Address: 1290 Crestlawn Drive, Mississauga ON
Website: http://www.paramountbutchershop.com
Style: Lebanese, Middle Eastern
Price: $$$
There's a quirky story about this place. While on holiday, I received a comment with many helpful bakery suggestions in Mississauga and one of them was Paramount Fine Foods for their baklava. I came back home two weeks after that, and as I was eating dinner following my flight, my youngest brother was saying how the day before they had gone to... Paramount Fine Foods for lunch and had brought back a box of baklava (which I got a chance to photograph before he ate it all). I couldn't believe my luck -- what are the chances? So, I got to review it without actually going there or actually needing to listen to my very helpful visitor's advice! :P
Paramount Fine Foods is actually a two-part store and primarily a butcher shop. In fact, they were in the newspaper awhile back discussing the butcher shop part, which is how I had heard about
it, but there's also a deli as well as a hot food area serving your middle eastern faves (the brother would like to say their shawarma is excellent...) and a bakery, also with your middle eastern faves: baklava! Like Baklawa King, baklava are sold by weight and cost $1 more per kg. than the former. Therefore, at $26/kg, they're not cheap, but are certainly good. The biggest hit, however, was eaten before I had arrived; there are apparently large honey treats with cream/cheese filling. The brother has a hard time describing them for me; all he claims is that they were amazing. The traditional baklava (the bottom two on the photo) is also amazing: soaked and wet with honey (a good thing) and loaded with nuts. On the other hand, the other items (top two) weren't as good and it's recommended you stick to the traditional rolled ones... or the cheese... things. :PAs for which Lebanese pastries are better? After a lot of deliberation, the brother couldn't give a definitive answer: they're both really good, but it's too hard to say which one is the best. So there you go. -___-
Rating: ***
Just as a heads up, you may want to mention that the baked goods from Paramount are from their Dixie store and this butcher place only has the occasional platters. There's no baked good section here unfortunately. :(
ReplyDeleteBUT the good thing about coming here is that you can head to Lazio Italian Bakery in the same location. They are so good. Tons of breads in baskets and all freshly made each day. Refridgerated sweets are made daily too. They have your typical croissants but they had amazing tiramisu, cannoli, profiteroles, sicilian connoli, and zeppole. Oh and their share of cookies as well. All decently priced. Their coffee and espressos are amazing!
Ah, thanks for letting me know! They have one website for both sites and my brother -- who was the one that went -- was absolutely no help in telling me where to go, so I didn't know the baklava is only at once place. I'm sorry.
ReplyDeleteLazio is in fact on my long list of places to visit. I'll pop in one of these days -- thanks for mentioning it. :)