You can’t get much for a dollar, tax included. Even more tragic: you can’t get good baklava very many places, let alone for a dollar. Let alone in the middle of the night. Makkah Market is open 24 hours and sells the best baklava I’ve ever tasted, at exactly a dollar a slice.

The giant triangular pastries are more sizeable than a restaurant dessert item, and composed of countless layers of phyllo dough layered into a neat stack. The walnuts and pistachios sitting near the lower layers are chopped finely enough to be more about taste than texture. And the layers of dough at the bottom are saturated with enough honey to prove a danger to diabetics. But it’s the contrast of the super-sweet sections and the flaky, crispy phyllo dough on top that gives this baklava the perfect balance.

What surprises me the most is how it can always be so uniform; never burnt, always just the right (significant) amount of honey… Perhaps the recipe used to vary slightly, as when you measure out all of the ingredients for a chocolate cake in just the same way, but it still comes out a little differently each time. Now, though, they must have polished the technique so well as to attain the same harmony of phyllo, nuts and honey every time, and, really, why mess with perfection?

Makkah Market
4249 Walnut St, Philadelphia, PA 19104
(215) 382-0909
http://www.makkahmarket.com