Meet Sameh Emghaoech

We were lucky to catch up with Sameh Emghaoech recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sameh, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I developed my resilience at a fairly young age. When I was a kid, I used to hold on to the negative, whether it was a personal failure, a loss of friendship, or a traumatic event, and that stunted my growth and held me back. As I grew older, my understanding of life began to develop and take shape. I started viewing life as linear, a straight line that has a beginning and an end. Our inability to change the past means that there was only a single path we could’ve taken, a single decision we could’ve made which can never be altered. Everything we do is leading us to a singular, unchanging outcome.

This belief has helped me not to take things personally, not to regret decisions, or to hold on to something negative. Now, despite challenges, I do the only thing I can, which is to keep going.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I’m a baker specializing in Syrian baklava and desserts. I make my own filo dough by hand and offer different baklava varieties filled with pistachio, cashew, and walnut. I’m the only one in San Diego who makes Syrian baklava and filo.

I sell online, at pop-ups, and farmers markets. I’m working on a lot of unique desserts that I’m hoping to introduce at a rate of once a month. In October, I introduced my Dubai Chocolate Nest, a crunchy kataifi nest filled with early-harvest Antep pistachio butter, mulberry syrup, and Belgian dark chocolate.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The first would be the resilience I discussed earlier. Two other qualities would be the ability to learn and the ability to take risk.

In general, self-esteem and confidence are the foundation on which positive qualities are built. Taking risks, for example, starts with our belief in ourselves and understanding of our abilities and limitations.

To learn something properly, we must understand why things function or behave the way they do, rather than simply learning what to do. For example, to learn how to make filo dough, I had to understand what each ingredient does and how it reacts to other ingredients and external factors. Only when we understand something at its most basic form can we create things that are worthwhile and good.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

Of course! As a self-taught baker, I appreciate learning and sharing knowledge. I would love to collaborate with other bakers on creating unique desserts, and while doing so I teach them something I’m good at, and they teach me something they’re good at in return.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://dimashqbaklava.com
• Instagram: dimashqbaklava
• Other: https://etsy.com/shop/DimashqBaklava

Image Credits

@matinsdreams