Oriental Pastry & Grocery

170-172 Atlantic Ave. (betw. Clinton & Court Sts.), 718-875-7687

My friend Rita visited Syria for the first time last summer. When I asked her about the country people's reputation as the most hospitable in the Middle East, she answered with an anecdote: "In Syria, if you ask for directions, they won't give them to you. They walk you to where you need to go."

On Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn, the extensive Middle Eastern strip colonized in part by displaced residents of Lower Manhattan's Little Syria, a neighborhood evacuated to accommodate the Battery Tunnel in the 1940s, Oriental Pastry & Grocery (along with Sahadi's and the Damascus Bread Shop) is one of the remaining members of the old guard of Arab retail. While the latter two stores have fully adopted the modern American model of shopping-come in, get what you need, get out-Oriental's mode of operation seems to be equal parts old world and old Brooklyn. The shop, opened in 1967 by the late Khaled Moustapha (better known by his anglicized moniker, Charlie) when he moved his family from Damascus, is both pantry and social club. While this is an ideal destination for any number of desirable food items one would pick up on the way home, it is with difficulty that a person could run a quick errand here.

Separate from its vaunted wares-the most authentic Syrian pastry prepared on the strip, home-style in-house catering, an eye-widening selection of imported and local dry goods, plus Middle Eastern dairy products and prepared foods-the most striking feature of Oriental is its hospitality. The three brothers who own and run the store-Khaled's sons Ghiath (Gary), Muyassar (Sam) and Anas (Al)-have cultivated an atmosphere where interaction is as essential to the business as the bottom line, if not more so. Here, a 15-minute stop turns into an hour, and an interview that would normally take an hour and a half takes four.

The tendency of patrons to linger is inextricably tied to the Moustapha as hosts and proprietors. Gary, the eldest, Sam, the middle son and Anas have worked here full-time since the 70s, and the store is their domain. It is no wonder, then, that the mood at Oriental is like that of a boisterous family home, where grown men hold one other in headlocks and tease each other like schoolchildren. Visitors get caught up in the everyday slinging banter, and it seems that the brothers know most customers if not by name, then by food preference.

My first visit to the shop was at the tail end of Ramadan. The store appeared to be empty, with the exception of Sam, a charismatic man with a beard and moustache and thinning curly dark hair, standing at the register between a basket of Arab Chiclets and a jar of dried Damask roses. It was a matter of moments until I had a cup of cardamom tea in hand and was sampling their syrup-drenched fruitcake, which Sam offhandedly mentioned is a favorite of burly health guru Dr. Andrew Weill's.

The pastry is a draw for many of Oriental's return customers and is mail-ordered with regularity across the country. Hidden in the far corner of the store near the belly-dancing videos and Middle Eastern CDs, glass cases that look more suitable for displaying cassette tapes or DVDs hold 22-inch metal pans of crisscross-cut traditional Syrian pastry. Thick coils of Turkish delight with a heavy dusting of powdered sugar, diamond-shaped nuggets of baqlawa, semolina honey cake saturated with rosewater-scented syrup, sticky slices of burma, tightly rolled shredded pastry filled with pistachios-all luxuriously cloying sweets begging to be taken with tea. According to Sam, his family learned from the "masters" in Syria, a country renowned throughout the Middle East for its excellent confections. The sweets are made several times a week to fulfill customer demand, but thanks to the preserving effects of sugar syrup and clarified butter, with proper storage the pastry can keep from six months to a year.

In the early days, phyllo pastry used for sweets like baqlawa and kouh wa shkour (a pastry of Oriental's invention made with pine nuts and cashews, literally meaning "eat and be thankful") was made four days a week on site, in a time-consuming process that requires stretching rolls of dough into paper-thin bed- linen-sized sheets. Even though they have since reverted to using mass-produced phyllo (the practice of all such pastry makers in New York with the exception of the Poseidon Bakery in Hell's Kitchen, which still makes their own), Sam takes pride in the quality of their ingredients. "For the Turkish delight," he boasts, "we add pistachios until the mixer can hardly move."

The sun had already set, and Sam invited me to partake in break fast leftovers in the back room, which I have since learned is the soul of Oriental Pastry & Grocery. Every day, an average of 30 customers drifts in and out to break bread with the rotating cast of characters-the Moustapha brothers, employees, fellow business owners and shoppers. This unfinished space features several refrigerators, ancient ovens and candy-making machines, and the focal point: an enormous marble slab table on which the brothers prepare food and guests happily sample it.

By next spring, the face of Oriental will be different for the first time in nearly 40 years. Plans for a renovation that will expand the space by three times include a mezzanine cafe featuring pastries as well as a new addition-booza, a dense Syrian ice cream that will be made in house. But Sam insists that the general mood will remain unchanged.

Over my protests that Ramadan evening, Sam got to work spooning out boiled chicken, cooked vegetables and broth from a blackened metal pot. This was swiftly followed by barley soup and a generous serving of cooked okra. Such treatment is not reserved for curious journalists. During a shopping trip on a recent Sunday, I entered the back room to find neighborhood retailers munching on pita bread, olives, homemade labneh (thick yogurt dressed with crushed mint leaves and olive oil) and chickpea salad. Across the table, Gary busily garnished three trays of whole roasted lambs he had prepared for a catering job that day.

"To share a meal is a blessing," says Sam, who is not concerned about losing money through generosity. "It's friendship, shows your kindness. Like I say, G-d will provide always."