Hamari Kahani
A tradition of love and celebration, reimagined for New York.
Halwa NYC began the way the best ideas often do, around a family table. In 2023, when we, Sobia and Sohaib, were newly married, Sobia’s dad invited us over for a traditional halwa puri brunch to celebrate. Sitting together, surrounded by the warmth of family and the comfort of halwa, a thought took root: why has halwa, a dish meant for joy, love, and gathering, stayed unchanged for centuries?
Semolina-based halwa is a classic, but it felt like being told vanilla was the only ice cream flavor we could ever have. Tradition didn’t need to mean limitation. So we started experimenting. For weeks, our kitchen turned into a testing ground of trial, error, and late-night taste-tests. Out of that came something new: halwa in unexpected flavors, halwa reimagined in cookies, halwa folded into croissants, pies, and ice creams. Familiar yet surprising. Grounded in history yet made for today.
At its core, halwa has always been about more than food. It’s about celebrating life’s milestones, big or small, and about bringing people together. That’s what we want Halwa NYC to stand for, honoring tradition while evolving it, creating desserts that carry the spirit of family, community, and celebration into every bite. And we’re starting right here, in the city built on reinvention: New York.
At Halwa NYC, everything begins with the ingredients. We cook in small batches, using high quality ingredients, fragrant spices, and seasonal finds from local markets whenever possible. No shortcuts, no fillers, just the kind of quality that makes each bite memorable.
Each batch of halwa takes hours of slow cooking, constant attention, and a lot of labor, the same care families have put into it for centuries. That patience is what creates the deep, rich flavors and the textures you can’t rush.
Our approach is simple: respect tradition, but push flavor forward. That means creamy pints of halwa, cookies with molten centers, and pies that surprise you with every bite. Every recipe is built to honor where halwa comes from and what it means while showing what it can become.