Shi Chai

I have been a loyal customer/​advocate ever since 2013. Since I first started going, tremendous progress has been made to this hip, mellow feeling hookah bar. When it comes to presentation and design, I can happily say it competes head to toe with Casablanca on Brady. The interior design is so modern, yet authentic in its middle eastern roots with the awesome Arabic music videos that play. The inside lighting and wall fixtures make for the perfect vibe while smoking hookah. Aside from the atmosphere that has totally changed for the good since 2013, the menu has also made drastic change itself. Again, much improvement on the food quality and taste of food as well. This past time I went (Jan 1^st) I ordered the falafel wrap and I was quite surprised on how good it tasted. Although I enjoyed the atmosphere around me and the delicious food, there are a few things I noticed that could improve to create better business and more revenue.
First, this place would be even more amazing if they had a beer/​liquor license.
Second, They should have two hose options for hookah
Third, the service has always been disapproving. Always takes forever to get the bill and to place an order.
Besides those smaller kinks that can totally be worked upon, I am excited to see how successful this place will turn out to be! Overall great prices and great vibes to come sit back and relax to some awesome hookah!

One of the worst experiences I have ever had in my life. The staff was super rude, the chicken kabob wasn’t even chicken! It didn’t taste like real chicken it was like a bad frozen egg!!! The hummus was a disaster! It was just water! Actually bitter water!!! The ambiance made me feel like I was in a dive bar or even worse! This place is just plain bad! Avoid the spot all together!

Awesome hookah. No hookah in Chicago or Milwaukee can come close to this authentic hookah. Chichai’s hookah is the best

Ended up here after a night of bar hopping. Service was excellent (which is the biggest point to me) the hummus lamb Schwarma Is authentic, and the hookah was full of flavor. Being from out of town, I feel this place just added to a great night out at Milwaukee.

If you’re looking for great customer service you’ll find it here. The owner is one of the sweetest people I know who knows how to make his customers come back always. The hookahs are the best in the city. The atmosphere and music are great. It’s a great place to hang out and eat snacks with friends.

I hear tons of good things about Shi Chai but I don’t think I’ll be able to get over my very first experience here. The first time I went, my friends and I only got a hookah and it was fine as far as I was concerned but my friends hated it. I admit, the flavor we picked wasn’t a good one. I“ve been to a lot of hookah bars in California and their coal service is on point, Shi Chai has no coal service, speaking from both of my experiences. The hookah’s aren’t worth the money because I feel like most of it gets invested on the food this place serves so the hookah falls short.
I will give this place points for having fantastic hummus! Although, that is really the only good thing I can say about this place.

Absolutely loved this place. Great food, service, and ambiance. Went on a date here and had the lemon chicken, dill rice, salad, and hummus with apple cinnamon herbal tea. I will definitely be going back and I will have a hookah next time.

First off — the wait was horrible. My friend and I waited a good forty-​five minutes on a Tuesday night. Granted, they had $ 10 Hookah specials… but we saw other tables that were receiving service before ours, when we had arrived at an earlier time. It wasn’t easy to get ahold of the waitress when we were ready for our check either. Another thing was the limited selection on the desserts. They were out of Eli’s «chocolate chip» cheesecake, along with «strawberry» flavor. We settled with tiramisu, and they sprinkled some chocolate chips on the top, along with some very good homemade tasting whipped cream/​chocolate syrup. The dessert was the best part of this experience. If you are looking for a welcoming atmosphere, this is not really the place for you. However, if you want more of a cultural experience, with a possible unexpected waiting time, come on in! Overall, I don’t foresee myself coming back to this establishment in the future. I was not impressed…

Great Gyro, with felafel. Totally Vegan and pretty good price. I would talk more about the meal, but thought it would be more entertainting to tell you that a man came in from the street trying to sell MEAT to the cook behind the counter… The staff was polite to this traveling meat man. But from my point of view I was just happy to see that they were not going to purchase meat for the restaraunt from a guy just walking in off the street with New York Strips.

We stopped in for a bite to eat last night. The place wasn’t busy when we got there, but half of our party was still on their way. We ordered our drinks, and tables were filling up. Just before our drinks were brought to the table, the other half of our party arrived.
The server didn’t ask if they were ready to order a drink, just dropped ours off and disappeared. All of our drinks were empty by the time we decided we’d just leave without dinner. We went up to pay, and the owner was gracious enough to not charge us for the drinks we’d had.
I’m not sure if there was simply not enough staff to handle the volume of people (Really, there isn’t a huge amount of tables in my opinion) or if our server was inexperienced, or what, but I’d like to go back to try the food sometime.

contrived atmosphere
no booze

It’s where to go when you wanan try the best hookah in town. Service is good with really friendly people. Love this place

Great place for riverwest hookah and shawarma. Not the best quality food but tasty never the less and worth the money.

I love this place, great staff and good food. Not to mention their hookahs always hit.

I usually write longer, more eloquent reviews, because I think it helps you — the to-​be consumer — and the owners of these places who often look here for how to improve. But this time, I can’t do it. My experience here was so unpleasant that I cannot even spare the extra 15 or so minutes to talk about it. So here we go; one paragraph to explain my atypical brevity, one paragraph to vent.
I’ve said it before: Fuck this place. Some of my reasons are the restaurant/bar’s fault: The service was shit and confusing (where do I pay? who do I pay? who is my server? why does she have NO idea what is on the menu? are you sure that other girl who took the bill wasn’t the server… or the other one… or the OTHER one??); the food was «meh» at best, cat food at worst (the Baba was actually really good; that’s where the compliments end); the forced-​outdoor seating was a fucking pain (I wasn’t there for the hookah, and I damn sure didn’t want to smell it from 5 different people). Some reasons are personal, and I’m certainly not going to share them on Unilocal! (they will not aid your decision-​making). Is it fair to attribute those personal reasons to this establishment? I fucking don’t care. This place can burn to the ground. So why one star? Because this site does not allow you to give a 0-​star rating. Also because I needed to eat, and this place was open late. The End. I’m not too likely to return to Milwaukee. If I do, there is a ZERO percent chance I will return here.

The Kabob Hub is a new hidden gem to the Riverwest community. They offer a variety of middle eastern cuisine that is very authentic and extremely flavorful as well.
I ordered the spicy chicken, which is very tender, moist and seasoned to perfection. It comes with a side of hummus and pita, which is the best hummus I have ever eaten. I also ordered the falafel which was crunchy on the outside and warm and soft on the inside, bursting with middle eastern spices. Definitely something to try! My friend ordered the chicken shawarma pita which was just as delicious and flavorful.
The prices were very reasonable and the portions were big, a true bang for your buck!
The service was friendly and the atmosphere was diverse and up upbeat. Amir, the owner is so nice and he made sure that all of his customers were taken care of and satisfied.
I just found out that they are now open for lunch, so I will definitely be coming on my lunch breaks. They are also open late, which is also a bonus.
I can’t wait to come back and try out some of the other items on the menu. I highly recommend this place to anyone.

We came here for hookah after a night at Foundation nearby. The interior was not too impressive, but the place was full of culture (arabic music videos on TV) and late night studiers. We were greeted, seated, and perused the menu. They have a few caveats, like only 3 people to a hookah, the other people are charged extra and I believe you have to buy a drink (tea, coffee, etc). Silly. Either way, the hookah was a bust, barely any pull and continued to be this way even after we mentioned this to the waiter. Too bad, I really wanted to like this place, but it was very underwhelming.

I really had to debate between 3 and 4 stars for this one. I have to go with 4 because it is my favorite hookah place in town.
«If it is your favorite hookah bar, why not 5 stars?» you may ask. Well, kind reader, I have been here dozens of times in the last six years or so since I started hitting up the Milwaukee hookah scene and I just have to say I have had my share of terrible experiences here — enough that on any given night, it is the difference between a 5 star and a 2 star experience.
First, why I love it: Great flavors, prices are decent and comparable to similar hookah bars in the area, the ambiance is very cool and not to «feminine» as sometimes hookah places can be with frilly pillows and whatnot, the noise level is reasonable, I enjoy the Turkish music videos on the tvs, and service can be awesome. One time about two years ago, a waiter gave us a $ 25 gift card to our table for no reason. We must have just been great customers or he had so many to hand out for the night. Either way, awesome!
Why I could really go for being about anywhere else on earth sometimes: sometimes there are not too many videos in the loop sequence and if you sit there for more than an hour, which you probably are doing, you will hear the same songs several times. Worse than that is the service. Last time I was in, we had a waitress who didn’t seem to have the faintest idea for how to wait tables. First of all, waitressing at a hookah bar should be the easiest kind of waitressing in my humble opinion. You just keep coals going, after 30 – 45 min see if they want another flavor. Maybe once or twice between as you fix coals, ask if they need any drinks or appetizers. It took about 15 min for her to even bring the hookah out. She didn’t come back to our table for an hour and 15 min. We were prepared to order another flavor quite some time before then and would have had she allowed us the chance and also would have liked their amazingly cheap and delicious tea and pita bread. Instead we wasted an hour and a half with one flavor that was old before we just gave up and left. She didn’t even ask if we wanted anything else when she came back — she just handed us a bill wordlessly. Now I know waitresses can get busy bussing many tables, but I think we were literally the only table she had and there was only one other table that night that was being waited on by a young man who stopped by their table several times during our night there. Please don’t make me feel like maybe I should ask another waiter/​waitress to take our order. She literally stood by the bar talking to the bartender and didn’t even glance at our table so we could wave her down. We left very disappointed.
My husband and I have a hookah we use at home and a good number of shisha flavors on hand, but sometimes we want to go out just to go out. I’d rather not feel like I would have been better off just staying home. Especially after being excited about going to a place I typically love.
Customer beware of a hit or miss experience! Hopefully, you get the 85% chance it will be a great time.

Very rude customer service. I will not be back!

Shi Chai is an excellent place to grab a hookah. I usually frequent here late at night to wine my day down. the décor is not the same as a Casablanca (Milwaukee) but it does the job.
They offer you a menu for the shisa (hookah) flavors. I felt like i was a kid in a candy store with all of the possibilities. I will say that it is more expensive then some of the other hookah spots in Milwaukee but a extra couple of bucks hasn’t hurt my pockets so i can live with it.
There isn’t a bar or a huge food menu so don’t expect that when you enter. The crowd is usually 20 to 30 something hipsters or college students from the river west area. So no dressing up or over dressing its not that type of place.
The pro for this place is that it is diverse and i appreciate that.