Le Mirage Pastry — Restaurant in Anaheim

Every kind of dessert and cake and baklava and beautifully laminated, buttery pastry. I don't understand how such an unassuming, mid-range-priced mom and pop shop is able to have such a wide variety, and with each individual item seeming like it's gotta be the one famous item everyone flocks to the bakery for. With its Arabic and French pastry fusion, my headcannon is that an Arabic family graduated France's most prestigious pastry school and then opened shop here.

We got one of every kind of baklava. They're all somewhat similar in flavor, but a completely different textural experience . Crunchy/tender, flaky/moist, pillowy/dense. A lot of them start out with a satisfying crunch and then just turn to butter in your mouth. A freakin festival of culinary textures. They were sweet, but not too sweet, nutty, caramely, brown sugar-y and perfect.

The thing we actually went for was the dark chocolate cake which, unsurprisingly, was phenomenal. Deep chocolate flavor, moist, not too sweet, and some sort of aromatic or subtle flavor that I couldn't place but that I really liked. Rose water? Bergamot? I don't know but I would love another slice.

A lovely gentleman with the jawline of Henry Cavil helped us, was super kind, and just seemed like he genuinely enjoyed his job. Be warned ladies, you might show up for the sweets but stay for the...

Have been wanting to come here forever.

What a HUGE disappointment!

The bouza is no longer freshly prepared and it is not presented in a bowl arranged in the beautiful, flower-like slices anymore. Instead, it's pre-packed and pushed into deli-style containers. As a result, it's a hard, crystalized mess without any of the desired stretchiness. The eclair was filled with cream that had gone bad and tasted of spoiled milk. The strawberry "mango" cake was dry, old, and did not taste like mango (or really of strawberry either for that matter). And the cheese knafe was terrible: made with semolina instead of phyllo floss and barely drizzled with mostly bland syrup. We only ate the cheese and threw the rest away. The best thing we had was the Oreo cheesecake and I suspect that its baked elsewhere, frozen, shipped, and defrosted for sale at this location.

Also, didn't order the fruit tarts because the fruit was not glistening as it should. Instead, the fruit looked old and dry. Also, didn't order the mini mirror cakes either because the topping had broken and was sliding off of the cakes.

What a shame. For nearly $40 for four pastries and an extra small bouza, what a terrible shame.

Will never return and must continue my search for the delicious Middle Eastern delicacies of my...

SYRIA 🇸🇾 Eat the World LA review: A little over a year ago, the New Yorker published a story by Orange County's beloved (and sometimes not so much) Gustavo Arellano covering the tale of the ice cream at Le Mirage and its journey from Damascus. Tucked away in the old city of Syria's capital, an almost 140 year old shop selling booza called Bakdash was what owner Maher Nakhal wanted to bring to Anaheim.

If you have ever traveled in the Levant, you have certainly come across booza, the ice cream that stretches when pulled apart and seems to have an ability to resist melting much longer than ice cream we are used to in other places. With ingredients native to the area, this type of dessert has been made since seemingly the beginning of time. A flour made from orchid tubers called salep and the resin of mastic trees used in chewing gum are what gives the ice cream its unforgettable qualities.

The bowl is served like a flower, with sliced petals of booza rimmed with pistachios. True to its promise, the stretchy fun is all there and brings back good memories for me of enjoying dondurma on sunny...