Mumbai food: Bandra store offers tasty Turkish treats

Bandra’s newest store sells delicate Middle Eastern eats that offer the richness of Turkish fruit and nut minus the guilt  

We found a new date place, and no, it doesn’t serve cupcakes or wine.

But, wait another week and you can find Turkish coffee to go with your baklava or biryani-flavoured almonds to satiate your midnight cravings.

Inside Levantine’s display case sit lemon peel dates in spoons

Levantine is a two-week old store selling Middle Eastern delicacies including plain and stuffed dates, flavoured cashewnuts and almonds, dried fruit energy bars, and baklava.

We enter the gold-and-black storefront and pass through a coloured glass door to find ourselves in a small space. The room is lit with red, teardrop chandeliers and a row of Turkish coffee cups line niches in the walls.

Our eyes instantly move to the display cases. There, delicate dates stuffed with strips of orange or lemon peel, paan or chopped almonds sit on white spoons — the oranges, yellows and stark whites giving the dates a pop of colour. There are also chikkis and energy bars stacked in neat rows. Hugging the walls are wooden displays featuring boxes of baklava, and flavoured cashewnuts and almonds.

We spent a good hour inside, tasting everything while chatting with the owner, Suraj Mordani. He insists customers try everything to ‘make a more informed decision about which taste suits them the best’. The store gets its Khodri and Sagai dates from Saudi Arabia and Medjool dates from Jordan; even the assortment of baklava is imported.

The energy bars are made with palm jaggery and honey and contains no sugar. Although the portions are small, they can be heavy. We had the chikkis and nuts in different ways — as an evening snack, as chakna while drinking and just as a post-dinner sweet.

Levantine scores well on many fronts — the packaging is good, the service at the store is excellent and you can question them about everything. Besides, the pricing is reasonable keeping in mind that most ingredients are imported. We like that our dessert options have moved away from cupcakes and macaroons. On the downside, some of what’s on offer is overtly sweet; it would also help if the baklava were sold in smaller boxes.

We eagerly await the arrival of their Turkish furniture, which, we’re told, will mean people can sit at the store and indulge in Turkish coffee. Till then, we pick our favourites from what’s available.

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