El Mahroosa Café & Hookah Lounge

I have only been to this restaurant once so my review is based on just a single visit/experience. They serve typical Jordanian food and are located off of Brookhurst and Ball rd. in Anaheim where there are many middle eastern restaurants spread around in a close proximity. The restaurant drew a large crowd on a Saturday night. Most of the patrons were there to enjoy Shisha or Hookah. They have a small no-smoking area and a huge smoking section. I was with a party of 6 people and the only table large enough to accommodate us was in the smoking section. I am a non-smoker but I usually don\'t have a problem with others smoking but the place was filled with smoke.. to the max.... still OK with me but men, women were also smoking cigarettes while seated along with their families comprising of young children. Maybe it is OK in their homes to do so, but I was a bit disturbed to see that. Going back to the food, it was VERY good. Almost everything that we ordered was well prepared. Service was a little slow and a bit unorganized. Our waiter did not write down the order and claimed to have a very good memory.... as a result ... we got two lamb Mandis whereas we ordered one Lamb and one Chicken among other items. After letting our server know about this, 4 different waiters/staff came to our table and asked us if we were sure that we ordered Chicken? However the staff was well behaved and courteous and I didn\'t have any problem with that one mistake. They brought us the right order about 15 minutes after serving the rest of the dishes. We ordered the mixed grill, the lamb and Chicken Mandi as well as Chicken Kasbah. All the food was very good, the Kababs were very flavorful, a little dry to over charred for some of us but I didn\'t mind it as they tasted excellent. The Mandi was excellent and the lamb was falling off the bone and was not gamy as some other places. The accompanying yogurt, salads and pickles etc were all really good. They brought free pita with the food. One thing to note is that they like to push bottled water at $2 each but they also offer regular water with ice in glasses. You just have to be firm and tell them that you don\'t want bottled water. As far as food is concerned, this place is really good. Service is also acceptable but I am taking two stars off, one for all the excessive smoking with little kids around. And taking off another star for the really loud music. At times that music got so loud that I was screaming just to talk to the guy seated across from me. One more thing that needs attention was the guy behind the cash counter, who may be the owner. He made the billing process unnecessary complicated and it took us a good 10 minutes to work things out with him as we were all paying separately. The owner needs to take some hospitality classes to learn better customer service. However I will definitely go there again, maybe this time with my family. But I will avoid a weekend and go on a weeknight to possibly avoid all the loud music and throngs of Sheesha and cigarette smokers.