We speak to the husband and wife team behind Pastel Lisboa to hear the story behind their authentic pastel del nata bakery in Glasgow’s West End

National World - LocalTV

Pastel Lisboa is an authentic pastel del nata shop on Byres Road that serves a constant influx of customers.

Transcript

00:00Well, Pastéis Lisboa is essentially two things.

00:03First and foremost, it's a first specialist baker in Scotland

00:08which bakes iconic Portuguese custard tart, pastéis de nata.

00:12But also, we equally are an Iberian-themed delicatessen

00:18where we sell produce from both Spain and Portugal.

00:20It started in 2018. Sebastian is from Krakow in Poland

00:25and on one of our trips here we had come across a little pastellaria,

00:29Pastel Donata Bakery, which just opens.

00:33Quite an unusual product in Poland.

00:36It's not as well known as it has been traditionally in the UK

00:40and we were just intrigued by the fact that they were making these from scratch every day

00:45and really, really killing it from day one. It was a huge success.

00:49That trip coincided with our trip to Lisbon

00:53where obviously everyone just goes around eating Pastel Donata

00:56and it kind of got a sinking. It is such a popular product in the UK

01:00but there is nowhere in Scotland where you can get the real thing.

01:04So that's what sparked the idea and we started going back and forward to Lisbon

01:09and continued eating lots of Pastel Donata.

01:12When we found what we thought were the best ones, we just approached the family

01:16whose bakery they were in and basically formed a relationship with them.

01:21They taught us how to make them. They agreed to give us their recipe.

01:26They consulted with us on the ingredients here and helped train our bakers.

01:30So we are using an authentic recipe from Lisbon, an award-winning recipe

01:35and we have replicated the real deal as closely as we can

01:39and we produce them from scratch every single day.

01:43You can come in and see the bakers doing it.

01:45It's all about the freshness, the provenance of the ingredients

01:48and putting the real thing out there.

01:50And the concept of the baker is based on the more modern Pastel Areas in Lisbon

01:55which specialise purely in Pastel Donata and the whole process of making them is on display.

02:01There is no, nothing to hide. Everything is made daily from scratch.

02:06By hand. By hand. There is no, we don't even have freezers on premises

02:09so everything is fresh, always fresh. I mean you're never going to get them more than a couple of hours old.

02:14Most of the time they are still warm when they are going out to customers straight out of the oven.

02:18We had a little bit of a pushback initially from the Portuguese community.

02:22Because we are not Portuguese, there was a little bit of a pushback.

02:25We are not Portuguese, you can't be making it right.

02:27But once they start trying it...

02:29And once we tell them the story and the provenance...

02:31It's a completely changed customer.

02:36They keep coming in with a big Portuguese following in Glasgow.

02:39We even got visited by the Portuguese Consul General from Manchester

02:43who, when he was on his trip up to Glasgow, he insisted on coming here to actually see it.

02:47And he's been back more than once. So we have a fan base which again is amazing for us

02:53because to get validation from the Portuguese community is just the pinnacle for us.

02:58So yeah.

02:59So yeah.

03:00So yeah.

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