InvestigationHookah cafes come out of the suburbs and seek to conquer a more diverse, more chic, more trendy clientele. Even if it means offering alcohol and avoiding the use of the term “chicha”, too connoted. But enlargement is not going full steam ahead.
A stone’s throw from downtown Caen, Nese Soytoprak, a 20-year-old apprentice actress, gently cups around fifteen grams of red tabamel, in the kitchen of N’Joy, the hookah bar of his brother Mehmet, a regional 2 footballer. at SC Hérouville. “Before, we used to make kebabs but there was a lot of waste”, she explains, placing her preparation under a hot coal. The tobacco heated up, she sucks in the sweet vapor emanating from her equipment, a metallic red King E28, to serve it just right to the first customers of the day.
It is four o’clock. Like every Friday afternoon, Amina and Amina, 20-year work-study salespeople, modeled in lycra dresses and perched on very high heels, meet after class for “Chill” between cousins in the neon pink smokehouse of N’Joy. “It’s quiet, alcohol-free, well attended, neat, not far from Galeries Lafayette”, they describe, tearing the bags that contain two small plastic tips. As the water in the vase begins to purr, a melliflu cloud rises above their powdery faces to join the billowing cumulus cloud of the boy next door. “It’s better than narcotics! “, slips Alonzo, 18 years old. He puts his headphones back on a timely song, We overcharged, by Classico Organisé, then sinks into a black faux leather Chesterfield sofa, padded with diamond-like buttons.
“Good recovery, we have just redone everything”, Nese indicates, while tasting the lemon tart that the two Amina brought to him in the kitchen. “It’s friendly, regulars often give me gifts… I once had a Paco Rabanne bottle. “ Its model of excellence: German shisha bars, perfectly integrated into the urban landscape thanks to the presence of a large Turkish community. On the menu, the flavors offered are also more varied than in France: beyond the traditional Mi Amor, Swiss Bonbon, Love 66, Lady Killer, Hawaii, Moscow and the essential apple, peach, grape, often embellished with mint, these establishments with vintage furniture offer Malabar and Smurf perfumes.
New aspirations
Developed in the Middle East in the XVIe century then popularized in North Africa, hookah bars have long been associated with the suburbs, as rapper Hatik sang again in 2019, in It is the city – “And there, I’m in a good mood, I just smoked a cop and I’m going to smoke a chich, oh-oh. ” However, for the past ten years or so, these tiled bouis-bouis with benches pierced by successive accidents of embers have had new aspirations.
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