Jonathan Peregrino spent fifteen years in corporate America before quitting to bake. The bakery he wrote a business plan for in a high school entrepreneurship class is now sitting on Woodward Avenue in New Center, baking pan de sal at six-thirty in the morning. Before this, he used to drive to Chicago or Toronto for the Filipino baked goods he grew up eating. There weren't any in metro Detroit.
JP Makes and Bakes opened November 7, 2024, at 6529 Woodward, Suite B. It is the first Filipino bakery in Detroit and, by most accounts, the only Filipino bakery between Chicago and Toronto. Peregrino, born in California and a first-generation Filipino-American who grew up watching his mom and grandmother cook through asthma-bound childhood afternoons, trained at the Academy of Pastry and Bakery Arts in the Philippines after his corporate detour. He moved to Detroit in 2019. He competed on Food Network's Holiday Baking Championship in 2020, made the Hatch Detroit semifinalist round in 2023, and spent the years between bakery dreams and bakery reality at Warda Patisserie, Tapped Coffee, Oak & Reel, and Le Suprême.
The pop-up version of this business has been running for years. The bakery is the upgrade.
The thing people are loud about is the ube brownie. Ube is the bright purple yam from the Philippines. Peregrino uses it the way other bakers use chocolate: in brownies, in cookies, in the Valentine's chocolates labeled Will ube mine. Pandesal stays close to traditional, soft and slightly sweet, with a coconut and brown-sugar filling that turns the whole roll into a small dessert. Pan de coco, the sweet roll with shredded coconut filling. Bibingka, the coconut rice cake. Cassava cake. On Saturdays, brunch shows up. Biscuits and gravy made with longganisa, the garlicky Filipino breakfast sausage.
Even the espresso pulls a little Filipino. Ube syrup is a flavor option. Coconut milk is the dairy alternative. Calamansi-ade, the citrus drink Peregrino's mother made at home, runs year-round. Coffee comes from Craig's in the Cass Corridor. Loose-leaf tea is from Eli Tea in Birmingham. Milk from Calder Dairy.
Motor City Match put $60,000 into the buildout. The bakery is the program's 176th business to open. Mayor Duggan said his line about it at the grand opening, which he is contractually required to do. Peregrino's parents Myrna and Ariel flew in from Seattle to help bake the first batches.
Peregrino is closed Sundays and Mondays. He says that's so he and his small team have something resembling a life. Detroit's Filipino-American community has been driving in from Ontario for the ube. So have people who have never had it before. The line on weekends sometimes runs out the door before noon.
6529 Woodward Avenue, Suite B, New Center. Wednesday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
