MYSTIC BÖREK

The advice constantly running through Spasia’s mind right now is “think small until you have to think big”. This feels pressing as she stands at the crossroads between small – testing her grandmother’s recipes, taking a few orders from friends-of-friends over the summer; and big – with so many orders at the point of writing that she has lists of people who she has “let down”. She has not let them down of course, they were just not quick enough off the mark when she released the current round of viral böreks on her Instagram Stories. But that feeling of personal commitment towards those clamouring for the delicious fruits of her labours is typical of Spasia, for whom a culinary generosity of spirit, learned from the strong Macedonian women who inspire her, runs through everything that she does.

Her capacity is small because the böreks are not. She can produce just 15 orders a day, baked two at a time in her domestic oven. They are huge: glistening, golden pastry behemoths, their aromatic fillings bursting and oozing from the crackling layers of thin, oil-rich pastry; some spiralled like gilded snails, some rolled in regimented rows like boxes of the finest cigars, some lain flat like bursting, opulently stuffed cushions. Cut open to reveal the rich layers of locally-sourced lamb sausage and apricot perhaps, or feta and pickled wild cucumber, their flaky interiors beg to be captured on camera before being devoured. These pictures began the flurry which, in a few short weeks, turned into the current frenzy. “I didn’t use Instagram that much before Mystic Borek”, she muses. But she turned to the platform to allow strangers to test her heritage recipes: “it’s different when your friends and family try it. You wonder whether they’re just being really nice”. She can now be certain that their enthusiasm had been borne of utmost honesty. The feedback she received from her initial post, a competition in which five people would win a borek, was so strong that she immediately compiled a menu based on the summer’s testing, registered her business with the council, and “Boom! It became what it is now!” 

The dream was always to focus on family and community. Mystic Borek is of course a riff on the Julia Roberts film which inspired Spasia as a child, with its portrayal of an adored pizzeria at the centre of local lives: “The feeling I had, of wanting to have my own family-run business, has never gone away”. One can’t help but draw a parallel between the powerful inter-generational female friendships in the film and the profiles of Spasia’s mother, grandmother and aunties with which she intersperses her borek gallery. She describes her mother, shown smiling warmly at the camera as she kneels, cuddling young, pudding-bowl-fringed Spasia, as a master baker and “relentless in all that she puts her mind to”. Her ultimate inspiration. This project reads as an homage to the amazing women in her life. “Some of the greatest chefs I’ve known have been the women in my family – it’s unreal what they are able to do from scratch, and it comes so naturally to them. But it’s bittersweet. We are losing the older generation and I feel like it’s my responsibility to continue what I have watched them do”. She is creating a tangible legacy: “You can keep retelling the stories, but they will fade and life will take over. With Mystic Borek there’s a record of what this means to me. But I’m definitely doing things my own way too! It’s definitely non-traditional.”

The connection between borek and pizza may seem non-traditional too, but there is a deep-seated tradition which they share: this is the food of the people. When Spasia moved to New York, young, broke and nervous, the small pizzarias of Brooklyn took her in and nurtured her with their 24-hour bright lights in dark nights, their cheap and comforting sustenance and their welcome to all-comers in the neighbourhood. The parallel between these deliciously democratic establishments and the Macedonian burekdzilnicas of her home was a joy to her, one she is keen to recreate some day “but maybe with a residency, or a pop up”. The food that is her heritage deserves such a spotlight: scrolling through her stories reveals their wax-clothed tables laden with salads and pastries, cupboards bursting with pickles and preserves packed into gleaming reused mayonnaise jars, and homemade clotted cream on everything: “my grandmother ate it for breakfast, with bread”. It is a rich and endlessly tempting display of dishes which deserve such a spotlight, dishes which provide her with a fierce cultural touchstone – indeed for Spasia a vital part of the Mystic Borek project has been to distil and define her cultural identity, both for herself and for those ignorant of the delights and struggles of Macedonia. But she says that to anchor it in a restaurant feels “too far out right now. I have found a really good rhythm, so right now my concern is expanding how many böreks I can make, and how to get them to people” 

One of the joys of starting small is how reactive she is able to be to her circumstances and, after 15 years of working in the industry for others, she is overjoyed by the autonomy that this gives her: “I need to keep reminding myself – hang on, it is up to me how I do this! If you don’t think something is a good idea, you don’t have to do it! Or if it’s a crazy idea, but you want to explore it, just do it! It doesn’t matter! Switching your brain to the mode where you make all the decisions is such a leap. It hits differently when it’s for yourself. My biggest growth has been really trusting the power of my instinct and always following my gut, no matter what others say”. Spasia is keen to emphasise that there has been no external funding in her Mystic Borek journey, only her own furlough money from her cheffing job. “At the beginning of lockdown I was like everyone else – sitting around wondering what the hell is happening. But I tried to take care of myself, to get as much sleep as possible, and that gave me the energy to get out and do something, rather than just survive”. In an industry where self-care can be a luxury and lack of sleep is a given, she embraced her sudden change of circumstances. She says that she has learned a lot about herself; she has come into her own personally, found a strength and pride in doing her own thing and developed a confidence in the value of her authenticity.

When she started in late summer, she was delivering böreks directly to people’s doors, taking public transport all over London with her distinctive flamingo pink trolley. “There were tough moments. It was fine in the summer, I got a tan and loads of exercise… but then the weather changed”. She no longer delivers, instead instructing customers to pick their collection location and installing herself and that trolley at a series of overground stations. For a couple of hours the surrounding streets are scattered with pizza-box-laden Mystic Borek enthusiasts as they return to their apartment lockdowns, misty-eyed and salivating with anticipation for the consoling feast ahead. In spite of heartfelt pleas from those who cannot make it to her drop spots, she has not yet signed up to a delivery service for the same reason that she will not squeeze in “just one more pie”, employing help to boost her production. Such steps require a leap of capital. Spasia is adamant that taking things at her own pace, not leaps but considered steps forward, will form the strongest possible foundations for a flourishing, longstanding business.

Spasia is building on her own investment. She may not be looking for a restaurant or shop, but she is on the lookout for a kitchen space to accommodate her growing operation – both local (Brixton) and priced to suit her self-funded budget. She is keen to retain the independence which is so vital to her, growing organically and maintaining the community feel that she has fostered so brilliantly through her social media. Her posts are unpolished, immediate, with a visual theme which creates an unselfconscious brand aesthetic suffused with a raw intimacy. She explains: “the product is me. This is who I am”. And who Spasia is went in a few short weeks from sitting on the sofa, freshly furloughed and nervous, armed with a seldom used Instagram account and a pile of her grandmother’s handwritten recipes, to running a business which is now almost too large for her to manage. The time to think big seems to have arrived. 

Interview by: Kitty Slydell-Cooper

Photo credits: Spasia Dinkovski

Follow Spasia and find out about Mystic Börek here