Baklava Cafe's foul medammas zaatar mana'ish, bread, pickles and labneh b zeit. Photo / Alex Burton
Baklava Cafe's foul medammas zaatar mana'ish, bread, pickles and labneh b zeit. Photo / Alex Burton
Baklava Cafe 46 Stoddard Rd, Mount Roskill. Open 8am-10pm every day.
Gastronomic paradise, for me, is the Middle East at breakfast time. Pretty pottery bowls of olives, baba ganoush, rocket, and hummus. Tomato and cucumber salad. Falafel balls boiled in oil 'til they're a crispy, crispy golden brown. Maybe eggs. A helpingof stewed fava beans, pronounced "fool" in Arabic and (alas) transliterated to "foul". Gloriously bitter olive oil must be drizzled over everything, plus enough lemon juice to startle the taste buds. All this should be eaten slowly and socially, with flatbreads so fresh from the oven your glasses steam up as you tear them apart.
Such spreads are standard across the Middle East and my love for them developed in Egypt. There, breakfast is best consumed on rooftops overlooking the Red Sea or Cairo's skyline of dusty minarets.
Auckland's closest approximation is in Mount Roskill, courtesy of Lebanon. What rather industrial Stoddard Road lacks in Arabian mystique it makes up for in excellent Middle Eastern fare. That's currently thanks to Bilal Malass, a softly spoken Lebanese pastry chef and father of four. Malass, 39, bought what was then Shefco Pastries from his former boss, a Lebanese food magnate, in late 2020. He changed the restaurant's name to Baklava Cafe, though Shefco Pastries is still on the sign you see from the road. And the old Shefco menu remains on the wall behind the counter, promising an array of mezze-style dishes that are all still on offer - thank goodness.
Owner/pastry chef Bilal Malass at Baklava Cafe. Photo / Alex Burton
That menu's prices are wrong, but it's descriptions are handy. The new, printed, menu has accurate pricing but little to enlighten a customer unfamiliar with Middle Eastern cuisine. Cross-referencing the two is important, lest you take "Foul Secret Recipe" at face value.
I love all the mezzes. I love taking friends to Baklava Cafe to justify ordering more. Last time I had foul with tahini ($7); a mini pizza coated with wild thyme and sumac (mana'ish zaatar, $5); tangy labneh - an ultra thick Greek-style yoghurt - topped with extra virgin olive oil, dried mint, and cucumber (labneh b zeit, $8); a medley of olives, gherkins, red onion, and fresh tomatoes ("pickles" on the new menu, $3); and two perfectly puffed "Lebanese hot breads" ($1 each). That's more than enough for two people and surely the best value brunch in Auckland at $12.50 a head.
Baklava Cafe can be hectic. Leggy Egyptian youths bounce in with basketballs. Venerable gents from Sudan sip tea with great solemnity, draped in traditional robes. Labour's MP for Mount Roskill, Michael Wood, comes in to mingle with constituents. Mums in hijabs and high spirits set toddlers up with iPads, order hummus, and gossip for hours on end. I like to read my book there, or play BYO backgammon. It's a destination for birthday parties, business meetings, quick catch-ups, alone time, and - according to Naz Khan, Baklava Cafe's business manager - anyone who's just flown into Auckland craving Middle Eastern food.
Malass and Khan exude easy hospitality. The cafe adapts to whoever turns up for whatever reason each day. Its utilitarian space is big enough that a raucous party can go on at one end and a serious tea session at the other. Given the majority of customers are Muslim, like Malass and Khan themselves, a prayer room's been set up upstairs. Anyone, paying customer or not, is free to pop in for a pray. Khan says workers from the supermarket down the road do so often.
The far end of the dining hall is dedicated to traditional pastries. Malass makes between 60kg and 100kg of baklava a week. That's more than anyone else in New Zealand, he claims. I confess that in all the years I've eaten at Shefco Pastries/Baklava Cafe, I've shied away from its namesake. Middle Eastern desserts can be cloyingly sweet, a little stodgy, and that's not my jam. Malass set about converting me with a piece of his diamond-shaped baklava.
Razor-thin layers of filo pastry shatter in my mouth (not stodgy). Hints of rosewater complement crushed pistachios and hazelnuts. While this baklava is unquestionably sweet, it's also buttery and earthy and … a revelation. I now crave it on the regular.
Top-notch clarified butter is the secret to good baklava, Malass says. And he never uses peanuts, no matter how tempting their price. It also helps that his family have perfected the art of pastry-making over generations, in northern Lebanon. Malass is passing that knowledge down to his own children, who were born in Auckland. The eldest, 8-year-old Rahaf, was helping in the pastry kitchen when I last visited. Her little apron was as floury as her dad's.
