Café Mille et une Nuits

[vox pop]

Shisha and thick coffee brewed with cardamom pods, cinnamon, clove, black pepper, and nutmeg.

 

Lab purchase

 

I was really excited by the non forum reviews I had read for this one last summer. And I received this before seeing the film. I was hoping

for more coffee and spices. I did not try it on my skin as I have this weird natural heightened sense of smell at times ( yeah that's my super power lol good times ) so I am really trying to not be so stubborn and honor what my nose knows. Having been around an authentic hookah at a friends place a couple years ago, every time I opened up the bottle of Cafe Mille et Une Nuits, I was not only permeated by that memory but also no spices. Had I tried it on my skin perhaps I could review differently. In the bottle for me was a smoky kind of haze. Which later after seeing the film this scent then made more sense to me. I passed this one on along to another. Trusting that it is where it should be.

Edited June 4, 2015 by vox pop

[lady_pandora]

This is a really interesting scent! The first time I tried it, I really just smelled the tobacco and had a sad. Maybe my nose was off that day, because on a retest, this is really well-blended and has a lot going on. I'd kind of been hoping for COFFEECOFFEECOFFEE, but what I got instead is still pretty nice. I smell coffee and tobacco and spices. It doesn't really "smell like" any particular thing or place I've smelled. It makes me want to keep sniffing at it, though. I'm not normally big on tobacco, but this is nice. Really evokes the color brown. I wonder how it would layer with something sweet like Antikythera?

[LizziesLuck]

Purchased from another forumite, and I'm glad I did. I'm not desperately in love with it, but I like it a lot. I LOVE cardamom and the cardamom is the strongest note in this for me. I had hoped for more coffee (actually I wanted it to smell like cinnamon flavoured coffee), but what I get is mainly spice. For me, it's missing a bit of sweetness, so I plan to try it out with something sweet and vanilla-ie.

 

 

Edited to add: after wearing this all day, I like it even more. It really lasted and was quite beautiful. Spicy and smoky.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Liz617113

[BeyondBad1313]

Dear lord does this bring back memories, this reminds me of the little smoking cafes' I was in while in Amsterdam,as well as the actual shisha I tried. I am excited to have this blend as it smells exactly like shisha smoke. The coffee in this is very light thankfully, this is just a beautiful incense blend for me, but it evokes so many good memories. This blend is good if you like the smell of shisha or tobacco.

[whisperstilled]

There are even odds the cardamom in this is going to make my skin explode, so I've got the shower at the ready! I'm a huge fan of OLLA, and this one's been on my wishlist for a while.

 

Wet: Sharp, sharp coffee and tobacco with black pepper. Packs a PUNCH, man, and really evokes a place and a moment.

 

Drying: A totally unfamiliar scent for me, which I like. I know all the individual components, but they create a whole which is a scent experience, one of my favorite things BPAL does. The tobacco is sweetening things a touch while it dries. A little of the harshness fades, and the cardamom and clove peek out a bit more.

 

Dry: This is strangely comforting for such an alien scent, though I can't imagine wearing it day to day. It smells like an old cigar box someone's stored strong spicy tea in. I don't know if I'd wear it, but now I want a full bottle just to sniff.

[Bassmastadroog]

This is a scent transporter. I feel like an entirely different human wearing it, or at least a version of me somewhere else, sometime else.

 

Cafe Mille is high on the spices from in the bottle. Cardamom, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon. I can sense all of them. It's not heavy on the coffee, but the coffee is the base of the scent. It's like a cold thick brew coffee in a shop dripping, while the glass fills containing all the spices for the drinks are open and waiting.

 

There is a little sweet smoke them at really starts at strength as mid wear, and that is the shisha waiting at the table beneath your hookah. Cold coffee remains strong til the end.

 

The wear on me is all day. This is a strong scent.

 

This is perfect, and brilliant. I searched for a bottle because it was one of those I knew I'd be in love with, and it is so incredible when it agrees!!!! This is my favorite coffee blend scent I've ever tried!!!!

[littleflight]

In the bottle I get the heavy tobacco/shisha scent with just a touch of coffee.

 

After dabbing a bit on my wrists, this morphed completely. The tobacco fades into the background and the rich dark coffee comes forward. After the dry down, the tobacco is gone completely and I am left with a heavenly spiced coffee scent...like taking dark roasted coffee beans and mixing them with the most fragrant Moroccan spices.... This is a keeper, and has some serious staying power!

[VioletChaos]

In The Bottle: Thick Turkish / Arabic coffee with a dusting of Middle Eastern spices.

 

Wet On Skin: The spices are coming more to the forefront at this stage, especially the cardamom and the nutmeg.

 

Dry Down: Having just come back from living in rural Morocco for a spell, I can say that this scent does NOT disappoint in terms of its realness and accuracy (so far, none of the North African-influenced OLLA scents have missed the mark in this regard!) Although I get none of the tobacco, it scarcely matters- this scent is one of the great coffee scents of the BPAL pantheon. The rich, thick, dark powdery grind of the coffee, the heavy hand of the sweet/savory spices, is exquisite. I can scarcely wait to see what happens when this scent ages. Just beautiful and simply mandatory for any fan of the Lab's coffee scents.

[Deceitfuldescender]

I think this may be the coffee scent I always wanted but had never found in bpal. It starts out super coffee heavy, ultra thick, syrupy turkish style coffee, black. Then the spices start to come forward, sweetened greatly by the shisha (which reminds me so much of college when we used to go smoke in the middle eastern restaurants). This is a sum of its parts scent where these components swirl together and slowly even out so nothing is strongly dominating and it is just an accord of this perfect picture of a place.

Late drydown is just remnants of sweetish spices dabbed with coffee.

 

Such a winner for me.

[VetchVesper]

I was thinking this would be a foody blend, along the lines of Miskatonic U, but this is mostly spices on me. My first impression was coffee, but more like black coffee with sugar and no cream. Then the coffee evaporated, replaced by a beautiful and intense cardamom underscored by hints of cinnamon and nutmeg. As the blend wears on my skin, the notes become less distinct and I get more of a spice cabinet melange. I get very little coffee, which surprises me, but it lingers in the background adding some warmth. Finally, the cinnamon and clove amp, as they are prone to do on me, and upstage the subtleties of the fragrance. It's still pleasant, but that beautiful cardamom is but a fond memory. I'll enjoy the imp, but I don't need a bottle.

 

If you are a fan of spice blends, you should definitely give this one a whirl. It's got a different feel from the other spice heavy fragrances I've tried.

[Aveya]

Source: Decant Circle

Preconception: I never turn down a coffee blend. But so far I've found very very few blends I keep and want to wear. I'm always disappointed in some way.

 

Vial: YES! THIS! THIS COFFEE SCENT! - Spice strong. But I like my coffee spiced!

Skin: No disappointment here! Cardamon is strong but I like that. Tobacco and coffee are swimming together in the background, spices are forefront and super bright.

Drydown: BPAL Coffee and tobacco linger around all day, with a nice soft spicy touch. I have to be careful not to wear this when a little dehydrated - it vanished from my first test off the back of my hand. In a better spot after some lotion it had much better throw for longer. Might be a re-applier for me, but worth it.

 

Verdict: I usually get Masala Chai lattes when I stop in coffee shops. This is that, for me. The scent of coffee (which I love) all around me, but then strong milky spices in my cup. Yum.

[samanare]

On me, this starts off strictly coffee on the skin, and then quickly fades to a blend of cinnamon/nutmeg/cardamom blend, which has decent longevity on my skin. I was hoping for a coffee shop, which is how it starts, but it quickly becomes a rack of baking spices. It's nice enough and I'm glad I have an imp, but I'm not rushing to buy a bottle.

[theseagrows]

i'm not a huge lover of coffee scents, but this one sounded amazing! right off i get a rich coffee with cardamom. i love that it's green/spicy and not too sweet. after more time on the skin, i believe i'm getting hints of black pepper and nutmeg. at that point i really liked the scent, but after another half hour or so, the coffee gets super bitter and is a little stomach churning...this has happened often with me and coffee scents, maybe i just amp the note too much? off to swaps with this one.

Edited June 8, 2018 by theseagrows

[mandragora369]

Until now I didn't like any coffee scent. Not from the lab or from someone else. Either way they were too much spice (or just plain spice) or too strong and sharp.

Café Mille et une Nuits is neither. There's only little spice, a nice dose of coffee and I can almost smell the Shisha smoke. It certainly has the vibe of Shisha Cafés. I might need a big bottle of it....

[Lucchesa]

Cafe Mille et Une Nuits is Arabic coffee on me, the kind that's brewed with cardamom. Strong coffee and cardamom (yay!) at first, with the tobacco in the background. The coffee fades after an hour or so and the spices linger, but this is not a long-wearing scent on me. It's a brand new decant, so I'm going to see how that goes with aging. It is beautiful, though!

[storme]

I'm basically a sucker for coffee AND for chai-resembling blends, so this was a no-brainer blind bottle buy.

 

It goes on warm and spicy and with a hint of bitter coffee, a really rich and indulgent smell that I adore. Then the warm, rich tobacco note comes through, but it's not very long-lasting--within an hour or two the scent is the merest suggestion of my having walked past a shisha shop recently. I may need to scent locket this one!

[witchytwitchygirl]

Chewy and syrupy, a little bit spicy, and almost chocolate-y to my nose? The coffee is VERY sweet, not bitter at all. The sweetness, I’m guessing, is coming from the shisha. I love it, and my partner really likes this one in particular, too. Maybe it reminds us of the coffee/hookah shop he used to work at. This is truly a comfort scent—more of a scent experience than a perfume, really. It feels like being snuggled up with a book and coffee in my cozy dream apartment. Guessing this will age very nicely!

[windbourne]

This fragrance has always been stronger on the sweet, sticky shisha tobacco & spices on me. The coffee note is there, and it's darker and deeper than most other BPAL coffees I've tried (except for The Turkish Village), but it's not and never has been the most prominent note. It's very atmospheric in that it doesn't smell like coffee and tobacco smoke, it smells like you've been in a hookah lounge, surrounded by people drinking coffee and smoking for hours. I find it calming. The late late drydown is a dark-roast coffee bean sort of scent, but it takes quite a while to get there. This is one of the few OLLA bottles I've made a noticeable dent in. ;3 I'm not usually that into tobacco, but this one's really lovely.

[skyturtles]

I. Am. Yummy.

From the bottle sniff, I get shisha overridden by baking spices. But we need to talk about this tobacco. I usually am pretty meh about tobacco. I associate it with leather, a scent that I loathe. This tobacco, however, has a sweetness and richness that will not make you think of any old cigarette.

Wet on my skin, the coffee and cardamom pop up. But we need to talk about this coffee. I do not often drink coffee. It, like some other acidic foods, do not make me feel well. So while some people loooove the smell of freshly roasted drippy coffee or whatever it is, I'm pretty ambivalent. So I am quite glad that the coffee is not overpowering everything else going on here. Rather, it has joined hands and they're all standing in a circle singing girl scout songs. In Arabic.

Drying down, I can pick out the cinnamon and sweet shisha. There is a woodiness about this as well. It is a well-worn cafe whose chairs, tables, and walls have absorbed smoke, caffeine, and little spiced desserts over the years.

I'm a fan! Lovely scent for the winter season ahead of us.

[Exquise-moi]

Gorgeous thick, initially strong (but short-lived) warm haze of spiced shisha and Turkish cardamom-laced coffee. 

[LavenderCoffee]

This one is a journey for me, and it never really smells like coffee, but I love it. There's something very sweet in the bottle and my skin picks it up and runs with it for about twenty minutes. I'm not sure if I'm misreading a metric ton of cardamom as sweet, or if the shisha is sweet, or if there's sugar in the coffee, or all of the above, but it is LOUD. And then it goes away.

What I'm left with is the most beautiful atmospheric scent of a clove cigarette inside a very old coffeeshop. 

[lipstickonmyteeth92]

I smell like I'm hanging out in a super cool café. 

 

It's this enveloping dark coffee with cinnamon and this dark caramel/cardamom/spice. And underneath it all there's a very sweet, rich shisha/tobacco undertone. It's *so* fantastic