May 2023

Dahabi Cheese Pastry

Atyab Bakery

I’m not totally sure that I just ate any cheese. I’m kind of sure that I ate some cheese, but it seems to have melted into the pastry so much that it felt more like some kind of thick strange butter. The pastry on the front of the package is not a good representation of the cheese in this pastry. The odd white squares on the package, which I assume represent cheese, don’t really give me a clear idea about what kind of cheese this might be either. Frankly if you didn’t tell me that there was cheese in this pastry, I may not have noticed it at all. I might have thought the butter like filling in this sweet pastry was a little weird, but I might not have thought cheese at first.

This could be a cultural thing, since I believe westerners enjoy a ridiculous amount of the cheese in their food. A good example of this difference in cheese consumption is clear when you look at bagels. I’ve had bagels in many countries all over the world, however there are many countries that spread the cream cheese on a bagel like it’s butter, and some that spread it like it’s being used to hold bricks together. I personally like the one or two inch thick cream cheese fills, but I can understand that it’s not everybody’s preference. So I’m wondering if in the Middle East, where I bought this pastry, maybe they just like a hint of cheese.

So in conclusion, this is an okay pastry, particularly for one that has a pretty long shelf life and that I bought in a gas station (true story). It would have been better for me with more cheese, but maybe that’s not everyone’s preference. I also imagine that more cheese would mean less shelf life, and that would be problematic for me in the near future.