Chapter One · The Stock-Up
Some regulars don’t come for one box.
They come to stock up for the month.
There is a particular kind of customer this bakery knows by sight — the one passing through North Vancouver, who will not leave the city without filling a bag with baklava, kataifi, and warm flatbread to carry home. Persian sweets keep. That is half their genius: honey and syrup are preservatives as much as they are flavour, and a tray bought on a Saturday is still singing by the following weekend.
So the visit becomes a ritual of accumulation. Pistachio-laced layers by the dozen. Rounds of bread, still soft. A tin of saffron sweets for the people back home who asked. The counter on Lonsdale is, for them, the last and most important errand of the trip.
