Pakistani bakery chain Layers Bakeshop opens first U.S. shop in Westbury
A Nutella cupcake at Layers Bakeshop in Westbury. Credit: Layers Bakeshop / Asad Mayan
You’d think Pakistan had never tasted a cupcake before, so overwhelming and immediate was the popularity of Layers Bakeshop when it opened in the eastern city of Lahore in 2020. Just two short years later, there are Layers in the country's north — Islamabad, Rawalpindi — and several more Layers in Lahore, for a total of 12. The 13th location is in the west, 7,000 miles west, in West … bury.
“Pakistan had cupcakes, but not like this,” said owner Asad Mayan, who earlier this month presided over the opening of the location on Old Country Road; it's the first Layers in the world not in Pakistan. “Ours are very fluffy, soft, light and they melt in your mouth.” Mayan ascribes some of that lightness to Layers’ avoidance of ingredients like butter and cream, as well as — this being a halal shop — gelatin and animal enzymes.
A good friend of one of Layers’ founders, the 30-year-old became enamored with the shop during a 2020 trip to Pakistan. “I had it, and I fell in love with it, and I knew the United States needs this,” Mayan recalled. So he secured the rights to open an American outpost, found a suitable Island location, and opened his own Layers this month.. With the help of The Halal Guide, a popular food-centric Facebook group, word has spread quickly. Fans have been lining up for Layers cupcakes and he says “all of them sell out by the end of the night.”
Mayan calls his “an English and European bakery,” and Layers sells no traditional Pakistani sweets, focusing instead on such Western confections as full-size cakes, brownies and cake cups (here called sundaes), all of them baked on-site. But it’s the cupcakes that earn the biggest raves, with upward of a dozen flavors available at any one time. Vanilla cakes with Lotus Biscoff-flavored frosting sell the best, followed closely by salted caramel cupcakes, Belgian malt cupcakes, cakes with Ferrero Rocher frosting and cakes with Nutella frosting. All are priced at $4, or 6 for $21. Full-size cakes range from $40 (red velvet, Ferrero) to $50 (Lotus Biscoff).
“We’ve got people coming in from New Jersey, Connecticut, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, and people contacting us from Florida, Pennsylvania and upstate, all looking to get Layers to ship to them,” said Mayan, whose dream is to open locations throughout the United States. Before that, however, he needs to get his mail-order business up and running, and before that he needs to scale up to meet the Westbury demand. A second Layers on the Island, already announced for Elmont, has been delayed indefinitely. “My team has been working an extensive amount of hours, so as of now this is our only location.”
Layers Bakeshop is at 621 Old Country Rd. in Westbury; 718-473-4151, layers.pk. Opening hours are Sunday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to midnight.
Newsday writer and restaurant critic Scott Vogel aims for a refreshing, gimlet-eyed take on the Long Island food scene, often while drinking a refreshing gimlet.
