The secret, not-so-secret delight that is Pasteleria Mallorca

How can it possibly be that I have been living 20 years in the very charming barangay known as Laging Handa (where the streets are named after boy scouts) and not know about the secret, not-so-secret gustatory delight that is Pasteleria Mallorca?

I am still bowled over by this.

Every foodie in the capital seems to know about a quiet old house on 18 Fuentabella — really, I could walk to this place in under 10 minutes — yet I don’t? And everyone else takes for granted that we know all about it?

It took conversations at a recent exhibit launch of my son’s for us to become aware that a great deal of people patronize this purveyor of fine Spanish (actually, mostly Mexican) specialties. Intrigued, my husband immediately tried to track it down.

The address is readily found online, but it has a habit of opening only between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays, closing even earlier on Saturdays, and a small parking space where you are not allowed to stay more than 10 minutes!

My son Joshua and I finally succeeded in snagging that parking space one morning, and as I parked I noticed someone with an uncanny resemblance to chef Gene Gonzalez entering the premises! I did know beforehand that Gene’s family was behind this enterprise, which was not at all surprising.

It turned out to be Gene’s younger brother Ompong, and he and sister Roselle were both at Mallorca that day. What followed was a half hour of reminisces of their beloved uncle (and my mentor), Brother Andrew Gonzalez of DLSU and other famed university academics. While we chatted my son Joshua busied himself taking photos of their extensive menus and all the while there was a steady stream of Grab drivers picking up their orders.

I asked Ompong if the selection of pastries they sold were specialties of Sulipeña, the ancestral hometown of the Gonzalez clan and other families like the Escalers. The town has faded away because the old families migrated out of it. I remember Gene writing about the culinary glories of Sulipeña that he was trying to preserve in his restaurants. The stellar ensaymada, which you must reserve before 8 a.m., is one such Sulipeña recipe. It melts in your mouth and you just know that henceforth this is one ensaymada you will order again and again.

It turns out that the items they sell are a collection of the specialties they have sold through their various bakeshops and food outlets over the years. The staff told Joshua that the recipes were, in fact, more Mexican than Spanish. That’s also not surprising since the galleon trade (stopping by Acapulco) brought Mexican ingredients and cooking styles to our shores. Much of what we think is Spanish food is actually Mexican in origin.

I was very intrigued even before stepping inside Mallorca because browsing their Facebook page, I was unfamiliar with so many of their pasteleria type offerings. And that’s coming from someone with Spanish cookbooks and books on Spanish gastronomy!

There are items you can buy right off the shelves, such as the light and addictive palillos de Milan, queso de bola-flavored mamon tostado and the coconut-accented panecillos de San Nicolas.

But the list of items you can order is long, ranging from an American apple pie to a French St. Honoré, to meaty empanada-like pastries, to pasteleria standards like cream puffs and favorites like sans rival, to intriguing items I’ve never heard of like argellianas and tirabuzon.

What I want to order when I get back from a quick trip to Cebu is the naranja pie, the tarta Madrid and more of those pillowy ensaymadas, which I suspect are made with lard rather than butter. Lard is also the ingredient in my favorite tortas from Cebu.

As you enter through the gate on Scout Fuentabella, you’ll note that the garage is not a parking area for cars but for pails and sacks of ingredients — a testament to how much baking is done there every day.

The demand for their products is so great despite any apparent lack of publicity, so this story might just add to the mad rush.

Run, don’t walk to Pasteleria Mallorca and be sure you get there early!