Eastern Nights Café, a lounge on the hookah-happy section of Steinway Street known as Little Egypt, will open a formal next-door dining room tonight for those who don’t want to be bothered with sheesha smoke as they enjoy delicacies such as the place’s foot-long grilled-liver sandwich with spicy pickled vegetables. The menu will be more or less the same as the lounge next-door, which currently offers entrées such as vegetables with pigeon, fatta with lamb cutlets, baby boneless chicken, kofta kebab, and a “Viagra sandwich” that, mysteriously, contains fish, rather than the Rocky Mountain oysters you can get at, say, Ali’s Kebab Café, across the street (according to a Chowhounder, Eastern Nights did once serve a “tongue and testicles” combo). A benefit of going the sandwich route is that you get a free Egyptian peach, pineapple, or apple soda. Good to have options, but cheap-hookah fiends that we are, we probably won’t be setting foot inside of the restaurant until colder weather puts the kibosh on the café’s sidewalk tables.

Eastern Nights Restaurant, 25-35-37 Steinway St., nr. 25th Ave., Astoria, 718-204-7608