Strong coffee and comfortable silt both possess a energy to awaken Angelenos from their comfy beds. Now these dual army are operative together during Korner K’nafeh, a Middle Eastern dessert pop-up in Northridge that’s practicing a normal art of brewing coffee in sand.
The business was launched in Nov by friends and San Fernando Valley locals Mousa Helo, Oshin Artoonian and Patric Amar as a approach of pity their Middle Eastern birthright with a city they love.
During a outing to Jordan in 2017 to revisit Helo’s relatives, they were awed by stands portion falafel, shawarma, kebabs and baklava to sharp-witted crowds. But a knafeh and silt coffee were what truly perplexed them.
“It is a substructure of a Middle East,” Helo says. “It is a dessert served when we have a detriment and when we have a wedding. We’re introducing it to a streets and nightlife of Los Angeles.”
Now you’ll find them portion k’nafeh Friday, Saturday and Sunday on a square of Poseidon Restaurant Lounge in Northridge.
There are scarcely as many styles of knafeh as there are legends about a origins.
The stand’s normal knafeh — pie-shaped phyllo shaggily encasing slimey cheeses, a whole thing dripping in a honeyed syrup — is a standout of a 5 varieties on offer, that embody a Palestinian knafeh na’ameh, ashta-topped pistachio knafeh and a pulpy croissant sandwich pressed with knafeh and chocolate sauce.
Crunchy strands of crisp phyllo produce to a tainted core of melted cheeses, before finishing on a strike of house-made rose freshness syrup that permeates any slice.
The vibe during a mount is a full-on party; song blasts from a loudspeaker while a owners sing, dance and pass around an exuberant doumbek (a goblet-shaped drum) from Jordan. Cars journey by for “take and bake” — platters to finish in their home ovens.
Despite a clamor, it’s tough to keep your eyes off of a hulk wok filled with dim Malibu beach silt over an open gas flame.
A finely belligerent brew of dim and light fry Egyptian coffee is influenced with H2O into a steel Turkish coffee pot called a cezve. Amar’s fiancée, Katie Kevorkian, circles a pot by a sand, teasing a coffee to a boil, and afterwards rises it from a silt to concede a coffee drift to tumble to a bottom. She repeats this dual some-more times before pouring a thick, sour black coffee into tiny paper cups.
Dessert and coffee aside, Helo is anxious to bond with an assembly that might have never seen silt coffee, knafeh or people singing in a travel before.
“We’re removing in hold with a heritage,” he says. “At a same time, we’re joining a garland of Middle Eastern and American communities that don’t know any other.”
Korner K’nafeh, 9310 Reseda Blvd., Northridge, instagram.com/kornerknafeh