Most baklava sold in Sydney is too sweet, too wet and made days ago. Here is how to judge a tray properly, what pistachio should cost, and where to eat baklava in Sydney fresh.
Baklava is one of those things Sydney has a lot of and not much good. It turns up in supermarket cabinets, at airport gates, in plastic clamshells at the end of long buffets, and almost all of it shares the same two faults: it is far too sweet, and it was made too long ago.
The gap between that and a properly made tray is not subtle. Good baklava is a pastry dish that happens to be sweet. Bad baklava is a sugar delivery system with some filo in it. Here is how to tell the difference before you pay.
What Baklava Actually Is
Baklava is built from filo pastry rolled so thin you can read through it, layered forty or more sheets deep with clarified butter brushed between every layer and ground nuts packed through the middle. It is baked until the top is deep gold, then hot syrup is poured over it, or cold syrup over hot pastry, depending on the house. The syrup sets into the layers as it cools.
The technique is Ottoman, refined in the palace kitchens of Istanbul, but the modern centre of it is Gaziantep in Turkey's south east, close enough to the pistachio orchards that the nuts go into the tray the same week they come off the tree. Gaziantep baklava carries a protected designation in Turkey, in the same way champagne does in France.
How to Judge a Tray
You can assess baklava before tasting it, which is useful in a cabinet full of options.
- Look at the syrup pooling. A shallow pool is right. A tray sitting in a lake of syrup has been drowned and the pastry underneath will be sodden.
- Look at the layers from the side. You should be able to count distinct sheets. If the cross-section looks like a single compressed block, the butter was skipped or the pastry was too thick.
- Listen when it is cut. Fresh baklava resists the knife and crackles. Old baklava cuts silently.
- Check the nut colour. Pistachio should be a dull, natural green. A vivid green means colouring, which means the nut was not good enough to speak for itself.
- Ask when it was made. Anyone proud of their baklava will tell you without hesitating.
Pistachio, Walnut, or Cold
Fistikli, the pistachio version, is the one people picture: sweeter, more perfumed, more expensive, and the style Gaziantep is famous for. Cevizli, the walnut version, is what most Turkish families actually eat at home. It is deeper and slightly bitter, and it stands up better to strong coffee. Neither is a lesser dish.
Then there is soguk baklava, cold baklava, which is a genuinely modern invention and has swept Turkey in the last ten years. The pastry is soaked in milk rather than syrup and served chilled under cocoa and crushed pistachio. It is softer, much less sweet, and closer to a chilled cake than a pastry. If you have decided you do not like baklava, this is the one that changes minds.
What It Should Cost
Real pistachio baklava is expensive to make because pistachios are expensive, full stop. A single generous piece made with good nuts and real butter sits around ten to fourteen dollars in a Sydney restaurant. Anything dramatically cheaper is telling you something about the nut, the fat, or the age of the tray, and usually all three.
Where to Eat Baklava in Sydney
Ask where to find the best baklava in Sydney and the answer has traditionally meant a drive west to Auburn or Bankstown, which is fine if you live there and impractical if you do not. In the inner east there is much less of it, and most of what exists is bought in rather than made.
At Cappadocia Cafe on Stanley Street in Darlinghurst we serve traditional baklava at $12, the syrup-and-pistachio version, served at room temperature the way it should be. It sits alongside kunefe, the hot shredded-pastry-and-cheese dessert, at $18, and San Sebastian cheesecake at $14. Turkish coffee at $5.50 is the correct thing to drink with any of them, because the bitterness is what stops the sweetness from becoming tiring.
We are a ten minute walk from the CBD through Hyde Park and five minutes from Kings Cross station, so if you have been searching baklava Sydney CBD and finding nothing in the city itself, this is the closest proper version.
Dessert is served through the evening at 82-84 Stanley St, Darlinghurst. Walk-ins welcome for the sweet course.
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