Instagram Post 7/23/2019

While doing reconnaissance for potential venues to visit on my Little Levant food tour in Bay Ridge, I checked out one of the newer kids on the block, Paradise Sweets at 6739 5th Ave in Brooklyn. It takes a certain amount of intestinal fortitude to launch a new Middle Eastern bakery along that strip considering the number of existing well-entrenched similar establishments but they seem to have a handle on serving the standards and coming up with some innovations as well.

(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)

Case in point, this Nutella Kunafa (no, I won’t provide alternate spellings you might see since this was originally an Instagram post and Instagram only affords us 2200 characters per post). It’s a flat foundation of noodle-ish knafeh pastry suffocated by an ocean of Nutella topped with a thicker layer of vermicelloid kanafeh; a final fillip of adroitly squirted Nutella along with a trio of cherries and some ground pistachios grace the top gratuitously.

A cross section of this awe-inspiring architectural wonder so excessive as to give even my prodigious sweet tooth a run for its honey.

Problem is, I liked it.

As for the canonical litany of Middle Eastern sweets, along with an authentically cheesy, Kunafeh Nabulsiah, they do an acceptable rendition of Halawet el Jibn (sweet cheese rolls), cheesy dough stuffed with cheesy cream shown here, as yet unanointed by the accompanying supply of sugar syrup.