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So Far, So Good

Hookah Cafe will hook you.

A A A Comments By Jason Sheehan Thursday, Apr 21 2005

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Mark Manger

Pipe dream: Hookah Cafe offers a taste of the real Lebanon.

Details

270 South Downing Street, 303-722- 4100. Hours: 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., 5-11 p.m. daily

Lamb kebab plate: $10.95
Kibbi: $8.95
Shish tawouk: $8.95
Meat combo: $13.95
Fruit salad: $3.95< br>Lemonade: $2.50

Closed Location

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After I finish eating, I have the leftovers wrapped to go and sit a minute, not yet ready to leave. True, I've never been anywhere. I've never been to Paris. I've never gotten drunk in Catalonia and had to be carried home from the tapas bar. I've never slouched through the cafes of Beirut, drinking thimbles full of deadly black coffee and devouring my weight in tabouleh. Someday I'll do all of that. But for now, I've already eaten my way around the world more times than I can count. Until I have the time and the means to do things right, this is the way I will travel, and I feel fortunate that I've lived in places where such trips are possible. All nightmares of foodie inadequacy aside, I've been places -- and I have no trouble telling the good ethnic translations from the bad.

Hookah Cafe is one of the good ones. I know this because when I finally get up and step outside -- carrying my bag of take-away Lebanon, still wreathed in the smells of cumin and garlic and sweet tobacco smoke -- the world is a slightly different place. Fuller, somehow. Denver isn't Lebanon, Downing Street isn't Beirut, but this spot makes those distant places seem that much closer. And I feel fortunate that I don't have to go far to get my taste of the far-away.

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