Flight attendant sells Porto’s-style puff pastry
If you’re still thinking of what to bring to this year’s potluck that’s portable, tasty and guaranteed to please, there’s a “new” bakeshop that offers pastries both sweet and savory.
Hungry Sans was started by Nikki Sanchez, a Philippine Airlines (PAL) flight attendant who pivoted to baking at the start of the pandemic.
She took up baking after her flights were cut and she was eventually let go. Sanchez wasn’t exactly a newbie in the kitchen since her aunts, her dad’s sisters, own a bakeshop that specializes in wedding cakes. “Every summer when I was in grade school was spent at the bakeshop,” she said.
She began experimenting on puff pastry, hoping to approximate the cheese rolls sold at Porto’s, the popular bakery chain in California that has a line of customers every morning waiting to sink their teeth into freshly baked pastry.
“I had first tried them at a cousin’s wedding in Los Angeles in February 2020, a month before lockdown. The ones I made were purely trial and error. I had never tried making puff pastry before so YouTube videos were a very big help.”
She started with the cheese puffs, followed soon after with a variety of fillings including hazelnut spread and stewed apples. Sanchez initially had no plans of selling the puffs but friends and family who sampled them kept asking her to do it. Buoyed by their interest, she posted on her socials that she would start selling and hasn’t turned back. She began accepting online orders in May 2020, and only opened a physical store in BF Parañaque in August 2023.
Supportive family
“I was lucky since my whole family was on board when we decided to open our first physical store. My brother and I were the ones who mainly planned the design and location but everyone was really supportive,” she said.
“I think the fact that we started online a few years back really helped because we had already built a following. It’s different when you open a store first and only then start introducing your brand to the people.”
Hungry Sans now has 16 puff pastry fillings to choose from. There’s cheese, guava and cheese, pineapple, Nutella, strawberry Nutella, queso con leche, white choc Biscoff, apple crumble, tuna mushroom, three-cheese spinach, chicken chorizo and peach mango. You can order a box of 12 with assorted flavors but the safe bets are the “classics”—cheese, and guava and cheese. The three-cheese spinach is also tasty.
Sanchez has been rehired by PAL, but she decided to keep running Hungry Sans with her two siblings. They have since expanded their offerings to include gyudon over rice, Tapa de Sans (their version of tapsilog), and grilled cheese sandwich.
“We’re really hands on when it comes to the bakehouse. All three of us go to the bakehouse as often as possible. We cook, serve the customers, clean up and because of the time we spend there, some of our customers have now become our friends.”
While the puffs are best enjoyed freshly baked, they can be reheated in an oven, toaster or air fryer for under five minutes. Sanchez advises not to heat them in a microwave as they can get soggy.
“The puffs are best paired with a nice cup of coffee, hot or iced,” she added.
Hungry Sans is at G1 Center, 98 Aguirre Ave., BF Homes, Parañaque. Order through hungrysans.pickup.ph.
