Hookah King

Stay clear of this place. Fake high reviews.
You walk through the restaurant to get to this place. They have a door but for some unknown reason they don’t open it.
Place: dark, poor ventilation and odd seating
Drinks: weak and expensive. 14 bux for vodka with any canned juice. I think the pineapple juice they put in was expired. It was foul.
Service: 1 person only working took 15 mins to get served awful drinks.
Hookah was 35 without fresh fruit. Just on the ceramic cup. It was nasty and harsh with no flavor. They use the cheapest tobacco possible. Then instant coal to light u up so u inhale lighter fluid.
Oh they add 20% to your check so you don’t forget.
Never will return to this place again and I highly advice you to pass on this. I hope this place shuts down.

This place was great. Hidden gem in the back of the restaurant. Almost like a speak easy. Hookah was on point and drinks were great. All I had to eat was the hummus and Mediterranean Salad. Simul and Britney hooked it up. Keep up the good work!

Our group had a mixed experience.
We were there on a Friday night, at 9 pm and we were the only people in there. We liked being able to talk with one another because it was so quiet, but we wished there was more of an atmosphere. It felt very much like an old world opium den.
We ordered 2 hookahs and they had neither the flavor we had ordered, nor the capability to light them. I’m not a seasoned hookah vet, but the coals were not hot enough. Even after asking twice, it just wasn’t the experience we paid for.
On the other hand, the food was phenomenal! Escargot, calamari, hummus, baba ghanoush… it was all so flavorful and lovely. The food really made the night, honestly.

My experience here started out great. You enter through the restaurant next door and tell them you want to do hookah, they bring you into this back room which has sweet lighting and ambiance with mirrors everywhere. Server brings the drinks & hookah menu, the menu clearly says happy hour 4 – 7 and that mixed drinks are $ 7 in that time period. We order three drinks total, and one apple hookah.
The hookah was pretty good, and the server was attentive and made sure we had everything we need. He even did the cool swirl the coals around his head in a basket thing which looks impressive and dangerous at the same time.
Drinks were great (I had the rasmopolitan while my cohorts had the caiprinha and peach martini or something), hookah was great.
When it comes time to leave it took us 25 minutes to get the bill, which is ludicrous. Then when the bill came it was $ 99! Simple math will tell you that $ 35 + 3 (7) = $ 35 + 21 = $ 56. Not $ 99. They added a 20% gratuity and had charged us full price for the drinks. When we argued that the menu said the drinks were a different price the server claimed that was a menu for the restaurant and that the hookah place doesn’t have happy hour. Luckily my boyfriend is a lawyer and argued until they agreed to let us pay the listed price of $ 7. I am sure they do this to people all the time so beware!

Extremely dark lounge, you need a flashlight to read the menu. The menu consisted of only 8 flavors and the employees could not tell me the brand of the shisha. They looked genuinely confused when I asked. On top of that, their hookahs cost $ 35… Cost per bowl is approximately $ 1 to the establishment, so they are profiting $ 34 per hookah, yet don’t know anything about it. Mind blown.

Double check your bill!!!
I came here with my girlfriend for hookah and a couple drinks on a Wednesday evening. The waitress hands us a hookah list, a daily special drink list and a menu. The daily special drink list had a different drink for each day with (Only at the bar) written at the bottom for $ 6 each. I asked her if we were still applicable since we were sitting at a hookah table and she said yes. So we order three total drinks from that list and when we got the check she charged us $ 14 for each drink compared to the $ 6 she implied it would be. She then stated that those were happy hour prices that ended at 7pm (which was NOT written on the daily drink special menu she gave us) yet she handed us the menu PASSED 7pm to obviously imply that those were still valid menu prices. So she went to the back and said she was going to see what she can do, came back and took one $ 14 drink off and said «okay now its the same price,» which it obviously wasn’t (two $ 14 drinks at $ 28 total versus three $ 6 drinks at $ 18). I was running late for my bus at this point and had no choice but to just pay the tab with the INCLUDED 20% gratuity and run out of there. I am not sure if she intentionally lied to me at the end or not but she mislead us from the get-​go and then refused to fix the mistake. Take your money elsewhere.

I’m pretty sure this place doesn’t deserve 4 stars and let me tell you why…
We went here on a weekday and it was empty the Lightning was dim and it was kind of depressing. I like the selection of Arabic music that they had but the hookahs were possible the worst hookahs I have ever had in my life.
We order two hookahs and he informed us that it would be $ 35 each plus tax and gratuity which was a problem I mean it’s NY you can complain about the prices. We get the hookah and it’s on a normal head not a fruit head and they use the quick start charcoal. Like are you serious? $ 35 for a rock head a one piece of quick start charcoal… The hookah had no taste I just tasted the chemicals from that charcoal and it was horrible after 3 pulls I was disgusted (I usually smoke for 2+ hours) the bill came and it was over $ 100 for a hookah my little brother can make. It’s something you find high schoolers smoke.
The service was worse then the hookah. We ordered food it came half hour later and the place was empty the waiter never came to check on us once. We had to give a $ 20 tip to the server because of automatic gratuity and for what just to give us a bullshit hookah and late food?
I won’t recommend this place to anyone. Hookah king? I think not either change it the hookahs or just stop making them.

Hookah sucks so badly, I can’t stress it enough. Worker made no effort to fix the hookah and showed no concern whatsoever towards our problem. Never coming back here again.

Best place to hang with co-​workers for happy hour. The service was great, hookah and drinks!

On Thursday it was in the place and we were delighted with the service make the best drinks I loved is definitely one of my favorite places

Came friday night with my girls and had an amazing time. Food, drinks hookah and service were great! I love the vibe the place gives you with the dark lights and great music. I really recommend this place for a Friday night with friends to have a relax and fun time and get the party started

Cool new spot. Rooftop area opening soon. Mint and melon also have great drink selection

This hookah lounge has great service and an amazing atmosphere. it’s secluded location adds to its exotic factor. Great place to visit in the city.

Good hookah, good drinks, good music and food.
I came last week with my wife and friends and we had a really good time. The place is a littler dark and what make it perfect ambience for hookah smokers. I will definitely come back

This place is really great! You can get food, drinks, and the best hookah from some beautiful staff! The space is huge and was playing some really fun music to dance to. Totally recommended!

Visited HK last night for Hookah and drinks, excited at the prospect of not having to travel all the way across town from Midtown West to UES for good hookah. I only wish I had not made that mistake.
The only reason this place would get a single star, is purely because the ambience and drinks were decent. But this place had a couple of issues —
1) WIth a name like Hookah king I was expecting the hookah to be top notch — It was by far the worst hookah I have ever had (and I have lived in the Middle East for 20 years so I know a thing or two about hookahs). Am not sure if our hookah apparatus was faulty but it was just not working. In all honesty our server did try to fix it, but we resigned ourselves to the fact that this is the quality of hookah at this place. (Keep in mind that besides the server there was no manager around to answer or clarify the issue we were having with our hookah)
However, in spite of this we thought to ourselves that we would definitely try this place again cuz we may have just gotten a bad hookah. And we would, had it not been for points 2 & 3 below.
2) The hookah cost 35 $ (INSANE). All hookah’s I have had in Manhattan are around 15 – 25 $ and far better in terms of quality and flavour.
3) We were charged a 20% gratuity (we were a party of two people). And this really ticked me off. Not only did I pay 35 $ for a really crappy hookah, but I was not given the choice to reflect that in the gratuity.
DISCLAIMER — Point #3 could very well have been an oversight on my part, since it may have been mentioned on the menu that there is a minimum 20% gratuity for the hookah area. Keeping in mind that the place is dimly lit (which is nice btw), I would have liked my server to inform me of the fact.
Anyways, I guess this is one of the pitfalls of trying out different places. I would definitely recommend Karizma if people are looking for GOOD hookah. If I hear that the quality of the hookah and some other practices have been altered, I would definitely be open to trying this place again and would be open to updating the Unilocal review.

The best hookah, music, cocktails and food I ever had, I was last night with my wife and friends and we had a really good time, definitely I will come back