"A spread of impossibly delicious looking breads and pastries were arrayed jewel-like on creamy white marble, a glass half wall the only thing keeping me from reflexively divebombing them like some kind of sugar-crazed bird with a deathwish. Cinnamon-sugar dusted “churro” croissants filled with dulce de leche. Perfect little pasteis de nata—delicate, lemony Portugese egg tarts. Crackly-crusted rounds of country bread. But it was a sheet pan checkered with deeply browned, sticky-looking spirals of dough flecked with what appeared to be crumbs of cheese (!!!) that stopped me in my tracks. “Golfeado,” read the little sign in front of this tray of glorious madness. “(Venezuelan Sticky Bun).” I ordered one immediately. It was everything I’ve ever wanted in a pastry. A flaky coil of buttery laminated dough—as in, what they make croissants out of—lacquered with a rich, raw sugar syrup and pushed right to that beautiful, bittersweet razor’s edge between browned and burnt. At once crispy and yielding and chewy, it was shot through with toasty walnuts and perfumed with anise seeds. But it was a shower of what I later found out was cotija cheese that secured this golfeado’s spot in my personal pastry pantheon. Mouthwateringly salty, tangy, and just the right amount of aged cheese–funky, it felt simultaneously like a left-field wildcard and something that belonged there the entire time, the perfect foil to that dense wall of sugar and butter." - ByAmiel Stanek
