A ‘hookah’ is in short a water-filtered pipe device used for smoking ‘shisha’. Shisha is in short tobacco soaked in flavored molasses. Even though this is not food related it directly relates to the sensation of taste and therefore falls into my realm of epicure.
Do: Change the water in the vase regularly.
Don’t: Use milk or anything else that will foam when agitated.
Do: Feel free to put ice, juice, flat soda, or anything that you feel might positively augment the flavor.
Don’t: Use any terrible tasting types of drugs through a hookah that is not yours when I was gone yesterday and now I have to replace my hoses. In fact just don’t use a hookah that isn’t yours when the owner is out of town.
Do: Use more than one flavor of basic flavored shisha (orange, apple, vanilla)
Don’t: Put water through the hoses to clean them.
Do: Think about your flavor combo like a drink or popsicle. (I.E. Orange + Vanilla = Creamsicle)
Don’t: Flail about and kick the hookah over. Spilling the coal and ensuring that we lose our deposit.
Do: Keep the shisha loose in the bowl like a salad.
and lastly, Don’t: Think that Hookah is somehow safer/healthier than smoking any other tobacco products. You still get plenty of carcinogens and that’s where the cancer is coming from. It just smells and tastes way better than any other kind of smoking with perhaps the exception being pipe tobacco.
Where I get my shisha: Al Fakher