How Do You Turn a Civil Rights Monument into a Pastry?

When Joanne Chang first stepped inside the Boston Common concession pavilion—where the award-winning restaurateur is about to open the 10th location of Flour Bakery & Cafe—she quickly noticed the striking statue, the Embrace, framed perfectly within the walk-up café’s main ordering window.

“I took a picture and sent it to Stephen [Jones],” the executive pastry chef of Flour, Chang says. Immediately, they got to work brainstorming how to make an homage to it for the menu. The resulting Embrace morning bun is one of several unique, new menu items exclusive to Flour Boston Common, which all play up a sense of place: Get ready for soft-serve ice cream with whimsical toppings, a fully loaded hot dog, and more.

An octagonal, 600-square-foot structure with no indoor access for customers, Flour Boston Common is unlike any other outpost of the beloved local bakery chain. Though the location has a spacious basement prep kitchen for its staff of 11, and 40-plus seats outside, the space’s quirks led the Flour team to streamline its familiar menu. Top-selling items spanning breakfast pastries, sweets, sandwiches, salads, pizza, and drinks will all be available, as well as a daily selection of specials.

Open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. to start, Flour will likely have a schedule that changes seasonally to align with the sunset. Chang hopes the place gets busy enough to stay open year-round; the team is already thinking about hot chocolate specials to complement skating on Frog Pond, for instance.

“We have this beautiful, iconic, public park, and there are no food options other than a couple of pushcarts,” Chang says. The team is looking at its latest location “as a celebration of and for Boston, with food to match.”

Here are the Flour Boston Common exclusives to look forward to this spring:

Flour’s Embrace morning bun. / Photo by Leah Willis

The Embrace morning bun

Tender babka is braided to evoke the shape of the nearby monument to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife, Coretta Scott King, which is itself a figurative depiction of a well-known photo of the couple taken during their time in Boston. The sweet, yeasted dough is layered with brown butter and chai-inspired spices, including freshly ground cardamom, cinnamon, clove, ginger, black pepper, and crushed cacao. The finished babka is rolled in the same spice blend for exterior crunch. “It’s been a while since we came up with an entirely new pastry,” Chang notes.

Flour’s vanilla and strawberry soft serve. / Photo by Leah Willis

Soft-serve ice cream

Chang and her husband and business partner, Christopher Myers, are regulars at the Original Boston Frosty, the ice cream truck parked seasonally near the Public Garden. “I’ve always loved ice cream. It’s my favorite thing ever,” Chang says. “I always thought, man, it would be so fun to have an ice cream truck, or maybe a little bike that runs around with coffee and treats.” The next best thing is a walk-up window in the middle of America’s oldest public park, so the James Beard Award-winning Outstanding Baker is finally giving scratch-made ice cream a whirl. Vanilla bean, strawberry, and a twist of the two are starting things off this spring.

House-made ice cream toppings include chocolate and raspberry dips, sprinkles, Oreo crumbs, mochi, and—ready for it?—sticky bun crumbs. The Flour team is chopping up one of its most famous treats and crisping them up to adorn cups and cones.

Sticky buns, hot to go

Prefer your sticky bun warm? Also an option. While every Flour Bakery will heat up any pastry if you ask, the Boston Common location will exclusively bake off fresh sticky buns throughout the day. “We’re hoping that when you’re walking by, you can smell the rich caramel and the nuts,” Chang says.

The Flour dog. / Photo by Leah Willis

The Flour dog

Hot dogs on house-baked milk buns are new to the Flour lunch lineup. “Being in the middle of America’s oldest public park is pretty darn special!” Chang exclaims. That same conversation that led to ice cream and an Embrace pastry also invoked hot dogs. “We were spitballing about our favorite park foods,” Chang says. Order it your way, or get the works on the Flour dog, which features baked-bean-and-ground-beef chili, sweet and sour relish, chopped onion, and celery salt.

“When you walk into Flour, part of the appeal is that there’s just so much,” Chang says. “Even though we have a limited menu [at this location], it still feels like so much.”

Flour Boston Common. / Photo by Jacqueline Cain

Opening April 15. 1B Charles St., Boston Common, flourbakery.com.