Boston’s best bakery for sweets doesn’t serve a single blueberry muffin. Instead, the treats lining Sofra’s white-marble counter are inspired by the flavors of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East: Persian spiced doughnuts, Egyptian bread pudding, pistachio olive-oil cake. The pastries look so decadent and tantalizingly come-hither that most patrons don’t even bother parsing the […]
Boston’s best bakery for sweets doesn’t serve a single blueberry muffin. Instead, the treats lining Sofra’s white-marble counter are inspired by the flavors of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East: Persian spiced doughnuts, Egyptian bread pudding, pistachio olive-oil cake. The pastries look so decadent and tantalizingly come-hither that most patrons don’t even bother parsing the hand-scribbled menu overhead. That’s too bad, as the bakery’s sleeper hit isn’t a baked good at all but, rather, a savory masterpiece.
An Israeli spin on huevos rancheros, Sofra’s shakshuka is a pillowy dream of stewed tomatoes ramped up with hawaij, a currylike Yemeni spice blend, and zhoug, a coriander-spiked Syrian chili paste, topped with farm-fresh eggs poached right in the sauce. That a multicultural breakfast dish might compete gamely with the pastries here won’t surprise fans of chef/co-owner Ana Sortun’s celebrated restaurant Oleana (also in Cambridge), which put upscale Middle Eastern fare on the local map years ago.
Our advice: Load up on pastry chef Maura Kilpatrick’s baked goods to go (don’t miss her light-as-air morning bun) while your companion hovers near the tables, waiting for a vacancy. Two piping-hot shakshukas later, you’ll still have plenty of sweets to tide you over on the trip back home.
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Food Editor Amy Traverso oversees the Yankee Magazine Food department and contributes to NewEngland.com. Amy's book, The Apple Lover's Cookbook (W.W. Norton), won an International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) cookbook award for the category American.
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