Where to find Dubai chocolate bars, falafel and more Middle Eastern food at Little Arabia Anaheim.

We are lucky to live in a place with dozens of cultural centers. There's Cambodia Town in Long Beach, Little Ethiopia on Fairfax Avenue or Little Saigon in Westminster.

Part of what makes Southern California great is the establishment of deeply rooted communities, where someone can connect with the home they may have left thousands of miles away.

It is possible to walk down a single street and experience and embrace a world completely different from your own.

Anaheim is home to thousands of Arab Americans from across Western Asia, including Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Palestine. In 2022, after decades of lobbying for an official designation by Arab American advocates and business owners, the Anaheim City Council recognized a mile-long stretch of Brookhurst Street between Broadway and Ball Road as Little Arabia.

During my time at UC Irvine, I visited the area countless times to pick up shawarma wraps and stacks of lahm bi ajeen for parties. I'm recently back on a mission to find flatbreads, falafel, and Dubai's famous chocolate bars on TikTok.

Feel free to treat this as a template for a Little Arabia food tour or a list of places to visit when you're in Anaheim. I traveled with a cooler for leftovers and friends who were eager to help me try everything we could in one afternoon.

First stop: Shawarma wraps at Zait & Zaatar

Two huge chicken and beef shawarma spits rotate slowly behind the counter at Zait & Zaatar, a fast-casual restaurant just north of Little Arabia. It features morning foul dishes, a full bakery and a menu of wraps, sandwiches, plates and bowls. But with the glistening meats in the direct line of sight of anyone ordering at the register, it's hard to focus on anything else.

The beef shawarma comes tightly wrapped with sliced ​​onion, tomato, parsley and tahini in a flaky bread, as thin and flexible as a flour tortilla. Toast on both sides until golden brown and the meat is hot enough to soften the onions and melt the tahini.

The meat has a slightly acidic flavor and very caramelized edges. If you order the plate, the wrap comes on a board with a pile of chips and sliced ​​pickles. After watching a group at a nearby table stuff fries into their shawarma wrappers, I did the same. It turned out to be a professional move and I don't believe in wasting fries.

Second stop: Saturday musakhan from Al Baraka

A variety of dishes from Al Baraka, including, from left, muhammara, lagneh, hummus, olives and the musakhan Saturday special in the centre.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

If you want the magic chicken, you should plan your tour on a Saturday. That's the only day of the week that owners Aref and Magida Shatarah offer musakhan, a chicken dish so incredibly excellent that I (and anyone I brought to try it) call it magic chicken.

I was introduced to Al Baraka by Times critic Bill Addison, who included the restaurant on last year's list of the 101 best restaurants. Here, the tables are filled with dishes typical of a Palestinian home.

Musakhan is a classic Palestinian dish of roast chicken scented with sumac and served on flatbread topped with caramelized onion. In Al Baraka, this chicken dish is reason enough to drive an hour down Highway 5.

The chicken tastes like it's been roasted for hours, with a long-developed flavor and meat that falls easily off the bone. The bread underneath is equal parts crunchy and chewy, topped with a deep purple sumac and onion puree.

At first, the dish is so acidic that it makes your lips purse, flooding your mouth with the spicy touch of the sumac and onion paste. The effect quickly becomes addictive. I needed it on every piece of flatbread, the chicken, mixed with my labneh and on top of the rice.

There are equally attractive special offers every other day of the week. But for the magic chicken, see you there on Saturday.

Third stop: Dubai chocolate bars and knafeh at Knafeh Cafe

A slice of knafeh from Knafeh Cafe in Anaheim.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

For months now, my TikTok For You page has been inundated with videos of people dramatically smashing Dubai chocolate bars, trying to recreate Dubai chocolate bars, and obsessing over where to get Dubai chocolate bars. For the uninitiated, it's a chocolate bar filled with crunchy kataifi (shredded filo dough) suspended in a sweet, chunky pistachio paste.

The original bar was created by Sarah Hamouda of Fix Dessert Chocolatier in Dubai. Videos of people eating real bars and similar recreations have racked up millions of views on TikTok. And now you can find them at some dessert shops in the Little Arabia area, including Knafeh Cafe.

The gold foil-wrapped bars are stored in the refrigerator, so don't assume they're gone if there aren't any on display. It looks like a solid bar of milk chocolate, but when you open it, the center is filled with a sweet, grainy paste of kataifi and pistachio. It has all the components of a great chocolate bar, with smooth milk chocolate and a crunchy, nutty center that has the perfect balance of salty and sweet. About two seconds after my first bite, I decided that the Internet obsession was appropriately reasonable.

But I couldn't leave Knafeh Café without at least one square of knafeh. I asked them to microwave it for a few seconds so the cheese would start oozing out of the middle. It's a great-textured dessert, with crispy strands of filo dough, gooey cheese, and a sweet, sticky syrup.

Fourth stop: flatbreads from Al Amir Bakery

A za'atar and cheese flatbread from Al Amir Bakery in Anaheim.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

The wooden shells at Al Amir Bakery appear to be five feet long, loaded in and out of the oven with about a dozen loaves at a time. There are six-inch mini buns topped with sojouk, cheese, za'atar, and even chipotle chicken. Large loaves, as big as large pizzas, emerge bubbling with cheese or steaming with ground beef, tomato and onion.

In a room to the side of the bakery, there are enough mini flatbreads stacked on trays to supply all the surrounding Costco's. I ask if there is a big party coming up. No, that's just the amount they need to get through the afternoon.

The za'atar cheese bread is painted with a green, tangy, herb-rich spice blend. The gritty dough sits beneath a blend of soft white cheeses that melt in tiny blobs over the entire surface of the flatbread.

The dough is pillow-soft and a little sweet, making unadorned crusts as tempting as half.

Fifth stop: Falafel pita from Sababa Falafel Shop

A falafel sandwich from Sababa Falafel Shop in Anaheim.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

The Sababa Falafel shop is technically outside the official borders of Little Arabia, but it's not one to be missed. There always seems to be a dozen people behind the counter and about 18 extra cars in the parking lot. The line wraps around and almost out the door and before you can place your order, the person closest to you behind the counter will hand you a steaming falafel to try.

The golf ball-sized scoop of fried chickpeas fractures on contact and crumbles into a tender purée studded with herbs. Owner Salah Othman wanted to recreate the falafel he ate as a child in Ramallah, the Palestinian city in the West Bank.

“Every morning, we would stop at a falafel shop and buy half a pita filled with falafels and eat along the way,” he told Times reporter Gabriel San Román earlier this year. “Those memories became something that created a flavor on my palate. I had to have it. As I grew up, I always wanted that flavor.”

You can pretend to contemplate your order while you finish your sample, but you know, and the guy waiting to fill your pita knows what you're going to order: a falafel pita, Sababa style.

The person making your sandwich will split the pita bread until it looks like an open crater and fill it with red cabbage, hummus, parsley, cucumber and tomato salad, pickles, tahini, and enough falafel balls to keep you satiated for the rest of the meal. afternoon and until dinner. It's an overflowing, dripping mess that requires both hands and a stack of napkins.

The Arabic translation of the word “sababa” is displayed on a wall in the restaurant. “Amazing.” “Excellent.” “Awesome.”

The entire afternoon was all of those things, as was the falafel sandwich.