What Simonia's is known for
Joao Cardozo and his mother Simonia started this Goan bakery in Mapusa in 1963, adding sweets like bebinca and dodol when Joao's wife Maria joined in 1972. Now run by the third generation, Assis and Jessie Cardozo, it operates three shops in Mapusa, Porvorim and Candolim.
Joao Cardozo and his mother, Simonia Ritinha Cardozo, started this bakery in Mapusa in 1963 with a small range of baked goods. The business grew slowly: its Municipal Market shop dates to 1969, and traditional Goan sweets weren't added to the lineup until 1972, when Joao's wife Maria Caetana introduced them.
Those sweets — bebinca, dodol, bolinhas, pinagr and gram doce among them — sit alongside more conventional bakery staples like fruit cakes, biscuits, toasts and bread. The layered, coconut-and-egg bebinca, baked in many thin layers, has become the shop's best-known item alongside the others.
By 2013 the family had marked more than fifty years in business, and Simonia's now runs three shops — in Mapusa, Porvorim and Candolim — under the third generation, Assis and Jessie Cardozo, with Joao and Maria still involved. Four names across three generations is a fairly literal record of how the business grew, from a mother-and-son bakery counter to a small chain.
Best for — Bebinca and traditional Goan sweets
Mapusa, Goa
Where next
- Pasticceria Gambardella — Minori
- Panificio e Pasticceria Barbieri — Italy
- Slattery — Manchester
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