Tabbouleh Town

For Armenian food, you go to south Glendale or east Hollywood. For Persian food, it’s Westwood or Reseda. For Arab markets and restaurants, the local capital is Anaheim. The three-block stretch of Brookhurst Street from Ball Road to Orange Avenue is home to three Arab markets, two restaurants, two cafes, a butcher shop and a bakery.

All the Middle Eastern cuisines have a lot in common, so the markets stock much the same ingredients that you’d find in a Persian or Armenian store (as well as some Indian ingredients, particularly condiments), and the restaurant menus are a lot like Armenian menus--hummus, tabbouleh, shish kebab, baklava. What makes them specifically Arab? They all have at least a few ingredients or dishes you’re not likely to see elsewhere, and some feature tombak, the special aromatic tobacco for smoking in a water pipe.

This is the densest collection of Middle Eastern food businesses in Anaheim, but there are others. If you go a mile south, you’ll find a bright new market named Ta’ami at Brookhurst Street and Katella Avenue. If you head half a mile west on Ball Road instead, you’ll come across Alexandria Restaurant & Fish Market, Al Sham Pastry, Sarkis Pastry, Anaheim King Market and a Zankou Chicken all in the same mini-mall at Gilbert Street. Little Cairo Restaurant and Janna, a tiny Lebanese eatery with a pool table, are a mile farther west at Dale Street. No surprise, this part of Anaheim is known as Little Arabia.

Some of the businesses have hung American flags in their windows, but you do sense a little unease in the neighborhood. Not so much in the markets, which draw canny shoppers from a variety of ethnic groups and look quite busy. The restaurants, by contrast, seem to be patronized mostly by people speaking Arabic, and business sometimes looks quiet in some of them.

The owners of these businesses are mostly from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, which share a common repertoire of dishes. You can count on seeing olives and olive oils, rice by the sack, bulgur wheat in all its grades, rosewater and orange blossom water, yogurt, fresh flatbreads and filo pastries in the markets.

You’ll also find syrups and honeys, inexpensive produce, canned Mediterranean vegetables and pickles, a surprising range of European cookies and handsome displays of halal meat (slaughtered according to Islamic law). All the markets carry Arab ingredients such as zaatar (a seasoning of wild thyme mixed with tart ground sumac berry), jamid (spiced buttermilk solids, often added to sauces) and Arab-style cheeses. The stock is mostly the same in all the markets, but each place also carries some unique items.

Also on the street are two cafes of the sort you’d find in Damascus or Amman: male hangouts for drinking Turkish coffee (typically flavored Arab-style with cardamom) and perhaps having a pastry, but mostly for chatting, watching Arabic TV, playing backgammon and smoking the narghile, or water pipe, which has returned to fashion in the Arab world during the last 15 years. If a non-Arab walks into one, the patrons’ reaction is likely to be guarded but mostly just very surprised.

1. The pioneer business in the neighborhood was Al Tayebat Grocery, located on the west side of Brookhurst just south of Ball Road. Owner Sami Khouraki, a onetime Kmart manager, opened the store 20 years ago. A few years later he took over the space next door and doubled the size of Al Tayebat (the name means “good things”). Khouraki is from Aleppo, Syria, and likes to emphasize Aleppo’s traditional role as the center of trade between Europe and the Middle East. He maintains a Web site where you can place orders.

The south half of the shop, the produce department, mostly stocks the same fruits and vegetables as your local supermarket, at least at this season of the year, though it is likely to have ridged cucumbers (miqta; the Armenian ghoota) and peeled garlic cloves by the 5-pound sack. North of that is a freezer case full of filo and puff pastry, samosa pastry (“samosa pad”), frozen quail and the Middle Eastern vegetables moloukhiya (a green also known as Jew’s mallow) and colcas (qulqas, a potato-like root also called taro).

Past that there are six aisles of staples such as oils, condiments, canned vegetables, syrups and pastas. Against the far wall are fresh breads, a little selection of Middle Eastern cooking utensils and a cubbyhole stocked with spices and sacks of rice. Along the west wall are a large halal meat department (whole lambs, $1.99 a pound) and dairy cases featuring domestic Akkawi cheese (like a dense feta, but less salty) and the creamier Nabulsi, not to mention many fetas and string cheeses.

Both narghiles and narghile tobaccos are for sale near the door. The impulse items at the cash register are likely to be frozen quail and bulk dates and walnuts. This is the largest market in the neighborhood and has the greatest number of unique items on its shelves, such as makdous (walnut-stuffed eggplants pickled in olive oil).

Al Tayebat Grocery, 1217 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim. (714) 520-4723. Also online at altayebat .com. Open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday; closed Sunday.

2. On the other side of Brookhurst, there’s a mini-mall with a restaurant and a cafe, not to mention a bookstore (about evenly divided between Arabic books and Arab pop-music recordings), a travel agency, a hair salon, an Islamic fashion shop and even a dental office.

The restaurant, Kareem’s, is a plain little place with little decor apart from a poster of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The menu is the usual tabbouleh-falafel sort of thing, but you can get some less usual varieties, such as hummus garnished with fried meat and pine nuts. Msabbiha is hummus topped with whole garbanzos; qudsiyya is much the same but topped with boiled fava beans instead. The breakfast menu offers shakshouka, a dish of eggs scrambled with vegetables.

Kareem’s Restaurant, 1208 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim. (714) 778-6829. Open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday.

3. Hidden away in the corner of the mall is Al-Karnak, a small cafe/hangout open in the evenings. Food is limited to coffee, snacks and soft drinks.

Al-Karnak, 1220 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim. (714) 991-6800. Open 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. daily.

4. A block north of Ball Road, at the corner of Brookmore Avenue, there’s another cluster of businesses: a music and video store, a jewelry shop, a clothing store, a hair salon and two food businesses.

One is a restaurant, Al-Rayan Middle Eastern Cuisine. It’s a rather grand place inside, all in geometrical patterns of purple and white with a dais and microphone for parties or musical performances. On weeknights, the menu is the usual hummus and tabbouleh-type appetizers, various kebabs and nightly specials, such as musakhkhan (stewed chicken with sumac) on Wednesdays.

On the weekends, it puts out an impressive buffet of a dozen or more cold dishes (which might include cauliflower frittata or braised kidneys as well as more familiar dishes such as stuffed grape leaves and stewed eggplants) and four or five hot ones, such as roast chicken, cabbage rolls or peppery okra stew. Behind the buffet table there are stations where you can get chicken soup, pastries and coffee or tea.

Al-Rayan Middle Eastern Cuisine & Pastry, 808 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim. (714) 491-2768. Open noon to 10 p.m. daily.

5. Next to Al-Rayan stands a business with a sign in Arabic script reading Al Sanabel Bakery (the name means “the ears of wheat”). You might expect pita bread and baklava here, but you won’t find either one.

Basically, this is a sort of Lebanese pizza parlor. The wall behind the counter is covered with photos of lahmajoun-like flatbreads topped with tart zaatar (with or without white cheese or yogurt cheese), meatballs, chicken or spinach. Even more lahmajoun-like are lahm bi-’ajin, with a topping of ground meat in a little tomato sauce, and sfiha ba’albakiyya, similar but tangy with pomegranate juice.

There are also toasted sandwiches ranging from American-style tuna to sandwiches of yogurt cheese with mint and olive oil, two kinds of Middle Eastern sausage or brains with garlic sauce and tomatoes.

Instead of baklava, you might find similar filo pastries with rich cream fillings that have been fried instead of being baked. But most of the pastries are cookies or syrup-soaked cakes. Buttery semolina cookies (ma’mul) with date or walnut fillings are usually available, and sometimes you can get little rod-shaped pistachio-filled cookies called karabij, which you dip in rose-scented natif, which is something between a thick sauce and a frosting.

Al Sanabel Bakery, 816 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim. (714) 635-4353. Open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

6. Al Basha Cafe, located just across the street, is the other cafe in the neighborhood. Its sign says it serves sandwiches, pastries and fruit juices as well as coffee, but the customers mostly seem to be making use of the water pipes the management provides--a perfumed wave of tobacco smoke rolls right out its door.

Al Basha Cafe, 809 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim. (714) 991-1112. Call for hours.

7. Two blocks farther north, a number of businesses are scattered around the corner of Brookhurst Street and Orange Avenue. Sahara Falafel has been in the mini-mall at the northeast corner for seven years. True to its name, it covers its walls with a mural of the desert complete with Bedouins and pyramids. Arabic news and entertainment play continuously on the television set over the counter, but there are only a few tables, and this is mostly a takeout business.

There’s more to the menu than falafel, good though it is. In fact, the place is better known for its roast chicken with garlic sauce and its shawarma (gyros) sandwiches, chicken and beef.

Sahara Falafel, 590 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim. (714) 491-0400. Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday-Sunday.

8. Al Huda Grocery opened four months ago in the next mini-mall to the north. It has aisles of frozen convenience foods, spices and oils, pickles and condiments, syrups and cookies and coffee and tea. There are also coffee beans at the counter, along with pastries. The rest of the space is produce.

One of the unique products it sells is Zaatar Albitoti, a richer version of the usual thyme and sumac seasoning which adds anise, fennel, coriander, cumin, peanuts, chickpeas and sunflower seeds.

Al Huda Grocery, #6, 518 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim. (714) 776-4242. Open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

9. Next door is Al Huda Meat Market, which advertises halal Australian sheep as well as beef and chicken. In the window there’s a diagram of the cuts of lamb in English and Arabic.

Al Huda Meat Market, No. 7, 518 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim. Open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.

10. The second-oldest Arab food business in the neighborhood is Sindbad Ranch Mid East Groceries located at the northwest corner for 12 years. The owner, Abdo Khouraki, is the brother of the owner of Al Tayebat. He keeps his market open an hour later than Al Tayebat most nights and closes on Mondays, instead of Sundays.

Frozen foods are on the right as you enter, pastries and breads and bulk rice on the left. There are aisles of syrups, confections, pickles and canned vegetables, a halal meat counter and, of course, a produce section. Among the unique products here are canned Iranian tuna and Moroccan sardines.

Sindbad Ranch Mid East Groceries, 521 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim. (714) 533-3671. 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday; closed Monday.

11. Just south of Orange Avenue, looking a little lost among its neighbors--a Sichuanese restaurant, a laundry and a chiropractor’s office--is Petra Restaurant. It’s a fancy place like Al-Rayan, complete with a dais and microphone, and larger than it seems from the outside; it looks as if two rooms have been joined where a decorative archway now stands. The walls are decorated with a big photomural of a tropical sunset.

Its food is quite good, with particularly juicy chicken and kofta (ground beef) kebabs. At end of a meal, you can get Arab coffee scented with cardamom.

Petra Restaurant, 611 S. Brookhurst St., Anaheim. (714) 774-7999. Open 4 to 10 p.m. Monday-Friday, 1 to 10 p.m. Saturday, 1 to 9 p.m. Sunday.