A brand-new bakery in Nepean is attempting to do more than just serve coffee and pastries \u2014 it\u2019s trying to rally a community and build a sense of home.<\/p>\n
Beatriz Silva Mancilha Neves and Patr\u00edcia Silva Mancilha Neves Ferreira have brought a taste of Brazil to 2932 Baseline Rd., opening \u201cThat\u2019s Bananas<\/a>\u201d what the sisters say is the city\u2019s first Brazilian bakery this past January.<\/p>\n However, for the owners, the shop\u2019s importance goes beyond food.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to make this a space where Brazilians got to feel a little bit at home,\u201d said Patr\u00edcia, who first came to Canada to study sales before finding her way to the food industry. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important for us to keep our culture alive with the Brazilian community in Canada, because that was something I really missed when we first got here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The idea for the bakery came together quickly. While Patr\u00edcia had always hoped to open up a place of her own, she did not have any business plans until recently when what began as a conversation in July 2025 became a business in six months.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea started with my parents. They were talking to a friend that had some experience with the market in Brazil,\u201d said Beatriz. \u201cThen after Patty participated in a market and managed to sell out everything, she had this idea to open her own business. Then she talked to me and I saw it as an opportunity to also start my postgrad in Ottawa, and so I decided to join her.\u201d<\/p>\n Patr\u00edcia says that she saw opportunity in Ottawa because of a lack of any Brazilian cuisine in the area. In fact, a look at census data for Ottawa shows the growing yet still-niche Brazilian population. In 2016, the census found 1,135 <\/a> Brazilians, in 2021, that number doubled to 2,550<\/a> people.<\/p>\n To Patr\u00edcia, the growing community was a great sign for her dream of a bakery. For Beatriz, the bakery was an opportunity to work with her sister and be closer to her nephew in Canada.\u00a0<\/p>\n After the sisters decided to go ahead, Patr\u00edcia began looking for locations landing on their current spot in Nepean.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt took a little over six months to settle everything with the last owner and also with the building, but we got the place on Dec. 15 and tried to speed run everything because we wanted to open in January,\u201d said Beatriz.\u00a0<\/p>\n The sisters met the target date and That\u2019s Bananas opened<\/a> Jan. 5.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, a few months in, Patr\u00edcia\u2019s vision of a welcoming space offering traditional Brazilian food such as coxinha<\/a>, pastel<\/a> and feijoada<\/a>, is already taking shape.<\/p>\n In That\u2019s Bananas, customers can find Brazilian baked goods, ready-made meals, popular Brazilian street food, a shelves stocked with Brazilian products that are typically hard to find and plans for cultural events from Brazilian-style pizza nights to live music and World Cup gatherings.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBrazilians like to cheer and be loud, especially for fut\u00eabol (soccer), so having a place for us to gather and be Brazilian is something we wanted to do with That\u2019s Bananas,\u201d said Patr\u00edcia.\u00a0<\/p>\n But as she has discovered, opening a bakery comes with challenges.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA typical day for me is crazy. I wake up, take my son to daycare, go to That\u2019s Bananas, do everything I can possibly do there from opening until around 3:30 pm. Then I go and pick my son up and if needed, return to the bakery and work more,\u201d said Patr\u00edcia. \u201cSometimes I\u2019ll go to the market after and then go back home and stay with my husband. But it\u2019s just chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n Sourcing ingredients for authentic Brazilian food has come with unique challenges.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most difficult thing is definitely finding the right ingredients, since in Canada we don\u2019t have everything that we may use on specific dishes from Brazil. We have a supplier that can get most of what we need but sometimes we can\u2019t find everything. When that happens we either wait or try to find something close enough to replace it,\u201d says Beatriz.<\/p>\n Even with these challenges, That\u2019s Bananas has been receiving excellent reviews from Ottawa\u2019s Brazilian community.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEverything is always fresh, flavourful, and made with so much care. The pastel was phenomenal and the coxinha was delicious,\u201d says Laryssa Cruz, a Brazilian who first visited That\u2019s Bananas back in January. \u201cThe sweets are authentic and delicious, and the savory options remind me of home.\u201d<\/p>\n Other online reviews commonly talk about how authentic the food tastes.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rodrigo Alves wrote, \u201cFeels just like home!!\u201d and Let\u00edcia Oliveira called That\u2019s Bananas the \u201cperfect place to remember the food from Brazil!\u201d<\/p>\n Patr\u00edcia says the support and positive reception from the Brazilian community has been very reassuring. Even non-Brazilians who have started trying out Brazilian food have had a positive experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both sisters say that the most rewarding thing so far has been the sense of accomplishment from That\u2019s Bananas. \u201cThe feeling of \u2018we did it\u2019 was very strong,\u201d they say.<\/p>\n As That\u2019s Bananas continues into its first year, the sisters are building on their current momentum, hosting more events and continuing to introduce Ottawa to the flavours of Brazil while remaining as a cultural hub for Brazilians in Ottawa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A brand-new bakery in Nepean is attempting to do more than just serve coffee and pastries \u2014 it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739,103480,103481],"class_list":["post-617003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa","tag-ottcity","tag-ottnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}