Shatila Bakery Spotlight: Dearborn, Michigan

Dearborn is home to the largest Arab-American community in the United States, and the food that comes out of that community is extraordinary. At the center of it, for baklava and Lebanese pastries and wedding sweets and everything in between, is Shatila Bakery.

Located at 14300 W Warren Ave in Dearborn, Shatila has been producing traditional Middle Eastern sweets since the Shatila family brought their pastry-making craft from Lebanon. The baklava here is the version that ruins you for baklava anywhere else: properly phyllo, properly buttered, drenched in the right amount of simple syrup, and filled with either pistachios or walnuts depending on the tradition. The bite tells you immediately that someone who has been making this for their entire life made this.

The full range of Lebanese sweets extends across the display cases: maamoul filled with dates, pistachios, or walnuts; knafeh; halawet el jibn; birds nest pastries; and dozens of other items that represent the full depth of a tradition most Americans have barely encountered. The wedding cake and special occasion business reflects the community that built the bakery.

Shatila ships nationwide and has become known well beyond Dearborn and Metro Detroit. But the storefront on W Warren is the original, and visiting it is an immersion in a food culture that Dearborn has preserved and shared with the whole region.

Visit at shatila.com on W Warren Avenue in Dearborn.

Michigan Small Business Spotlight is proud to feature Shatila Bakery as one of Southeast Michigan’s most celebrated and culturally significant small businesses.