For those of you who are unaware of this fantastic shop and café/ restaurant in Palma Nova, it is a unique business  to Mallorca, making and serving food more associated with the UK and Australia. Pies !!

They make a huge array of “proper pies”, both sweet and savoury. They make them from scratch, including their own pastry in a state of the art kitchen, which contains a machine called “Little Oz” capable of making up to 1000 pies an hour !

My personal favourite is the peppered steak, which has a real kick to it. They even serve Tapa pies, just a smaller version of the regular ones.

The business is owned and run by Ivar and Genevieve von Engelhardt, who both have a background in yachting. Genevieve came from yacht racing in Australia to become a head stew and chef on a variety of sailing yachts and Ivar, originally from South Africa, was formerly a pastry chef with Gordon Ramsey amongst other roles, before eventually making his name as chef on such yachts as Alegria.

When deciding where their future lay after discovering they were expecting twins, they chose Mallorca as they felt it was the best environment in which to raise their children. They then set about deciding what kind of business to run, with the mission of creating something special to hand on to their children. The business eventually opened its doors in Spring last year, initially as a take away pie shop, but as time went on , they quickly realised that the market here was more suited to an eat in restaurant. That meant going and investing in furniture, crockery, cutlery etc, which they hadn’t banked on! However they decided to adapt to what the market wanted and quickly became increasingly well-established amongst the local community especially by the young mums who can take their kids into the restaurant where there is a creative corner set up for drawing and reading etc. A very clever move I’m sure, as the kids will always be asking to go back !

Tragically in September last year, they lost their son Caspar, aged 2 in an accident. As one can imagine, this turned their world upside down and is still making life very difficult for them both to come to terms with . Their focus though is to create something special for their other children, which from the evidence I’ve seen, they are doing remarkably well.

And in spite of their own problems, over the past few months, they have still seen fit to donate money from each cupcake they sell, give pies to the salvation army each week plus donate 10% of all their Biltong sales. A truly remarkable and selfless family and deserve to be supported by us all.

As well as supplying the pies for their own customers, they also supply the famous Fish and Chip shop in Plaza Drassana, and are now supplying an increasing number of charter yachts, which was always a priority, having had the personal yachting experience themselves. They are also very keen to hold events in their premises, such as birthday parties etc, so next time you are thinking of holding an event, why not have a “Pie and Pint” night, you will not be disappointed !