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F or Julia Gallay, food was always like a love language. Growing up in a Jewish-Brazilian household, traditional treats like pudim de leite and torta alemã expressed what words could not. “I speak Portuguese now, but growing up, a lot of my family members didn’t speak English,”
she recalls. “It was like the only way to showcase love was by cooking your favourite things.” Today, the self-taught pâtissier creates otherworldly confections beloved by
Instagram aesthetes and sweet tooths alike, drawing baking inspiration from unique sources such as ikebana, architecture, and ceramics. Since winter 2020, she has been baking her signature floral desserts full time from her home studio. Thirty-thousand followers later, she counts brands including Mejuri, Dermologica, and Sézane as clients, and leads cake-decorating courses, where she shares her expertise.
Before launching Gallz Provisions, Gallay had been working for a medical tech startup and baking recreationally. Though she wanted to be in the food industry, she wasn’t sure how to make the transition. “The food space is where I wanted to be, but I had no way to show that—I had never worked in a kitchen before, or in restaurants.” When a work grant for the orthopaedic software she was working on fell through in 2020, she made the leap.
Gallay’s micro-bakery took flight during the pandemic, placing her among a new class of entrepreneurs in the food space whose endeavours were jump-started by the hyper-specific circumstances that arose from COVID-19 restrictions. And in the origin stories of these culinary startups, authenticity is the main ingredient.
“I didn’t expect to be doing this full time,” former model Becca Pereira shares. “It really was just a way to connect with the community and it’s now turned into so much more beyond just me.” When her plans of attending culinary school shifted in light of the pandemic, Pereira launched Spice Girl Eats, a Toronto-based pop-up that served up the Indian cuisine that she grew up eating.
As a child in Barrie, Ont., Pereira had a more difficult time embracing that same traditional cuisine. “People did make comments about us smelling like [Indian] food and it was hurtful,” she recalls. In lieu of the elaborate Indian leftovers that her mother prepared, Pereira would sometimes request bologna sandwiches. “I was ashamed. Now I feel like I was so ridiculous,” she admits. “Me and my siblings should not have done that, but you do want to fit in as well.”
Now, that food is a source of pride. After the pop-up’s first year, Spice Girl Eats became Spice Girl Chai, with Pereira pivoting the brand’s focus from a pop-up kitchen to a bespoke bottled chai mix. She’s now developing a ready-to-drink version of her signature concentrate.
“The idea came because when people came to pick up the food [from the pop-up], we would give them chai—that was my mom’s idea—and people loved that,” she reflects. “I realized there isn’t actually a lot of good chai that you can get in the city, and saw that as an opportunity.”
Setting the Table
Meet the women bringing authenticity and community to the culinary scene in Canada. By Sumiko Wilson
SMAGAZINEOFFICIAL.COM FOOD + DRINK