A much beloved New York bakery- with an almost cult-like following- finally has a home. After a long wait, Mah-Ze-Dahr Bakery now resides in a chic downtown shop. Since founding Mah-Ze-Dahr Bakery- based on the Urdu word essence- in 2013, Umber Ahmad has been baking her divine sweets in a commercial kitchen with Shelly Barbera, her executive pastry chef and partner, and selling her ridiculously delicious pastries online to customers as well as to wholesale clients like Jet Blue- I’ve also been the lucky recipient of a care package filled with her signature goodies that happily put me in sugar haze/coma. Pretty impressive for an ex investment banker whose specialty was the global expansion of food brands.
Fortuitously, celebrity chef Tom Colicchio was a client, and they talked food. After Ahmad treated him to a sampling of her cakes and cookies she grew up taking with members of her Pakistani family in Michigan, he encouraged her to go into business. The spacious West Village shop – which opened in September- is done in pearl gray, with a tufted banquette and marble displays for Ahmad’s lush tarts, cookies, cream puffs, bars, cakes, brioche doughnuts and other sweet and savory items. There’s also a back room with a communal table that she plans to use for classes, and a big kitchen downstairs. Sweet. www.mahzedahrbakery.com
Tags: Culinary, Desserts, Mahzedahr Bakery, New York, Restaurants, Tom Colicchio, Umber Ahmad
