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| - It pains me to review a place with one star, especially when it is locally owned and the owner is easily accessible by working in the establishment. That being said, I am pleased to offer my one-star review for Harem.
This place starts out very intriguing. The ambiance looks phenomenal, a very dark place with a great patio that faces hoards of middle school kids killing time on a Friday night. I've strangely found that every time I go there, the music gets cranked up about 15 notches to the point where conversation becomes extremely difficult...not a good aspect of a hookah bar.
From there it gets worse. The hookah is very expensive (especially compared to some of my local Tempe joints, and on top of that, there is a one drink minimum. However, the way that you are notified about this is ridiculous. My group ordered three coffees, a latte, and five waters. When we were brought five $4 Voss water bottles, we were a little surprised. Upon inquiring, we were informed that coffee doesn't count as a drink, and rather than ask what our one drink would be, we were brought extremely overpriced water.
It gets worse. Our coffee took about 25 minutes to be delivered, our charcoal was changed one time, and although the owner apologized for 'the mess,' there was no attempt to rectify it and put us in a position where we wanted to come back.
My advice would be as follows,
1. Hire more staff if it takes more than 10 minutes to get a cup of coffee on a table
2. Turn the damn music down
3. Make a one drink minimum for people who aren't dropping $25 on average sheesha
4. Use the proceeds from the $4 waters to put a lock on the bathroom door!!
Unless I see that there are some drastic changes I will not be returning to Harem.
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