Mr Kaak

Kaak is the sesame-crusted bread Lebanese vendors sell from carts and corner ovens — ring-shaped, a little chewy, meant to be eaten on the move — and at this South Keys bakery it is the whole organizing idea rather than one item among many. The clearest expression of it is the Kaak Knefeh Sandwich, which takes the cheese-and-syrup comfort of a tray dessert and folds it into a handheld loaf: a single order that explains both the name over the door and the way the kitchen thinks. From there Mr Kaak works outward, putting sweet and savoury versions of the same few ingredients into conversation across a compact Lebanese and Middle Eastern menu.

The savoury side is salty and direct. Pastrami and halloumi fill one kaak; bastorma and Akawi cheese another; there are zaatar-and-cheese versions plain or loaded with vegetables, mortadella with cheese, salami with Akawi, and a straight Akawi order for anyone who wants the bread to carry the least. The cheese is not an afterthought here. Halloumi and Akawi run through the sandwiches, a crumbled shankleesh comes vegetarian and gluten-free with olive oil and vegetables to scoop, and the homemade halloumi is sold by weight for a table building its own spread. Plain kaak comes by the half-dozen, the M'chabek version too, for anyone who wants the bread alone.

The sweet counter is deeper still, and it is where the bakery makes its fullest case. Knefeh anchors it — shredded dough and semolina layered with sweetened cheese — and around it sit Mafroukeh, roasted semolina under fresh Kashta cream and fried nuts finished with pistachio and orange blossom; Ward el Sham, a baklava wrapped around Kashta; Znoud el-Sit, fried baklava dough filled with cream and syrup; Osmaliya, Kashta caught between two crisp layers of stringy dough; and Halawat El Rez, rice and cheese in a blossom-and-rose-water syrup. The Halawat El Jeben rolls arrive eighteen to twenty-two pieces to an order, and much of the rest of the counter is sold by weight.

Read the menu twice and its structure shows itself. The same short list of ingredients keeps reappearing in new forms. Knefeh is both a tray sweet and a sandwich. Semolina and Kashta cream run from Mafroukeh through Osmaliya into the Kaak Mafrooke, where they are worked with butter, milk, almonds, cashews, and rose water into kaak shape. The cheese thread ties sweet to savoury, the same Akawi turning up beside pastrami in one order and beside syrup in the next. The repetition is the craft: a small kitchen turning a handful of doughs, cheeses, and syrups into a long menu without reaching past what a Lebanese bakery is built to do.

Mr Kaak opened in 2021 on Pleasant Park Road, near where South Keys meets the south end of Bank Street, and it keeps the modest, bakery-first habits of the trade — open through the day, geared toward takeout and large orders as much as a quick stop at the counter. The by-weight sweets and the six-piece kaak orders are built for a table being assembled at home, not a single plate eaten in. Taste the Tradition is the line the bakery puts on its own sign, and the menu reads as a literal version of it: less a reinvention of Lebanese sweets and kaak than a patient, repeated rendering of them, the kind where a first visit and a tenth can share almost nothing on the counter and still come from the same few doughs, cheeses, and syrups.