Dessert Maven Behind Hit Filipino Ice Cream Parlour Mamasons Will Open a Kentish Town Bakery

Florence Mae Maglanoc and Omar Shah, whose Filipino dirty ice cream parlour Mamasons has been a runaway success, will open a new bakery on the Kentish Town Road strip that has become their undisputed territory. Panadera will open between Moi Moi Island, the West African and Caribbean restaurant, and Guanabana, the duo’s Latin Caribbean restaurant, offering breads, pastries, and an enticing range of speciality drinks. It will bring the Maginhawa Group’s venues to six.

The initial menu promises pan de sal; pan de coco; and ensamayada, a sweet, enriched bread matched by savouriness from cheese. Drinks, heavily inspired by dessert-like preparations, include a brown sugar taro boba; a strawberry latte frappe; and a buko pandan frappe. Maglanoc is also developing a pan de sal loaf, intending it to be dubbed the Panadera loaf, alongside corned beef or egg salad sandos and the ube doughnuts that have proved a hit at Mamasons, both in Kentish Town and Chinatown.

Maglanoc and Shah started documenting the process of opening Panadera on YouTube, with the deck oven and lamination machine arriving just as London entered tier 4 coronavirus restrictions, and then lockdown. The opening of the bakery is a natural trajectory for the influx of baked goods at Mamasons, which began with its anchor, ube bilog — ice cream in a pan de sal — and has since extended to doughnuts filled with ube or milo; ube-hued brownies; and buko pies.

The bakery’s Instagram account has since teased Filipino-inspired croissants, as well as announcing that the coffee will be provided by Gray’s Inn Road cafe-roaster Catalyst. It will also continue Maglanoc and Shah’s building of an identity that refracts Filipino heritage and tradition through London’s culinary kaleidoscope, making their restaurants, ice cream parlours, and now bakery some of the most forward-looking in the city.

With lockdown having delayed plans, as for so many restaurants in the capital, an opening for takeaway looks set for some time in February. More soon.