Shisha in Athens, explained honestly

Shisha occupies an odd position in Athens. It is everywhere on the terraces in summer, almost nobody can tell you how it works, and the pages that sell it tend to describe it in language borrowed from a spa. This is a plainer account, including the paragraph most restaurant pages leave out.

In Greek it is usually the narghile. Elsewhere it is hookah, or sheesha, or the water pipe. They are the same object, and the object is older and simpler than the marketing around it suggests.

What is actually happening in the pipe

At the top sits a bowl of shisha tobacco, which is not loose leaf. It is a wet mixture, usually called mu'assel, meaning honeyed: tobacco combined with molasses or glycerine and flavouring, which is why it is sticky and why it produces so much visible smoke.

Above the bowl, separated by foil or a metal heat manager, sits burning charcoal. The charcoal does not touch the tobacco. It heats it from above until the sugars and glycerine vaporise, and that vapour is what you are drawing on.

Then the draw pulls it down the stem, through water in the base, and along the hose. The water cools the smoke and that is the whole of what the water does. This part matters, so it gets its own section.

The paragraph most pages skip

The water does not clean the smoke. It lowers the temperature, which makes a large volume of smoke comfortable to inhale, and comfort is not the same as safety. Cooling a thing does not remove what is in it.

A shisha session also runs long. Forty minutes to an hour is normal, and over that time the total volume of smoke drawn is considerably greater than a cigarette. The World Health Organization and national health bodies are consistent on this: a water pipe is not a safer alternative to smoking, and the charcoal adds its own combustion products on top of the tobacco's.

We serve it, so we are not neutral, and you should weigh what we say accordingly. But we are not going to print the line about the water filtering out the bad parts, because it is not true and you deserve to decide with the real information. If you do not smoke, this is not the thing to start with.

Where the law allows it

Greece prohibits smoking inside hospitality venues, and that applies to a water pipe exactly as it applies to a cigarette. In practice this means shisha in Athens lives outdoors, on terraces, in courtyards and on pavements, which is also why it is so much more visible in summer than in February.

We have a two level terrace and a courtyard that opens onto the square, so the outdoor space exists. Where exactly it can be set up on a given night depends on the weather and on how full the terrace is, so ask when you book rather than assuming. The contact page has the number.

The two on our list

There are two entries. The Wookah Experience, named for the pipe itself rather than for a flavour, and shisha with a spirit of your choice, which pairs the pipe with something from the bar.

The pairing one is the more interesting proposition. A water pipe is slow and sweet, and putting a sweet drink next to it is a mistake almost everybody makes once. Something with bitterness, smoke or real alcoholic weight holds its own instead of disappearing. An aged agave spirit works, and so does a dark rum. Ask the bar and they will steer you better than a page can.

On flavours, ask the team rather than this page, because what is stocked changes and a printed list that has drifted is worse than no list.

Who it is actually for

Shisha is not a drink you finish. It is an hour, and it is shared, and it only makes sense at a table that has decided to stay. Ordering one and then leaving in twenty minutes is spending money on something you did not use.

That makes it a thing for the second half of an evening rather than the first, which is why it sits naturally in the late part of the night: after the food, on the terrace, with a group that has stopped looking at the time. If that is not the evening you are having, it is not the order to make.