More than 30 years ago, a stale sweet treat inspired this family to open their Bengali dessert shop

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

When Serajul Islam took his first bite of the traditional Bengali dessert, roshogolla, after moving to Los Angeles, he found the dough was quite hard.

It was the 1990s, shortly after he immigrated from Jashore, Bangladesh with his wife, Farida.

He was brainstorming about what type of business they could open in L.A. and it was this syrup-filled ball of dough that made him realize how much he missed the dessert from home. 

“When I ate that roshogolla, it felt like if someone would hit my head with that, my head would break open,” he said. “That was when it struck my mind to open a sweet shop.” 

This is the origin story of Aladin Sweets and Market at 139 S. Vermont Avenue, one of the oldest Bengali restaurants and shops in the neighborhood. 

To this day, the family business has their regular customers who value the market’s traditional dessert recipes, including the roshogollas or laddoo, chickpea flour fried in oil.

Sadman Farooqui, a regular customer said on a recent visit, “The laddoo here is number one. Laddoo like Bangladesh is found only here in Los Angeles.”

The variety of Bengali sweets available at Aladin Sweets & Market.

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Avidha Raha

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The LA Local

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A few gallons of milk

Serajul and Farida moved to Los Angeles with their three kids in 1990. Serajul always wanted to own a business and initially rented a frozen dessert shop to check if it would be a good fit. He only lasted a month. 

After eating the hard roshogolla he came back home and spoke about it to his wife, about his grand ambition to sell desserts. The couple purchased a few gallons of milk from a Vons market and tried making sweets at home. The first few attempts were not successful.

Fresh, homemade sweets made regularly with chhana marks the authenticity of Bengali sweets.

Chhana is a fresh, unripened acid-set cottage cheese made by curdling milk with an acidic agent like lemon juice or whey, then straining out the liquid whey. It is the absolute foundational building block of traditional Bengali confections, serving as the raw dough-like base needed for preparation of the sweets. 

Serajul called a friend in Bangladesh, who owned the Madhu Sweet Shop in Jashore. Over the phone, their friend guided them through the nuances of making chhana (cheese curds) which is turned into a smooth dough. After repeated attempts, the chhana texture finally came out perfect.

Cooked Bangladeshi food and signature items like Pran chips and Gobindovog rice.

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Avidha Raha

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The LA Local

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From a humble catering service operated out of their home, Farida and Serajul expanded the business into a full-blown shop. Now, Aladin has become an institution in the Little Bangladesh area, where everyone can go and feel a little sense of nostalgia. 

Caught in between other small shops and grocery stores in the densely packed streets. Aladin Sweets sits near Koreatown’s sushi and Korean barbecue bars, modestly consistent with its homemade desserts that bring in their loyal customer base from all over L.A. County.

Parvin Akhtar, a customer from outside the neighborhood, has kept coming back to Aladin for more than eight years.

“Even though the price is a little expensive, I keep coming back from far away in Torrance, because I like the sweets here,” Akhtar said.

Winning over the toughest critics

Serajul takes pride in serving not only the community here, but also legendary artists who visited L.A. at some point; like Manna Dey, Bhupen Hazarika, and even A.R. Rahman in the more recent times. He hopes that people think of Aladin as that spot which feels like home away from home. 

Through the glass doors of Aladin, the first thing that can be seen are very easily identifiable Bengali sweets. Roshogollas, sandesh, kalo jaam, laddoo, mishti doi and chhana jalebis are some of the most popular items. 

Aladin also serves savory and sumptuous Bengali meals like fish curry, biriyani, mutton, tehari, pulao, luchi, and so on.  The moment upon entering, people can smell the aroma of specific Bengali spices such as black nigella seeds, fenugreek, mustard, cumin and fennel seeds. 

While the savory menu is impeccable, it is the sweets that paved the way towards the foundation of this restaurant. 

Soon the word spread and it reached the ears of an organizer from Dakshini Bengali Association of California, who gave Serajul and Farida their first stall in their upcoming event. 

“It was a three-hour long event, but all our food was sold out in the very first hour. That event became a huge advertisement for us,” Serajul said. 

Their stall with homemade Bengali sweets and snacks like patties and fritters, which people were seeing after a long time, lured everyone in.

Legendary singer Manna Dey, left, visits Aladin Sweets and Market in the 1990s.

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Courtesy Aladin Sweets and Market

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After winning the approval of the toughest critics in Southern California, every Bengali event – be it Bangladeshi or Indian – invited them to sell their food. They started catering from home in full swing: to larger events, concerts and even weddings. Soon after, the store Aladin Sweets and Market came into existence in 1993, and there has been no looking back ever since. 

It all started with the motivation to produce chhana at home like every other Bengali household, and make sweets for the diaspora in Los Angeles hungry for a taste of home. 

Serajul and Farida’s son, Mokibul,  also runs the business and recalled from his childhood how his mother would keep the sweet-gifting tradition amongst Bengali households alive.

“My mother would make homely sweets which were popular in Bangladesh, as gifts to share with people here,” Mokibul said. 

Farida explained the sweet-making process that she has been following all these years. First boiling gallons of milk and curdling it into chhana, kneading the chhana into smooth balls or other shapes depending on the sweet item, pouring them in sugar syrup and finally getting it ready for consumption. This process can be found in Bangladesh as well as in the eastern part of India, especially in the state of West Bengal and Odisha. 

Farida looked back to the early 90s, during the initial days of trying out the sweet-making process when she would get some time for herself. ("After dropping the kids to school, I would try making sweets alone. In L.A., I also saw Anandalok magazine that came from Kolkata, whose backside had some sweet recipes. I kept on trying,” she said “Then one day, the sweet came out very nice, since then I maintained that recipe.")