Steinway Street is undeniably Arabic. Among the many restaurants and food carts selling halal, Mediterranean, or Arabic food, there is a large supply of hookah bars and hookah paraphernalia, such as pipes.  The windows of Wessam Deli and Grocery and other delis display dozens of hookah pipes. The great supply of hookah bars attests how important smoking hookah is in the Egyptian and Middle Eastern social life. I talked to the owner of the “First Hooka Lounge in America: Egyptian Coffee Shop Hooka Lounge” who said that he had mostly Arab customers from Egypt who “come in here and talk.” I did not smoke, but sat and talked to him for a long time as he occasionally drew smoke from a long pipe. It was easy to believe him when he said, “it’s more social” when referring to smoking hookah. It was dark inside and the air was filled with the intoxicating and fruity smell of hookah. The only light came from the window beside me. He was drinking red tea and sitting casually as smoke came out of his pipe.

The owner telling me about Astoria, his business, and Egypt. (The large wooden box on the table between us is backgammon)

The owner said that while women occasionally visit, men usually populate the lounge. For most of the time I conversed with the owner, one hundred percent of its occupants were men and those men were generally older and Arab. He has owned the business for fifteen years and been in America for thirty-three years. He likes the Egyptian restaurants on Steinway Street, along with the supermarkets and stores that offer Egyptian foods. He mentioned that the food, and everything else, is of better quality here than in Egypt and that his favorite food is a type of beans. While we were talking, people would walk up to him and give him money for the hookah. The owner said that he used to make a thousand dollars a day and that now he only makes two or three hundred. He blames the decrease in customers on the new competition moving in. This is not surprising, as I saw more than a few Hookah Lounges on Steinway. He was fine with the original conditions and decorations of the lounge, but he made revisions to address the increased competition. One such revision is a large mural of an Egyptian woman on the wall, as seen below.

The images on this page were taken by Y-Lan Nguyen. 

The lounge is open twenty-four hours a day. He shows soccer, movies, local and world news on the flat screen television in the back of the lounge. A few of the men were intently focused on the soccer game while I was there. I ordered a cup of red tea because I wanted to thank him for his time by supporting his business. A man poured me some steaming tea from an extremely large kettle. Like the owner, I only added sugar to my tea. He recommended a street cart to me that he frequented, telling me that they sold halal shish kebabs that were cooked on wood that was not chemically treated. The cart had just pulled up; I suppose to get ready for people coming home from a day at work. The meat was not ready when I later tried to buy some.

Drop by for a cup of red tea:

Egyptian Coffee Shop

25-09 Steinway Street