A mango pie? This baker takes Miami’s favorite fruit and makes it even better

When she was a small child growing up in Cuba, Natalia Martinez-Kalinina remembers what her grandmother did with the bounty of wild mangoes that flourished in her yard.

She would gather as much fruit as she could carry in pails. Then she would give them to the neighbors, family and friends who came to the front door. Sometimes, even random strangers got lucky.

“She had one of those problematically large mango trees that was a structural threat,” Martinez-Kalinina recalls. “Anywhere in the U.S., it’d be taken down, but not in Cuba. So she gave them away. Sometimes I would help her.”

Martinez-Kalinina’s grandmother, Beatriz Adelaida Brunet Quintaro, passed away in 2016, four years after Martinez-Kalinina moved to Miami. But the memory of the mangoes stuck with Martinez-Kalinina, who eventually decided to replicate her grandmother’s generosity as a sort of tribute. Only instead of giving away the fruit, she baked it into pies, sharing slices with people she came across in the course of her job, with friends and neighbors, even handing strangers a slice that they were always happy to take.

Eight years later, with so many requests for pies pouring in, Martinez-Kalinina has taken her random acts of kindness a step further, starting an online business selling the pies. She bakes them in the commissary kitchen at her home in a live/work building.

“It wasn’t meant to be a thing,” says Martinez-Kalinina, laughing. “I just wanted to do something nice connected to my grandmother. But it grew to such a point people were texting me every year to get on the list to get pies. The list got longer and longer. I had not imagined it as a business until this year.”

Creating a baking business was a new venture for Martinez-Kalinina, who works in the tech world and is cofounder of the Miami venture-backed startup Base, a modern twist on a social club that links people from different backgrounds to shared experiences.

But her contacts there helped her. A creative director offered to design a logo for her. Martinez-Kalinina also hosts dinners, concerts and other gatherings at her home for eclectic groups of people and urged them to try the pies, too.

And they rave.

Ashley Schmidt, who knows Martinez-Kalinina through their shared health tech work and runs a scuba club with her, remembers being skeptical of mango pies before she took her first bite.

“I was questioning how good it would be,” she says. “Blueberry and blackberry pie, yes. A mango margarita, yes. Manoges and yogurt, a mango smoothie, no doubt. But mango pie?”

The flavors changed her mind.

“It was the best pie I’ve ever had,” she says. “There’s something about this flavor that’s like Christmas. So warm and delicious. Sometimes you can eat a mango, and it can be on the sour side, or they’re overly sweet. This is right in the middle.”

Miranda Brna of Miami Beach calls the pies “truly amazing.”

“I honestly didn’t know pie could taste that good,” she says. “I am not a pie person. But this pie is so good, that I AM a pie person but just for this pie.”

What makes this mango pie so addictive? In addition to Miami’s general rabid appetite for the fruit, Martinez-Kalinina believes it’s the chili powder she adds. When her family left Cuba and moved to Mexico, they adopted an appetite for a bit of spice, which inspired her recipe.

“It’s not spicy,” she says. “But in Mexico, you add tahine to mango slices. With that contrast, the flavor is enhanced and elevated. I love the spice with the sweet.”

Martinez-Kalinina won’t be quitting her day job, though. Mango pie is a seasonal treat, and she hasn’t had luck making pies with frozen fruit.

“I’m sure more skilled chefs could do this, but for me it doesn’t come across the same,” she says.

Thus, Sunny Slice’s season ends when the mangoes are no longer available, usually sometime in August. This year, unlike 2024, has been a good season for mangoes, and neighbors are still supplying her with fruit, which proves to Martinez-Kalinina that an act that started as a gift is a positive force in the world.

“It brings out the best community version of us,” she says. “People are so generous with their mangoes. They become givers and engage in neighborliness. We don’t always do that here.”

How to order a mango pie

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$8 a slice, $40 for a pie

This story was originally published July 23, 2025 at 4:30 AM.