The Great British Bake Shop Opening in Salinas

July 12, 2022 – Like many great food sagas before it, this one began with grandma.

And, more specifically, her ham and egg pyes.

Wife and husband Lesley Everett and Chris Swainson were missing classic British fare when they relocated to Pacific Grove from England in 2014. (They’ve since moved to Marina.)

As a child, Everett remembers the matriarch they called Nanny Oxborough making her savory ham and egg pyes after Christmas with leftover ham. They were eagerly anticipated by the family all year.

When Everett and Swainson baked some of grandmother’s go-to, they borrowed from her strategy—slow-cooked ham of top quality, not too salty, not too sweet, paired with chopped hardboiled egg—with an important update, namely onion sauce made from scratch rather than from a packaged English powder.

“It’s very much a family recipe,” Everett says. “We missed the meat pyes.”

Satisfaction achieved.

The two continued to prep them for personal enjoyment, and eventually Swainson shared some with his cycling club, unsure if his Yankee friends would dig them as much as they did. The squad was all about it.

“They all just loved them from the start,” Everett remembers. “We thought, ‘Maybe we’re onto something.’”

May Oxborough, born in London in 1904, produced more than traditional English pyes.

She had 10 children and ran a British pub where she provided home-cooked food for her extended watering-hole family.

That included pyes with a crust that emerges light, buttery and flaky, like a puff pastry, only thick enough to withstand hearty fillings, including P.G. Pyes’ now popular steak and ale number.

But before Everett and Swainson could transform that inspiration into a business, several things had to happen.

First off, their friends Reba Wilson and Mike Abbruzzese of Sweet Reba’s had to appreciate the pyes enough to offer use of their Carmel Crossroads kitchen on Sundays. So they’d cook every weekend, mainly to order, and bake some extras to sell retail.

The enthusiastic feedback reinforced the feeling they had something with promise. About three months back, Everett and Swainson—who by day run her leadership development company Walking Tall—started looking for a storefront of their own.

After Abbruzzese alerted them to an opportunity, they paid Adriana Jimenez a visit at 8 W. Gabilan St., Salinas, in the former Blue Aces Bake Shoppe.

“When we walked away, I said, ‘If we don’t take this bakery, we might as well say we’re not going to do it, it’s not going to happen,’” Everett says. “It’s perfect.”

Swainson marvels at how quickly the project has coalesced. “The whole [endeavor] is more accidental than designed,” he says. “It was an off-the-cuff remark I made one day [to try selling pyes] and it’s roller coastered from there.”

A rebrand—from P.G. Pyes to The Great British Bake Shop—hints at an expanded endeavor on the way in Oldtown. (Meanwhile, P.G. Pyes’ Carmel fans won’t be completely cut off: GBBS aims to set up delivery service.)

In Salinas they plan to offer an Indian-spiced chunky veggie pie, a beefy shepherd’s pie cousin called a cottage pie, an English-style apple crumble with cloves and cinnamon and seasonal “mince” pies with almonds, raisins, other dried fruit, currants, orange peel and brandy. Also in the offing are buttery shortbreads and bakewell tarts with raspberry preserve on a pastry base with ground almonds on top.

British merchandise will help complete the across-the-pond effect—think Paddington Bear, Mary Poppins, Beatrice Potter, Beatles music and events coinciding with the royal calendar.

“It hasn’t been completely finalized, but it will be very British, whatever we do,” Everett says. “It’s not just a bakery, it’s very much an English experience.”

She elaborates from there.

“We find people are often so interested in the U.K. and London and often have visited or want to visit,” she says. “We are really looking forward to hearing their stories and sharing as much about our wonderful culture as possible, even if it’s just our accent that people want to hear.”

Anticipated opening date at 8 W. Gabilan St. in Salinas is Aug. 1.

More at thegreatbritishbakeshop.com or on their Instagram page.