ish young man with sort-of dread (yup, singular) and beads and all sorts of things in his hair arrived. I said I was glad to see him, as I was about to commandeer the chairs for my friend and I. His response was: “help yourselves, my Mum and I won’t be back for awhile”. He pulled some “necessaries” out of the backpack – filled his wine glass (clearly we were kindred spirits), a pipe (tobacco, I’m sure- sort of), an apple…
His Mum did come back for snacks, and to check cell messages (!). She was, well, herself; and very generous.
I loved to be reminded of the 70’s, of Amsterdam, of alternate lifestyles, and of the fact that we are all the same – just living our lives.
It was a great concert. A great evening. A confirmation.
OK, this has nothing to do with shisha; but I have never been good at keeping on topic.
Hope you’re having fun in Haliburton, and look forward to your posts when you’re back.
Back in the late-90’s there was a place near the corner of Bank and James where you could share a hookah and there were some kind of lute-ish instruments on the wall that the owner and customers would play. It had great food as well.
Why wouldn’t the Ottawa smoking ban apply to a hookah?
A. and I did when on the World’s Worst Pub Crawl because the pub that we were supposed to go to was closed. I’m actually pretty impressed with this place, the shisah is pretty cool. You can get different flavours like Strawberry and Chocolate. It’s pretty inexpensive to use too. Also, they have good food and the beers are cheap. The staff there is pretty friendly too. If your looking to try something different one night, I would recommend this place.
If you really want to have a wild night, go to an opium den. Makes all this shisha stuff look totally Kindergarten. (email me for details) Thank you.