Mystic Borek

Every summer, as soon as school broke up, I would go to Macedonia and just stay there until I had to go back to school. There were always lots of people around, lots of food and lots of arguing over who was going to feed us.

My last visit to Macedonia was the first time I went back after my nan had gone. She was definitely my biggest inspiration when it came to cooking. She left me her recipe book and when I came home, I thought: I need to somehow honour her, because she left me this for a reason. It didn’t start out as a business. It was meant to be a personal project to show people our culture and what we’re about.

For the first three months, working from home felt like a dream. I would wake up, make myself a coffee and then start baking borek in my pyjamas and watch the sun rise out the window. I would then load up my pink trolleys with pies and take them on the tube to make deliveries.

I started the business during Covid so I just took everything as it came because everything in the entire universe was unpredictable. As our orders grew, I moved out of my home kitchen, made a website and hired my friends to help with the admin and deliveries. Otherwise I’m still doing everything on my own.

I don’t have any real fantasies about the future. I could grow this into some big delivery business but it’s the interacting with people and the community that I really like. I can imagine myself as an 80 year old with my own small borek shop, still making pies and chatting to everyone.

Image courtesy Spasia Dinkovski (Alex Lake/Observer)