Grand Central Bakery - Hawthorne cafe

Bread first on Hawthorne

Artisanal bread is the anchor at Grand Central Bakery's Hawthorne shop, and everything else on the counter arranges itself around it. This is the branch where the company's Portland story started in 1993, which gives a neighborhood bakery-cafe on Hawthorne Boulevard more weight than an outpost usually carries. The loaves lead, then buttery pastries, biscuits, pies and sandwiches, with coffee to make it a full stop rather than a bread errand. The bread program is broad rather than narrow. Different loaf varieties come out through the day, and the case fills in around them with the sweet and savory work a daytime bakery needs to hold a street's attention from opening to mid-afternoon. Desserts turn up in the case alongside them, which is what lets a morning bread stop work just as well in the afternoon.

A remodeled room with bakery character

The room reads as a neighborhood cafe, remodeled recently, in close-in Southeast Portland, and the look blends modern lines with vintage pieces and a fair amount of tradition. That combination suits the address. Hawthorne is a walking street, and the bakery works the way a walking street's bakery should: people come in for coffee and a pastry in the morning, a sandwich later, a loaf on the way home. Breakfast and brunch traffic sets the pace of the mornings, and the counter absorbs it without ceremony. Nothing about the service is formal. You order at the counter, take a table if one is free, and let the bakery case do the persuading.

Start with a loaf, then work the case

Start with the artisanal bread, since it is what Grand Central built its name on and the clearest reason to choose Hawthorne over a generic coffee stop. From there, move into the pastries, which are the buttery, laminated end of the counter, then the biscuits and the pies. Sandwiches are the lunch answer and they are built on the same bread, which is the tidiest argument for the whole operation. Coffee rounds it out. If you are buying for later rather than eating in, the loaf is still the right purchase, and a pastry is the thing to add for the walk. Treat Hawthorne as a working neighborhood bakery with three decades of Portland history behind the counter, and order in that spirit: bread first, then whatever came out of the oven most recently.