Shopper’s Guide to Anaheim’s Magical Little Arabia

To get the full impact of the Little Arabia District shopping district in Anaheim, start at the intersection of  Brookhurst and Katella where the abundantly well-stocked Fresh Choice Marketplace holds the place of honor ( 9922 Katella Ave, Anaheim, CA 92804 on your GPS) in the Little Arabia District.   The abundantly stocked grocery store focusing on Middle Eastern ingredients also holds an amazing selection of Latin products and meats, which are also choice and halal.

You can’t miss Fresh Choice the bread bakery right inside the door, where you can pick up WARM pita just out of the oven.  Just follow your nose. That’s because Middle Eastern breads are baked fresh all day.   Also check out the Jerusalem bagels and taboun (from the Middle Eastern word for tandoori), along with its close relative, the Persian sangak bread. The friendly owner is there to explain them all.   And we chatted with him and international food writers, Faye and Yakir Levy, who introduced us. They explained that the sesame rings called taboun are also known as Jerusalem bagels. To those familiar with Turkish baked goods, it is very close to simit.

The bakery section in the back is long and filled with a dazzling selection of middle eastern pastries, such as baklava,  Turkish delight and cookies.   The Middle Eastern sweet bakery there– Kunafa King -Fresh Choice Marketplace, bakes these pastries, and also sell Turkish delight from Istanbul, which they will slice to order for you.

Meats along one back wall are as impressive in their variety, and include Latin American salted specialty meats. It’s so much fun to grab a ticket and watch what everyone else buys while waiting your turn.  There are nose-to-tail selections available, including the mainstays and offals like heart, tongue and oxtail.  We purchased choice ground beef for $2.99 a pound on sale.

Cesina, a type of salted, aged beef used in Latin-American cuisine is one example of the unusual types of meat offered at Fresh Choice Market.

Little Arabia District, the ethnic center for Orange County’s Arab-American community is also known as “Little Gaza.” In fact, before Arab merchants took over the section of West Anaheim, it was popularly known as the Gaza Strip because of an unincorporated area called Garza Island.

“Rising from agricultural fields in the 1950s post-World War II building boom, the Gaza Strip historically had a working-class feel to it,” according to one OC Weekly article, ” although by the 1980s, white flight left the Gaza Strip mostly abandoned or replaced with seedy businesses.  Little Arabia grew significantly in the 1990s with the arrival of immigrants from the Arab World, and is home to thousands of Arab-Americans predominantly hailing from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.”  Local Arab American business leaders  began buying distressed homes and selling them to Arab immigrants, doing the same with empty commercial complexes while recruiting merchants to start up new businesses in them.   In 2010, local Arab American groups launched a social media campaign to have the area officially designated as “Little Arabia,” as it is now known nationwide.