Güllüoglu Baklava & Cafe

This post isn't going to win us any fans among locavores.

Every day Güllüoglu imports its baklava frozen, in vacuum-sealed bags, from the largest baklava-producing factory in the world, which is located in Istanbul. It's then distributed between a cafe in Brooklyn and one in Turtle Bay, Manhattan. Given the history of baklava, though, perhaps all this travel isn't so heinous or unusual. After all, no one really knows where baklava began, but at some point someone somewhere layered dough and nuts, sweetly cemented with syrup. This person is our hero.

Several cultures in Central Asia embraced and modified the original concoction, and here we are --- happily able to choose among the more than 10 types on offer at Güllüoglu, including burma kadayif, pistachio topped with dry, shredded phyllo; puffy söbiyet, whose ground up nuts are offset by pops of cream; dürüm, almost a sandwich of meaty, mini pistachios stuffed between thick slabs of caramalized dough; and delicate visneli, which replaces the pistachio with sour cherry, to excellent effect.