Exhale Hookah Lounge

Maaaan, this place is balls. Maybe it's because I'm just used to a higher quality hookah experience (even in my own home), but this place was really unimpressive.

The atmosphere is totally lame. It's plain, it's uncomfortable. It's not a place to relax and have a night out. It basically seems like the fast food experience of hookah. I don't know, maybe we just had the most uncomfortable spots; we started indoors at a  little table with two chairs, then thought "okay, this is lame" so we moved to a (too) brightly lit side patio area where we got no coal service whatsoever. And look, I'm a huge believer in being consistently kind and friendly to service people of all kinds. You get better service, and you're not the asshole customer who made someone's night miserable. We were very friendly and appreciative, but having to get up and ask multiple times for new coals is a pain.

The first hookah we got took about 15 minutes to arrive, and it wasn't even all that busy. We immediately realized that there was something wrong with the hookah, I'm thinking a gasket issue, because it didn't pull at all. So we waited another 15 minutes for a hookah that worked. They were nice about it and all, but I honestly think the wait was silly. We'd already waited for our purchase once, and they gave us crappy, non-usable equipment- they should have just immediately gone back and prepared us a new one instead of making us wait a combined 30 minutes just to start. Like I said, it's not the prettiest or most interesting location. The only thing to keep us entertained were all the douchebros revving their 1997 Honda Civics with "all da kewl mods" and showing off to each other. Loud, rowdy, and ridiculous. Really though, that was the entire crowd. NorCal douchebros in Affliction gear with shitty cars and white trash attitude. Sigh.

Anyways, the hookah itself tasted good. The price was mostly on-point. The service was friendly but slow and unattentive.

Go to Aladdin in Rancho.

My friend and I have been here a couple times, and each time we end up mostly enjoying our experience.

The setup is much nicer than most hookah places. Seems like they attract pretty regular customers, too. The lighting and the music videos make it almost club-like, but much more low-key.

My only complaint, and it's kind of an important one (thus the 3-star rating), is the staff. Some of them seem relatively nice, but we did have one gentleman on one of our visits click his pen on the counter non-stop until we felt rushed to choose our flavor. Kinda rude. Almost every time we go, we end up feeling like they don't really care to be welcoming.

I do still recommend it as a nice hookah place. But the attitude can be a little much.

Love it!!! The owner Sean is super hot.