In the broadest sense, any restaurant or nightclub can be considered a shisha parlor or club if it offers patrons hookahs, shisha and a comfortable place to smoke. Some shisha parlors have well-equipped kitchens and are more akin to bistros. When alcohol is not sold, shisha parlors derive revenue from sales of coffee, tea, soft drinks and snack foods.

Usually a disposable mouthpiece is provided for each user for hygienic reasons. These bars differ from other bars only in the fact that they offer hookah. However, shisha parlors nowadays often distance themselves from the eastern cultures by offering hookah and alcohol without the cultural elements. Some people of Middle Eastern or South Asian extraction consider them a continuation of their own cultural traditions. Certain parlors offer modern hookahs with fruit bowls or other kinds of improvements over smoking hookah at home. In the United States and Europe, shisha parlors are most popular in college towns and urban areas and are regarded by some as a novel and chic way to socialize.

Many shisha parlors incorporate such elements as Islamic decor and Arabic music or Indian music and have traditional decor, but some are simply bars without the eastern cultural elements. In Western countries, shisha parlors are often owned and operated by people from the Arab world or the Indian Subcontinent where use of the hookah is a centuries-old tradition. ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Ī hookah lounge (also called a shisha bar or den, especially in Britain and parts of Canada, or a hookah bar) is an establishment where patrons share shisha (flavoured tobacco) from a communal hookah or from one placed at each table or a bar.Ī hookah and a variety of tobacco products are on display in a Harvard Square store window in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Such statements should be clarified or removed. This article contains weasel words: vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information.

Aagh hookah lounge