Explore Orange County’s Little Arabia By Crawling These 10 Delicious Destinations

"Maher Nakhal opened Le Mirage Pastry in 2003. Initially, he focused on Middle Eastern sweets like knafeh, baklava, and cakes. In 2016, he built on frozen traditions that his in-laws established in the 1880s at Bakdash, a famed ice cream parlor in Damascus, Syria. To produce booza, a type of ice cream with a uniquely chewy texture, Nakhal and his team pound ice cream by hand with a wood hammer and scrape it off from a stainless steel well. Le Mirage Pastry uses milk, sugar, vanilla, rose water, sahlab (herbaceous orchid powder) and mastic for chew. Frozen slices become white petals rolled with crushed Turkish pistachios, forming decorative (and delicious) flowers." - Joshua Lurie