Halawa Dibs: Our most unique creation

Every menu has one. The flavour that never wins the popularity contest but quietly earns the deepest loyalty. At Mama Booza, that flavour is Halawa Dibs, our most ambitious creation and, we would argue, our most underrated. It is built on two of the Levant's oldest ingredients, and both deserve a proper introduction.

The first is carob molasses, dibs el kharrub, pressed from carob pods that were once so prized in the Shuf mountains south of Beirut that they were given as wedding gifts. The second is halawa, whose first written recipe appears in the 13th century cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh. One ingredient valuable enough to mark a marriage, another documented for eight centuries. This is not a flavour we invented so much as one we inherited.

In the tub, sesame halawa and carob molasses swirl together with mastic and sahlab, with pieces of pistachio halawa folded through. The first taste is deep, earthy and sweet up front, and then the dark molasses warmth arrives and stays, the kind of finish that makes you pause mid-spoon.

It will never be the easy choice. Chocolate flavours sell themselves, and fruit pops photograph beautifully. Halawa Dibs asks a little more of you, a willingness to taste something older and stranger than the freezer aisle usually offers.

Which is exactly why the regulars call it the connoisseur's pick. Order it once and you understand, this is the flavour for people who know. Consider this our formal defence, entered into the record, of the best thing in the tub.