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Media Credit: Cody Spoon

Media Credit: Cody Spoon

Sometimes the opportunity to broaden your horizons isn't far from home. New cultural experiences can happen without traveling the world. The Westport area in Kansas City, Mo. offers a quaint eatery with a Middle East feel and a culture that wouldn't hurt anyone to experience at least once.

Midwest restaurant chain Jerusalem Cafe is a family business, operated by people who wanted to bring their experience of Middle Eastern heritage to the states.

"We are not in it for the money," Murad Al Reshia, who helped build the business, said."If we wanted to do that, we would be in the liquor business. We just wanted to allow people to experience something we love and enjoy."

Jerusalem Cafe offers a restaurant setting, a bakery and a hookah bar, all engulfed by a relaxing and authentic mood. The hookah bar is their biggest draw for new customers, who tend to be college-aged people.

In the Middle East, a hookah bar is a social gathering place where everyone relaxes, talks, plays games and smokes the tobacco. The tobacco pipe with a long, flexible hose draws smoke through water and gained achieved the majority of its popularity in India. The hookah is used to smoke a flavored all-natural tobacco that contains less than .05 percent nicotine, and nothing else even remotely harmful.

Located above the restaurant, Jerusalem Café's hookah bar is dimly lit with authentic, red, hanging lights lit softly, along with a few dimmed lamps in the corners. Middle Eastern art work and artifacts hang from the walls, immediately capturing attention and interest. While enjoying the multitude of culture, soothing music fills the ears and helps contributes to the relaxing atmosphere the cafe hopes to deliver.

"We just wanted to bring a social atmosphere where everyone could just relax and chill, without doing the bad stuff," Al Reshia said.

Jerusalem Cafe offers 54 different flavors of tobacco, including but not limited to strawberry, cola, and piña colada. All flavors are smoked from the authentic, handmade and decorated one-hosed Egyptian and Syrian hookahs. A single hookah lasting around two hours only costs about ten dollars.

Rather than walk onto the airline carrier, visit Jerusalem Cafe at 431 Westport Rd for a cultural, cheaply-priced experience that exposes all of its customers.

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