A business was destroyed over the bank holiday weekend in a fire which took 12 crews to control.

Firefighters were called out to Café Cush, a shisha bar on Leyton High Road, just before 2.30am on Sunday as a blaze ripped through the three-storey building.

An Eighty-one strong team battled the inferno which took almost three hours to stabilize, in which time neighbouring business owners rushed out to inspect their own premises.

Twenty-six year old Ali Albayrakoglu received a phone call at 3.30am telling him that his business could be in danger.

Mr Albayrakoglu, a company director of Eral Metal works Ltd, said his neighbouring business was already engulfed in flames by the time he arrived.

He said: “I got a phone call to say that there was a huge fire, I jumped out of bed and came straight down in my pyjamas.

“The road was blocked off but luckily I had access round the front of the building.

“I saw them fighting the blaze, it was a huge fire.

“It was the shisha place next door, I think Numa might have been affected too but Café Cush has been burnt to ashes.”

Owners of the popular Café Cush took to social networking site Twitter to tell customers that they would now be closed due to ‘tragic unforeseen circumstances’.

Shisha bars give people a space to meet up and smoke flavoured tabacco through an instrument called a 'hookah' which allows smoke to pass over water before being inhaled.

The Numa fuction room, which is believed to have been going through a refurbishment at the time of the incident is housed in the same building and was also affected by the fire.

A spokesman for the London Fire Brigade said that an investigation into the cause of the fire has been launched.