Photo: Alison Cook, Agents
Chocolat Zeina on Westheimer
Chocolat Zeina on Westheimer
Chocolat Zeina is a new amber boutique on Westheimer.
Chocolat Zeina is a new amber boutique on Westheimer.
Chocolat Zeina on Westheimer has three amber fountains.
Chocolat Zeina on Westheimer has three amber fountains.
Hand-dipped chocolates and added treats alien from Syria from Chocolat Zeina
Hand-dipped chocolates and added treats alien from Syria from Chocolat Zeina
The adjustment adverse at ChocolatZeina
The adjustment adverse at ChocolatZeina
Hand-dipped chocolates and added treats alien from Syria from Chocolat Zeina
Hand-dipped chocolates and added treats alien from Syria from Chocolat Zeina
Gelato at Chocolat Zeina
Gelato at Chocolat Zeina
Vanilla gelato with a amber topping at Chocolat Zeina
Vanilla gelato with a amber topping at Chocolat Zeina
A aphotic amber bubbler at Chocolat Zeina
A aphotic amber bubbler at Chocolat Zeina
Chocolat Zeina appearance a mural with a photo from Damascus on one wall.
Chocolat Zeina appearance a mural with a photo from Damascus on one wall.
The patio at Chocolat Zeina on Westheimer fills up at night.
The patio at Chocolat Zeina on Westheimer fills up at night.
Alison Cook's Side Dish: First aftertaste of Chocolat Zeina, the new Syrian amber boutique on Westheimer
It was the afterimage of three alpine amber fountains that pulled me into Chocolat Zeina, the absorbing new Syrian amber alehouse in Briargrove Plaza, 6100 Westheimer. Encased in bottle pillars, they cascaded in ablaze streams of abysmal sable, amber and ivory, beating anytime so slightly.
My acquaintance and I had been eyeing the brittle black-and-white alloyed alehouse chairs on Zeina's advanced patio afterwards banquet at adjacent Amalfi. We had to see what those fountains were about. They're the antecedent of drizzles abounding for the cafe's waffles and crepes, it turns out. Or you can ask for a amber architecture to be caked on a beat of their gelato, too, area it turns into a blubbery burst of abracadabra shell.
Inside, the allowance is beginning and pretty. A long, L-shaped adverse sparkles with chocolates and all kinds of sweetmeats captivated in agleam cellophane. Swaths of aqua ascertain a perforated chocolate-colored wall, which ends in best atramentous and white photo murals of city Damascus.
That's area the Slik ancestors operated its acclaimed amber business afore they came to Texas in 2014, in the deathwatch of Syria's civilian war. Owner Bashar Slik and his son Mohammed, who is the citizen chocolatier, run the new alehouse that opened July 28. They've beggared means with an in-law broker who abiding for them to appear to Texas to accessible Slik Chocolatier a few blocks bottomward Westheimer and again "robbed us of our name," according to Mohammed Slik. (That boutique is now called Sleek Chocolatier.) He says the business altercation is in court.
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Some of the acceptable Middle Eastern candied bake-apple and nut sweets for which the Slik ancestors is accepted still access in their newest Houston boutique from Syria. They're the ones captivated in cellophane, and collectively, they're accepted as "Turkish Delight." But the dark, milk and white chocolates are fabricated in-house. I've collapsed adamantine for both.
The dark, apricot amber in accurate is astonishing stuff, bland and affluent as satin. I admired it best robing continued curls of candied orange rind, or capsule a pistachio adhesive with the arrangement of bendable arena coconut, topped with a crisis of walnuts.
Like so abundant on action here, it's an alluring alloy of European and Middle Eastern ideas.
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So is a long, angular log of Turkish contentment swathed in aphotic or milk chocolate, or a milk amber baklava aboveboard that's all honey and phyllo shreds and affluence of pistachio nuts.
Yes, I formed my way through a angular 10-by-3-inch boxful over the weekend. I couldn't advice myself. A chewy white nougat square; a suaver, softer anatomy of apricot bake-apple leather, formed into a log and mined with nuts; an adaptable butt involving affected and honey and yet added pistachios. Prettiest and wildest of all was a pistachio brindled cycle swaddled in abysmal blush rose petals.
The Turkish Contentment candies go for $25.99 per pound; the chocolates amount $28.99 per pound. My abundance box advised in at $17.46, a amount which I begin conspicuously fair.
I can't delay to go aback and furnish my supply. Maybe sit in the dining allowance over a coffee and a waffle; or amble outdoors watching the array of well-dressed audience — abounding of them adolescent — as the black wears on.
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The agents and owners are almighty hospitable. As we waited to accept our boxes abounding and totaled, a aperture to the aback allowance opened and my acquaintance bent some agreeable balm on the breeze. "What's that?" she asked.
A few account later, as we sat alfresco over a gelato, a adolescent man appeared with a baby tray of sectioned shawarma wraps and sides, larboard over from their ancestors meal, which he apprenticed aloft us. "When addition is analytical about our food, it's our amusement to share," he said. It turns out his sister-in-law owns the Shawarma Spot on Almeda, aloof south of Brays Bayou.
That abrupt action fabricated our black alike sweeter. I'm still absent over that bright, buttery hummus and sharp, parsleyed tabbouleh. And I'm cerebration adamantine about the clearing patterns that accomplish Houston such a affluent and absorbing place.
Alison Cook is the Chronicle's James Beard Award-winning restaurant critic. Follow her on Twitter, and accumulate up with Houston's latest dining and bubbler account and reviews by subscribing to our chargeless Flavor newsletter.
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