Little Arabia: Brookhurst Street's Designated Cultural District
Anaheim formally recognized Little Arabia for its concentration of Arab-owned businesses, bakeries, markets and community life along Brookhurst.
Along Brookhurst Street in west Anaheim, signs in Arabic and English share the storefronts, bakeries perfume the sidewalks with sesame and cardamom, and hookah lounges, markets and restaurants draw customers from across Southern California. This is Little Arabia, a commercial corridor the City of Anaheim formally designated as a cultural district in 2022, recognizing a community that has been building there since the 1980s.
The designation made Anaheim home to one of the first officially recognized Arab American commercial districts in the United States. City signs now mark the district along Brookhurst, broadly between Crescent Avenue and Katella Avenue, where dozens of businesses include Lebanese and Palestinian bakeries, Syrian restaurants, Yemeni coffee houses, halal markets, travel agencies and salons. For many Orange County Arab Americans, the street functions as both a shopping center and a cultural hometown.
Food is the easiest way in for a first-time visitor. Bakeries turn out manoushe flatbreads, knafeh soaked in syrup and trays of baklava, while restaurants serve shawarma, kebabs and family-style platters meant for sharing. Markets stock the ingredients behind those menus: olive oils, spice blends, dates, cheeses and pita baked on site. Evenings are the district's busiest hours, particularly during Ramadan, when restaurants fill after sunset for iftar meals.
The road to designation took years of advocacy by local business owners and community organizations, who argued that formal recognition would help the district market itself, attract visitors and secure a place in the city's planning conversations. Supporters also note a practical benefit: district status helps new arrivals and tourists find the corridor, turning Brookhurst's word-of-mouth reputation into something a map can show.
Little Arabia sits only a few miles from the Resort District, but it offers a different Anaheim: locally owned, multilingual and built by immigrant entrepreneurs over four decades. A visitor who spends an afternoon moving from bakery to coffee house to market will leave with a fuller sense of the city than any single attraction provides, and very likely with a box of pastries for the drive home.
