JOIN USKunafa, a Middle East version of pastry, it is sweet and served as a cake. In Lodhi Colony’s Meherchand Market, there is a bakery named after this Arabic delight. First timers can only land up here accidentally and anyone who enters the place will be offered something sweet to eat, mostly a kind of ‘baklava’ (an Arabic sweet dish, which is layers of a filo dough held together honey or any other sweet syrup), a tradition which is common to many cultures. It is small, yellow lit store with different desserts which can be found only in the Middle East.
The dessert café claims to be authentically Arabic in nature, and made its way to India from Palestine four years ago. Naser Barakat, one of the owners of Kunafa in India tells Metrolife, “In Palestine we have been a very old and known name since 1902. In India we have many branches now and our chefs and experts come from Palestine, Syria and Jordan.”
There are at least 20 to 30 types of kunafas and baklavas here. Mostly the sweets are filled in with various dried fruits like hazelnut, almond, walnut, pistachios, cashews, apricot, orange and lemon, the gourmet assortments look fresh and good quality. The Turkish delights in pink and green, are small cubes of minty gelatine candy. The
figs and dates are large and filling, which is a known speciality of Saudi.
In addition they have coffee beans and tea leaves in organic nature, to take home. The Turkish tea and the Jordanian coffee are made and served in authentic style and cutlery. The Jordanian coffee is a black coal roast, cardamom flavoured not-so-sweet Arabic coffee, it will definitely be new to the palate but a must try.
The menu keeps changing from time to time to accommodate the different types of sweet dishes back home. “There are at least 600 varieties of sweets that we have. But, due to space constraints we cannot have all on the menu together, therefore we introduce new items now and then. Also we have an experimental chef from Turkey,” says Barakat.
Also known for their gifting options, Kunafa makes packaging an art. They customise the wraps and gift boxes into any shape, size or packaging that you like.