Nara Hookah Lounge

I came her to celebrate my birthday with a few friends. I had a <a href="/redir?url=http%3A%2F%2Frestaurant.com&s=c5fe485af4df376130bee54f875814d79c4d7913e1258123b1206d2bdbf4873b" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://restaurant.com</a> certificate so I figured why not? They have a strict dress code. My brother was wearing a sleeveless shirt and turned away. He luckily had an extra shirt in his car but found it discriminatory since women were wearing sleeveless shirts (he's gay and almost female, I can totally attest to this.) We were seated by a window which was nice. Our waitress was lovely and explained what kind of hookahs they had and drink specials. My sister in law had the drink special. Pineapple something but mostly ice. Not so special. I on the other hand had quite a few orange mojitos. I would recommend. The melon mint hookah was divine. We racked up a $160 tab and when I offered my <a href="/redir?url=http%3A%2F%2Frestaurant.com&s=c5fe485af4df376130bee54f875814d79c4d7913e1258123b1206d2bdbf4873b" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://restaurant.com</a> certificate for $20 off $40 (which may I mention brought me here in the first place) was denied. I mentioned that it did not say anything about excluding hookah, drinks etc (I always read the fine print, I was in finance for 7 years). She talked to the manager and he said this time only. Gee thanks. Overall great atmosphere, good but pricey drinks and hookahs. I'll probably come back to try the food sometime.

Maybe it's because I was four bars into an impromptu Sunday pub crawl but I thought Nara was great. They had live music which was way too loud, but the food was great and the hookah was a nice fun Sunday night activity. Everyone was beyond friendly, attentive and helpful.

I've been here twice now and I don't think I'll be back.  

My first visit was with 2 friends in the middle of the day for a late lunch.  Since it was mid afternoon on a weekday the place was empty, we all ordered 1-2 drinks and a bunch of appetizers to share.  While the drinks and food were good I can't even remember everything we ordered (a bad sign).  I'm sure there was falafel and some kind of olive and cheese plate.  Again, everything was fine just not very memorable.  The service was good, but since we were the only people there that's not saying too much.

My second visit was with a larger group on a Saturday night.  We all ordered drinks, 2 hookahs and small plates to share.  The waitress took our orders without writing anything down, then promptly returned about 2 minutes later to say that she couldn't remember half the groups drink orders.  When we finally did get our drinks, 2 of 10 drinks were missing and the majority of the drinks that did show up weren't made correctly (tonic instead of seltzer, wrong alcohol, etc).  Throughout our time there no one every came by to tend to the hookahs.  Also we were charged extra for basic things like extra pita (I wouldn't even call it extra when we are only given 3 tiny triangles of pita for a party of 10).

Also, we were there pretty late and I guess they must close at 1, around 12:30/12:45 they turned the music up so loud that everyone in the area where we were seated had to leave.  It was deafening.  I'm not sure if this is the tactic they use to get people to leave at the end of the night but that was the end result.  I definitely got the message and I won't be back.