Specialty: Custom blended tobacco & lounge
Location: Wicker Park
Features: Free WiFi, bakery, sandwiches
Reservations: No
Hours:
Daily - 9:00 am to 12:00 am
Parking: Metered street parking

ADA: Wheelchair accessible

Billed as the nation's first cigarette lounge, it is built to attract smokers who are being slowly forced out of bars and restaurants as Chicago's smoking ban goes into effect. The lounge is exempt from the ban since the majority of sales come from tobacco products, though the lounge also offers cocktails, coffee and cheese plates.

Cigarette giant RJ Reynolds Tobacco is behind the lounge in an effort to give cigarettes more cache, the same way Starbucks has elevated coffee drinking. The lounge offers $8 packs of artisanal smokes made on the spot from custom blends of tobacco leaves. Nine flavors range from the "sweet and delicate" Oriental Rose -- reminiscent of a fine chardonnay, according to the brochure -- to the peppercorn-flavored Earl, which melds Oriental tobaccos with Indian spices.