Louche

[Grant Barrett]

I am pleased to see this word in use, though the context here doesn't really help
define the word "louche."

http://www.nytimes.com/library/dining/031500smoke-restaurants.html

Where the rich, famous or putatively hip gather, you will often find smoke. It tends
to be a late-night thing. The menu at the new 71 Clinton, with fewer than 35 seats,
on the Lower East Side, even encourages it, declaring, "Smoking permitted after
dinner hours" on the same line where it prohibits cell phones. Places cultivating European
or louche ambience have to allow smoking by their louche European (or American)
patrons. The relationship between the smoker and the smoked upon at such establishments
is distinctly hierarchical: a tyrrany of the minority. The smokers are the cool ones,
cowing nonsmokers into silent fuming. For many New Yorkers, the desire not to seem
unsophisticated is even stronger than the instinct to complain. And so, much
off-the-books smoking goes unreported.

>From OED:

louche (lu), a. [Fr. louche squinting, OFr. lousche, orig. only fem.:-L. lusca, fem.
of luscus one-eyed.] Oblique, not straightforward. Also, dubious, shifty,
disreputable.