Azela Cafe

It’s pretty cheap and they have decent mint tea — a must for any hookah place. It’s a little dirty and the music was mostly tom petty (seriously), but that didn’t take away from the night.
Decent place, kinda dirty, but that’s what makes it feel authentic.

Authenticity. This place is the real deal. They have the two keys to great shisha.
1) Great shisha. It’s the best on 18^th street. I don’t know if it’s the way they pack it, or what, but it’s smooth. The staff is excellent and friendly.
2) The vibe is that of an authentic dive shisha café. There’s none of the pretense of 18^th’s more high brow shisha options, and of course none of the cost involved in buying that pretense. ($ 10 for a pipe, usually extra coals are free, no cover at the door.) In light of that authenticity, ladies should go with gents to avoid that awkward feeling you get being in a social setting around a bunch of middle eastern men.
But this place is every sidewalk shisha joint in Cairo, Algiers, Sale (where the owner is from). There are cards, tea, sports on TV and Moroccans and their friends duding. It’s dirty, and I would never eat there, but it’s comfortable like a living room. Perfect.

I wanted to update this to say that more recent visits have shown that Azela is attempting to clean up it’s act, which is turning it into basically Generic Hookah Bar X and I can no longer attest to it’s greatness.

Who knew that a place that doesn’t serve any alcohol would be in Adam’s Morgan? I know, I’m just as surprised as you are.
The walls are bright orange and the décor consists of folding chairs and card tables. For those that really miss laser tag there are black lights, but they are somewhat useless seeing as there are also fluorescent lights that are on.
The crowd was a mix of older men. In fact I believe there was only one other girl in the establishment and she didn’t seem to be in a good state of mind. Or body. In fact she was laying practically on top of someone with a dazed look in her eyes.
I guess it’s a good spot for people watching?

Well, if you’re looking for a can of Coke, a bottle of water, and $ 10 shisha, here’s your place.
If you’re looking for comfy seating and decent lighting that you don’t have to share with roaches, not so much.

You can pass by Azela’s and not even notice it, or the bright hookah decal pasted on its greasy windows. Its walls are a sordid, institutional orange and the once-​white chair rail is scuffed black, a highway for the small, brazen syrup-​coloured roaches, one of whom we saw roving happily over the wall right behind my head.
When you take a seat on the drab, worn folding chairs pulled up to chipped formica tables, the sole, greasy-​haired employee wanders out from his half-​walled booth at the end of the room – which also serves as the kitchen, for preparing your coffee or tea – and drops a laminated card in front of you, which immediately begins to glow under the erratically-​placed blacklights overhead. Meet your menu, which consists of a small variety of fruit juices, Moroccan tea and Turkish coffee, non-​alcoholic beer, soda, water, and shisha.
The other patrons, groups of middle-​aged black men chatting quietly and playing cards, barely glance at the large television at the end of the room, where you can see D.L. Hughley silently mouthing at you as you draw in the sweet smoke from your $ 10 hookah.
Azela is strictly utilitarian – it doesn’t have Soussi’s moody exoticism, Chi Cha’s black-​out drunk lunacy, or Gazuza’s sleek eurotrashiness. It’s orange, it’s brightly lit, it has uncomfortable seats, but it also has a comforting, grimy authenticity about it; the type of unassuming, apathetic, and best of all cheap, attitude that all truly local places have, from DC to Surabaya, London to Windhoek.