A chat with Emma and Sebastian, the couple that brought the iconic Portuguese sweet to Glasgow.
Find them at 280 Byres Road, G12 8A, Glasgow
Open Monday to Friday 8.30- 18.30; Saturday 9.00- 18.30; Sunday 10.00-17.00
When I arrived at Pasteis Lisboa I was not imagining being able to have a full behind the scenes.
Seeing the full process to make these little pastel de nata has been the highlight of the week.
While I am chatting with owners Emma and Sebastian about the idea of bringing this new and unique product to Glasgow, bakers Rosa and Stuart are shaping new pastel de nata for the people coming in.
Can you imagine having a warm pastel de nata just straight from the oven?
One can think (not me) that making pastel de nata would be simple due to their size and the small list of ingredients but I can guarantee the process is long, meticulous and one single mistake can ruin a big part of the production.
Technique and quality of ingredients make the difference in this handcraft "little beauty" and also a nice dose of perfectionism too.
Emma and Sebastian explained to me the journey it took them to "build" their pastel de nata dream shop. In the meantime, I have to admit I have been distracted by the show I had in front of my eyes and also by the smell of cinnamon and sugar. Luckily I am multitasking!
They explained to me tat even if they are really happy with their products, they are still on a learning journey and lots come with the experience. Not a day is like the other and you need to do a strict quality control check pretty often. So this is what happened for example with their custard cream and here we start. Enjoy!
One week before we opened"- Emma starts- "João (our Portuguese consultant and pastry chef in Portugal) came over from Lisbon to help us with the final touches. We had literally the equipment ready to go, training in progress with the new bakers, making sure the processes were absolutely perfect. Everything was working fine but the custard cream was too sweet and we could not figure out why.
We have been over to Lisbon, we were replicating perfectly what we have learned.
Why is this not working?
Then we realised that the custard was too sweet due to the grass the cows were eating.
The sweetness comes from the grass and this explained the increase in the level of sweetness in the custard. We have to reduce the sugar and we ended up with a healthier custard.
Then a few months after we started having problems with the custard again, it was too lumpy, too thick.
Mossgiel figured out what was the problem, run tests themselves, went to the bottom of it and found the right solution for us. It is the best milk in this part of Scotland, without a doubt.
One of the reasons why their milk is so good is that Mossgiel has a very unique pasteurisation process. At Mossgiel they pasteurized at the lowest possible temperature and they use wrapped cooling process so the milk retains the flavour of the fresh milk. They developed this process themselves.
It is the benefit of using local companies, they are working hand in hand with us for our specific product. We are really proud of working with them, it is local, it is organic, and we know where it is coming from. We got through a few hundred litres of milk per week and we could have gotten milk somewhere else for a third of the price but we decided we would never compromise with the ingredients."
The process of building the perfect pastel de nata is a long one. It takes two days, right?
"Yes, basically it takes two days. First the dough is made and laminated, then every single pastry case is moulded by hand in the special tins we source from Portugal. Separately, our custard is made to a secret recipe, and this and any other fillings are added to the moulds immediately before baking.
We bake all through the day, seven days a week, so that our customers receive the most fresh, crisp and creamy pastel de nata possible, whatever time they visit us."
And when is one product it has to be perfect all the time.
How did you come up with such a particular idea?
"We have both backgrounds in hospitality. We knew somehow this was written for us.
My parents have been in the industry since the 50s. They were in the licenced trade and restaurants.
My father had nightclubs when I was a teen. At 14 I was helping him to do under 18s disco.
We grew up in the business, it never stops, it is part of your life. My two brothers became chefs and they opened a guest house half an hour from Sky and that is also how we met!"
Sebastian then added "I spent four seasons working for Emma's parents in the kitchen. After I finished university I came to Scotland and I was about to open a food business. It was 2008, the idea was to open an innovative fish and fish place before it was a thing. But probably times were not right and I worked for 13 years in marketing.
In 2017 we spent a long weekend in Lisbon. After that trip, we went to visit my family in Krakow and we came across this small place called Cafe Lisboa that has just opened. It was tiny, they were doing pastel de nata, coffees and some brunch. In Poland, the patisserie market is really sophisticated and she was selling a product which was not as familiar as here, she was outside the main historic city centre and she was absolutely killing from day one. So we kept our eye on her. Every time we were over visiting family we were checking it out and we were thinking this could be nice to have in Glasgow.
We travelled back to Lisbon and looked into this idea seriously. After our intense market research in loco, we have found the best pastel de nata. We then started talking with João, the head patisserie chef in this 5 generation bakery, told him what our project was and we just flew back with him.
He became our consultant. He trained us and also helped us with the equipment and the general business planning and we just really went from there.
Sadly this was immediately pre-pandemic. We were ready to go, phoning premises in the city centre, talking with investors. We thought it would never gonna happen but soon after we realised there was no time to waste: we have to do it.
Money was a big issue for us- we had to find money to open it. We have found the premises but we could not get a loan from any of the big banks we were in conversation with.
We went then to talk with the British Business Bank and because our business plan was so far developed we basically got a decision in two weeks. The support we had from them was incredible.
It is difficult now to find a niche. In the last year, there has been a huge trend in bakeries in Glasgow.
We wanted to do something different. We wanted to bring to Glasgow a product that most people know but done our way: handmade from scratch daily using the highest quality natural ingredients following an authentic and traditional recipe.
Alongside with that, we decided to add a deli section in our shop with a selection of high-quality food from Spain and Portugal. We travelled a lot in Spain and Portugal but we are also food mad, we are food crazy and we wanted to share this passion with our customers in Glasgow.
This is the reason why you can find a nice variety of cured meats from Taste Spain from Salamanca, cheeses and fish conservas of the highest quality.
Despite the difficulties in sourcing products from Portugal in particular, the idea is to develop in this direction and bring more products to Glasgow adding also the e-commerce.
How has this year been? From the moment you opened?
"It's been crazy! We genuinely did not expect the explosive launch we had - we sold out within 3 hours for the first few days and struggled to keep up with demand for the first couple of months until we'd boosted our staffing levels way beyond what we started with. We've had customers coming from all over the country, tourists seeking us out, even the Portuguese Consul General came to visit us from the consulate in Manchester (he loved our natas!). We're really grateful for the way we have been welcomed, it's exceeded our expectations and dreams.
We've loved seeing how customers have embraced our product - for parties and celebrations, wedding towers (lots of weddings!), corporate and charity events - and through our increasing number of wholesale partners."
I think it is also normal at the beginning not to be 100% ready. It takes time to know each other in a team, to know your customers, to see all the variables that are involved in the business.
"You change things all the time. The recipe is still a work in progress. I am thinking all the time what can we do better? Constantly, it never ends. When we opened we were really lucky because the British Business Bank covered also a full pr package that helped us to have a lot of media coverage that we could not afford otherwise. That was a game-changer for us. The week before we opened we had João here, we were training our bakers, and we gave away 5000 pastel de nata in 4 days.
People were queueing up even before we opened. These two things made the launch so explosive.
Then it just kept on doing.
In the meantime, our staff has grown as well. Before it was me and another baker. Now we have a team of 4 full-time bakers.
One of the biggest challenges in this industry is assembling a team that works well together.
We have been lucky on this side: most people have been with us from the beginning. We really invested in them, we look after them. It was the way my parents were doing. It is not rocket science, you have to look after your staff because they will look after you.
This is our philosophy: we respect our staff. We do not have a person on a zero-hour contract.
Apart from a couple of part-time, all our staff is full time with proper contracts. It is not a moral way to have people working. I could not sleep at night if I was treating people like that.
You can make more money if you do the other way but I would consider it dirty money. Sean, our kitchen porter is 17 years old and we pay the normal rate like everyone else.
Your product is evolving and new flavours of pastel de nata have appeared on display.
"I am a bit more of a purist when it comes to pastel de nata." Sebastian commented with a smile
People were asking for flavours from day one and so we decided to go for it.
But when doing it we wanted to still respect our values and make special flavours only using fresh fruit, and the finest dark chocolate. The rhubarb we use is from Emma's parents garden."
Memories time for Emma "That rhubarb plant was in my grandparents' garden. When they move in the 1930s to Dumfries they took it with them. I remember picking rhubarb from their garden when I was a child and my granny making a rhubarb cake with the pastry all over the top. When they died and their house was sold my dad took it to Perthshire where my parents live and when they retired they gave half of that plant to my brother. This thing has travelled all over the country and it should be 100 years old. And now we use it here, I feel there is a nice story behind it.
We are working on some summer flavours at the moment. We are planning to do something with wild Scottish berries and we want to go and forage and make a special with it: something seasonal, fresh.
Emma told me that other surprises for summer are already in the oven. Stay tuned to discover more!
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