Best Place To Eat and Smoke

As more local restaurants frown on smoking, it's getting harder for nicotine junkies to find tobacco-tolerant tables. But smoking diners aren't treated as pariahs in the outdoor dining area at Café Rumi (OK, it's a parking lot), whether they're puffing on store-bought cigarettes or inhaling the water-cooled smoke from an exotic-flavored tobacco (such as apple-licorice) loaded into a glass sheesha. Café Rumi owners Marwab Chebaro and Bassam Helwani rent the Middle Eastern-style water pipes (each hygienically fitted with a disposable plastic tip) for one or two fragrant bowlfuls to patrons with a true passion for puffing. Chebaro recently upped the price of a bowl to $10, but customers don't seem to mind the price increase; hookah bars are all the rage on the coasts, and if it costs a little extra to look hip while posing with a bubbling sheesha, so be it.