Sarkis Pastry

Orange County, CA (The Joy of Food) — Sarkis Pastry is the house that baklava built, a Near Eastern bakery specializing in every type of baklava found under the sun.

There’s one walnut-filled baklava called “kul-wushkur” which translated from Arabic means “taste and give thanks to heaven,” a phrase that I think sums things up pretty well. 

At Sarkis, the pastries are basically Lebanese-Syrian, although you’ll find influences from Armenia, Turkey, and Greece. All are referenced by their Arabic names. 

The shop is family-owned and began with a location in Beirut, later expanding to Glendale after the family immigrated to the U.S. Locations in Pasadena and this Anaheim shop followed, always settling in the Armenian centers. 

The Anaheim location has the good fortune of sporting a Zankou Chicken two doors down. Nary a visit goes by where I don’t stop by offensively wreaking of tons of garlic sauce.

The freshness of the pastry is immediately noticeable when you eat it: thin sheets of filo dough crushing apart, giving way to layers of nutty, sweet flavors inside. Entire sheets are stacked and brushed with butter and syrup, then cut into diamonds, rectangles, squares, or circles. 

Diamond Baklava is probably the most recognizable thing here, abundantly crisp and filled with walnuts. It’s often a staple on Greek-style menus.

Finger Baklava, also known as brides fingers, are shaped like a log and rolled around in a mixture of minced walnuts, then topped with ground pistachio. At Sarkis, there is also a larger version of these filled with almonds instead of walnuts.

Kul-Wushkur, the aforementioned ‘taste and give thanks to heaven’ agent, is a small rectangle-shaped baklava filled with crushed walnuts in a puffy and crisp casing.

Wardeh is shaped like a flower (a rose), loaded with chopped cashews, and topped with minced pistachios. This tends to be less flaky and more dense thanks to its clustered composition.

Pastries are sweetened with a very light sugar syrup flavored slightly with rosewater, but copious amounts are sometimes added, leading to a very wet, very saccharine pastry experience.

Baklava pieces are sold by the pound, which amounts to more little nuggets of goodness than you might imagine. You’ll be served by folks who are both warm and hospitable, another detail worth mentioning in an area surrounded by tourist-driven traps solely out to make a buck. And speaking of bucks, you won’t spend many here: my order, normally half a pound of my favorite baklava pieces, comes out to $6 and some change.

Written by Joy

Thanks for reading. The Joy of Food blog celebrates eating well, traveling often, and living la dolce vita. San Diego, California is home base, but thoughts are from all over. Reviews and photos help to highlight wonderful (or not) food experiences from around the world.

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