Baklava Bakery does many things and it does them all exceptionally well. For years, the family-owned business supplied New York’s and South Florida’s best restaurants with its namesake Middle Eastern desserts, peppering the region with its perfect Lebanese pastries that combine layers of honey-soaked phyllo dough and roasted pistachios, walnuts and cashews. Then, came the Instagram following and the nudge to expand to candied nuts and decadent chocolate truffles. Now, we get all of that plus a new menu of indulgent crêpes to satisfy sweet cravings beyond a bite-sized nibble—think the classic with a hazelnut spread or the signature churro with cinnamon-sugar.
The venerable New York Times recently dedicated some serious ink and online space to explain something we locals already know: Miami’s bakery scene is on fire. The headline accurately calls our bakeries “eclectic,” which we’re of course embracing as high praise. It goes on to note that “artisan bread-baking thrives” here in Miami. So true, NYT! You can find world-class bakers in all corners of Miami-Dade these days, from family-run Cuban spots that (almost) make us want to move to Doral, to pandemic pop-up success stories reinventing how we define sourdough and sweet treats. What Miami’s best coffee shops do for our productivity, these bakeries do for our souls—and there’s no calorie count too high to keep us from that satisfaction.