Flour Bakery + Cafe — Restaurant in Cambridge

NOT FAMILY FRIENDLY! I live on campus and visit this store very often but today I had a very bad experience at this store. I was ordering three different things and they told me they were out of one of them which I was planning to give to my toddler as her lunch. So I just spent one extra second to decide an alternative option for my kid, and asked them to heat it up. The person at check out was obviously not happy with me. She said, next time please let me know your special request beforehand. I said, sorry what do you mean? She said, you should let me know you want to heat up your food before I slide your card. I was astonished. This is so ridiculous. Does this makes any difference for you to check out? I told you right away when I ordered my food, not any second after you checked me out. Then I said I want to talk to your manager. So the so-called supervisor of the day came, he was using the exact same attitude to me. He said, yes because you are taking other people's time. Ha, this is really interesting. So I waited there and see if what he said was true. Clearly, everyone behind me took much longer time at the check out, I was just using half of the average time everyone spends at the check out counter. Ok fine. I won't comment anything more about this store and the people who dine there earlier all saw what happened. I believe everyone has their own judgment. I don't want to say you are simply being mean to me just because I look like an immigrant or because of my race, maybe that's not exactly true and I don't want to say that word to define the entire story. Plus I am also nine months pregnant. But if you want your customer to be so familiar with what you are doing everyday and immediately coming up with ten backup ordering options when you are running out of stock, you should also let us know beforehand. So my toddler and I left the store at the end and she sat there for almost half an hour waited for her lunch and we had to go home starving because we just simply don't want to stay...

Rating is for this location and not Flour in general. I've frequented the location up the road on Mass Ave many a times and as a resident of Cambridgeport, I was stoked to hear that Flour got about 0.5mi closer to home.

The first thing to note is that this location is both limited in menu and hours, in order to tailor to the needs of those working in the immediate area. Monday-Friday ONLY 7am-6pm. So if you live in the area and want to grab some delish muffin tops outside of those hours or on the weekend, get your walking shoes on.

The menu is also a stripped down version of the other locations. Salads are limited to just two and there are only about half a dozen sandwiches. This was disappointing as a vegetarian looking for some lunch, as I was pretty much pigeon holed into the Hummus Sandwich if I wanted something substantial. For $9 the sandwich was pretty good, but there are much better options at the other locations, which left me disappointed. Next time I'll likely go for my go-to breakfast sandwich (amazing!) but I'm not sure if they make this all day.

The ambiance is amazing, with pleeeenty of seating, from large tables for group work, individual tables for those stealing wifi and couches/loungers for small/medium groups looking to catch-up or even conduct a first round interview. The gas fireplace was perfect for the frigid December day that I was there, giving off just enough heat to warm you up slightly. Half the wall space is windows, so on nice days you'll get plenty of daylight.

At the end of the day, would I come back again...no because they close early :-)...but seriously I anticipate myself spending a lot of time here when I'm working from home. Great job Joanne Chang (owner/chef), the only complaint I have is that...

I can not wrap my head around how hyped Flour Bakery + Cafe is as an institution. I genuinely must be missing something.

Level-headed people will wax rhapsodic to you about the sticky bun. Kendall square tech bros will hold your hand, look at you misty-eyed, and whisper that the breakfast sandwich is the best they have ever had.

To date, I have experienced the food as aggressively mid. The breakfast sandwich has little in the way of flavor and is a weird non-texture - sort of soft and mushy all the way through. Most pastries leave me not disappointed, but not delighted either. The primary thought that lingers over every bite is wishing the pastry had been $2 less.

To be fair, I never tried Flour in its early days. Maybe everyone is just clinging to the memory of glory days I never got to experience. Maybe the entire institution is running on the promise of a faded dream. I don't know.

That being said - where there food is mid, there espresso is a moral crime. Baseline espresso comes out an odd tar like, bitter flavor. In a cappuccino, the espresso is lost amidst a oceanic quantity of lightly frothed milk. The sight of it would send an Italian into an apoplectic frenzy. The salesperson that sold them their blighted coffee machine is an international criminal. I would recommend they drop the "+ Cafe" part of the name until there is a deep reckoning.

Respect to the staff though - they are very friendly and the service is always great. The vibe itself is good. Just maybe bring...