Sofreh Opens a New Bakery With Persian Pastries

Tahini date banana bread at Sofreh Cafe.

Sofreh Cafe opened in 2021 in Bushwick selling pastries laced with rosewater, studded with pistachios, and sprinkled with cardamom. A short-lived project that closed a couple of months later, it has just reopened at 216 Flatbush Avenue, at Bergen Street, across from the street from its sibling Iranian restaurant, Sofreh, owned by Nasim Alikhani, known for its Persian dishes that caught the attention of the James Beard Awards this year.

One difference between the old and new spot is ownership: Initially, Alikhani and Ali Saboor launched Sofreh Cafe together; Saboor is behind the Bushwick Persian restaurant, Eyval, which focuses on wood-fired cooking — next door to the original Sofreh Cafe location.

Running both the Bushwick restaurant and bakery proved to be too much for him and Saboor isn’t involved with the new iteration. Even though it only lasted a few months, it still had potential, former Eater critic Ryan Sutton wrote in a first look. “Spend a few languorous hours at Sofreh Cafe means to inhale the scent of fresh roses — even amid the absence of any noticeable floral arrangements in the minimalist Bushwick space,” he added, “They use rose to accentuate and awaken the senses, rather than to overwhelm.”

Alikhani says she started looking for a new space as soon as the Bushwick Sofreh Cafe closed. She started putting the word out in Prospect Heights and Park Slope.

It took her two years to land on the right one — a homecoming now across from her restaurant, near Barclays Center. As at the original, all the baked goods are Alikhani’s recipes. In its new iteration, Sofreh Cafe is serving items like tahini date banana bread ($8), latifeh (a cookie sandwich with rose cream and pistachio, $8), milk bread with nigella seeds ($5, or $12 when served with clotted cream and housemade marmalade), bereshtook (made with chickpea flour and Valrhona chocolate, $3), walnut egg yolk meringue (four for $5), cardamom cake with rose ($8), chickpea cookies with cardamom (six for $5). There are also savory items like sabzi, a herb-filled frittata ($10). Piroshki (flavors will rotate with options for a meat, like beef, or veggie, like kale-mushroom). Rose doughnuts will only be available on the weekends. An expanded menu for breakfast and lunch will follow.

It’s been her dream, since she first got into hospitality, to open a cafe. “I just wanted something where I could go between the two spaces,” she says. “I’m going fully hands-on here — this one is more elaborate.”

To start, operating hours are Tuesday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; weekends 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The exterior of Sofreh Cafe on Flatbush Avenue.

Luke Fortney contributed reporting.