Mikkelsen’s Pastry Shop is a Sweet Success Story

The eponymous owner of Mikkelsen’s Pastry Shop, Danish pastry chef Paw Mikkelsen, has been creating all manner of baked goods for restaurants and retail customers for a quarter-century and counting. What he, wife/business partner Elizabeth, and their employees provide by way of service and hospitality makes the business special.

Paw began working in his father’s bakery in Denmark at age 11. At 15, he left home to complete a baking apprenticeship, earning a Master Baker designation. The Ritz-Carlton, Boston brought him to the United States, where he met Elizabeth. They married and Mikkelsen moved up to the position of pastry chef at the Ritz, followed by jobs at the Four Seasons Hotel Houston and on a Mississippi River casino boat. The couple moved to Naples and opened Mikkelsen’s Pastry Shop in 2000.

When COVID struck in spring 2020, they swiftly adapted. “We started making quiches that people could take home for an easy meal,” Elizabeth says. “Nobody could find bread. We made bread. People needed toilet paper. We sourced it from our restaurant suppliers who had gobs of it because no restaurants were open.” They enlisted their next-door neighbor, a chemist, to produce hand sanitizer. Farmer Mike’s U-Pick in Bonita Springs brought produce and Halperns’ Steak & Seafood in Naples brought its wares—and an unofficial weekly farmers market was born. Once things opened again, the Mikkelsens’ pastry and wedding cake business resumed.

Through the years, multiple hurricanes, and economic recession, the Mikkelsens kept on creating luscious desserts. Their brand of personal service continues as always. Says Elizabeth, “We’ve got to get it right.” 

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