Over a delicious meal at Lokum Eats, Daniel and I finally spent some quality time together catching up on all things Junction, literature, and baking. He taught me some Spanish terms, gave a brief history of our storefront, and confessed to a hatred of muffins. And like many other TYPE Junction regulars, this local celebrity has fans everywhere, many of whom we bumped into before, during, and after our lunch. Folks, I present to you another of Junction’s finest, Daniel Sáez, owner of Noctua Bakery. If you don’t already know him, you should.
— Steph
So, what’s it like running a small business in the Junction?
The best part? Building community, which is great. The worst part? It’s on and off. We had our slowest day of the year yesterday, despite the fact that it was sunny. The other thing that I contend with on a regular basis is this condo craze that has come to the Junction. People are developing and developing and developing and developing and they're not understanding that you need services, too. If we're not on top of it, this is going to become that strip between Spadina and John Street that is just like… I don't know. It's pretty hard to have a small business in the Junction right now considering that everything is going to get redeveloped.
Development and its effect on the neighbourhood came up with TYPE superstar Maybel, too. She lives in one of the Junction’s first developments and she loves it, but she did mention that the No Frills routinely ran out of stock in those early days because they couldn’t keep up with the growing demand.
The pressure of the water changes in your shower, too. I've noticed that where we live, the water pressure used to be different.
Do you have hopes or fears for the future of the neighbourhood that you live and work in? Is there anything that excites you about the development?
The prospect of moving my business is something that I made peace with when I signed the lease. I knew it wasn’t for keeps. But it's just all the moving pieces. We’ve been serving the community for two-and-a-half years. Now if we move, how's that going to look? If we want to stay in the neighbourhood, the specifics of running a bakery are pretty… I would have to rethink the way that the bakery is. How much equipment do we need? How much do I want to keep? If we need to move to a smaller place, do we need to get a smaller oven? How do we continue to service the wholesale that we do? So, is it exciting? Sure. Those two condos at the beginning of the Junction Triangle are great. That obviously generates a density that you want and they have space available for retail, but for a business that is as young as mine, how do you keep serving the community without dying while trying. It’s a concern that real estate is becoming more and more unaffordable. There's many vacancies. See the space over there? That space over there? Obviously that's a vacancy tax, but it's like: how do you keep it going? Many people praise the Junction because it’s that last stronghold of independent businesses and fierce supporters of community, but, man, I live with the notion that I'm going to have to move at some point within the next couple of years. How do you adapt? Our current situation is great because it's accessible for people. Both my bakers walk to work.
What a privilege!
Indeed. But then you have bakeries that have outposts all throughout the city and they started to move their kitchens into areas that are industrial like Castlefield because it's cheap. But how do you get the people to go there? It’s a commute. It’s a 30-minute, 40-minute commute on the TTC, on top of baker hours.
Who do you think ends up working in these industrial food kitchens in remote areas?
Oh man, anyone who needs a job. If you’re a newcomer, you'll take whatever you can get. I’m an immigrant myself. When you need to pay rent, you need to make it work. It's difficult. One of our guys was telling me that he faced that very situation, and… I don't want to get too woo-woo, but it's also about the energy that you start your day with. If you have to wake up at 3:00AM or you have to do an all-nighter? We tried a night shift. It doesn’t work. We had someone who started with us as a night baker and it takes its toll on your body. Your whole perception shifts. I don't believe in that. So I kind of map everything out now so that we start at 4:00AM, which is still early, but it's not midnight. You still have time to ease into your day. These are first world problems, I get it, but it makes a difference.
I can’t believe it’s only been two-and-a-half years. I don't remember the bakery not being there and I don't remember meeting you, in the sense that I feel like there was no TYPE before Noctua. Do you remember coming to the bookstore for the first time?
I do remember. We actually tried to rent that space years ago for the bakery. Ten years ago.
The space we’re in?!
Yes. It was a dispensary then. They got busted on Canada Day back in 2016 or 2017. And before that it was a convenience store. It was rented in-between and we couldn't rent it. It's a good thing that we couldn’t because I didn't know anything about growing a business.
But I do remember when you guys opened. I remember Beck. It was Beck for a long time. And then I remember Emma started being there, and you and Kalpna. Yeah, that was the roster. Oddly enough, I used to live closer to TYPE on Queen. I lived on Queen and Niagara. I even remember the first time that I went there. I remember working at Terroni, when they used to do the Secret Santa, I always got gift cards from TYPE. I always got a bookmark. Whenever I had a day off from Terroni, I used to go to TYPE to buy cookbooks or fiction or whatever. Then I moved to the Junction and when you guys opened here, it was huge for the neighbourhood. Huge. Like something shifted, I think. I’ve given Neil at Pandemonium a fair share of my money over the years and still do, but somehow I missed that level of convenience from when I lived at Queen and Niagara. Like, oh, I'm gonna call TYPE to see if they have the latest Junot Díaz book. I used to go there in-between my laundry cycles to buy something and read it while I was doing laundry. That was something that I felt I didn't have in the Junction. And location-wise, there’s TYPE, there’s Botham’s, there’s NODO… it’s a strong block. Everything is happening.
So what brings you to our bumping block these days? Well, to the bookstore specifically…
Dude, honestly, I just want a break from my day.
[The earnestness with which this was said made Daniel and I laugh. A lot.]
Whenever I feel that shit is hitting the fan, I either go to you or Pandemonium and I decompress and browse. I've been going on a Drawn and Quarterly kick lately. So that's what I've been coming in for.
Were you always a reader?
Yeah, I was. Since I was like 16, 17. My mom was a single mom, so there was a strong work ethic and she was always trying to make ends meet. So I had a lot of alone time. My mom was working, my sister was going to school, my stepdad was working as well, but I always felt that my mom was calling the shots. Strong matriarch energy to her. She always encouraged whatever was art, music, and film. I used to spend a whole day just watching movies and reading, but I don't think I became a serious reader until I was probably, like, 17, 18 years old.
Did you always read in English and Spanish?
Since I was 14, I started reading in English. I think in that period between 19 and 30, I was pretty… there was a point when I realized I couldn't read everything that I wanted, so I would devote myself to the oeuvre of a single author. I was really a completist. It's like, fuck, I’m going to read Henry Miller. I know that Henry Miller is pretty uncool these days, but I read everything. Henry Miller led to Dostoyevsky. I read The Brothers Karamazov, The Eternal Husband, Notes from the Underground. Same with Camus. I read all of Bukowski, because it’s the right thing to do when you’re 20. I didn't know a better way. I think it speaks to a period of my life that I look back on and think it was pretty great. I had access to all this wealth of knowledge through art. That was cool.
And that was part of the fun too, because many of those books were out of print and if you wanted to find them, you had to figure out a way. It was almost like the equivalent to the Walk of Christ with the Cross. In Spanish, it's called the Via Crucis, but we used it as slang for when you go bar to bar drinking or you go book hunting.
Those activities share a term with the painful walk of Christ?
Yeah, the Via Crucis. So I found a 1960’s edition of The Rosy Crucifixion by Henry Miller. The reward wasn't only reading it, but also finding it.
I left all those books behind when I moved to Canada. I have a friend who's a bookseller in Venezuela and I'm actually thinking about opening up the collection and selling it. They’re very special editions.
What are you reading these days?
Stay True by Hua Hsu. And I got it at TYPE too. And it's great because it's about the assimilation of coming from a different culture into the West. It’s not that I come from… I come from the south of the West, but there is still this shock.
I read Berlin by Jason Lutes. It reminds me a lot of Frank Miller.
I’m not into manga but I’ve been on a weird Japanese kick. There’s a book called Talk to my Back by Murasaki Yamada. It’s this woman who wrote all these vignettes from the perspective of being a single mom. So it’s essentially just slices of day to day life, like parenting. That one is pretty cool. I read another one. It was kind of like Black Mirror-esque. It’s called Offshore Lightning by Saito Nazuna. It’s so relatable.
Our Little Secret by Emily Carrington is pretty fucking dark. It’s this woman who essentially comes to terms with the fact that she was groomed and abused by a neighbour. Years later she runs into her abuser on a ferry and it obviously opens this Pandora’s box and she’s like, you know what? I should get justice for this. She goes to a lawyer and the lawyer kind of like, plays her and then she starts writing as an act of healing and she starts drawing this whole story. It’s a tour de force. Reading it as a parent, I was… heartbroken, but it’s a great way to look for signs if your kid changes behaviour. It is also a reminder to always be attentive and communicative with your kids, because Emily had a very poor relationship with her dad, and obviously the predator took advantage of that.
On the culinary side, I’m looking forward to getting my hands on Beatrix Bakes: Another Slice by Natalie Paull. Bullet-proof recipes. Her first book is also great.
Other than that, I’ve just been reading books in Spanish.
Daniel gazing lovingly at his collection of cookbooks.
Max and I are shameless fans of the Bake Off franchise. (Paul Hollywood, if you’re reading this, come visit the Junction.) Any juicy tales from your time working on the Canadian show?
Oh man, I don’t know if I have any. I worked as a production assistant and was at the bottom of the food chain. I was working at The Beet at the time. My son was born and a friend of mine, who is a culinary producer, asked me if I wanted to work for a couple of weeks and I ended up working at Great Canadian Baking Show, Fire Masters and MasterChef.
Did they share the competitors’ bakes with the crew?
Not that I remember. But you always had access to stuff when you were cleaning. And there comes a point where you just want to go home after a long day and you don't care about how this or that tastes.
I feel like there's a lot of glamourization of the whole culinary TV thing but behind the scenes, it’s different. There's a lot of work happening. On a show like TGCBS, the culinary producers and PAs work incredibly hard to make it happen and make sure everything runs like clockwork. And the contestants are also working really hard under a lot of pressure.
We have a few regulars at the bakery that were contestants on TGCBS. Shout out to chi nguyễn who became a supporter because of our panettone.
Stoppppppppp!