Why go
A former muffler shop in Donelson holds the bakehouse now. The team behind Sunflower Bakehouse say they saw the old garage and envisioned an adorable bakehouse, and what opened in it is a vegan kitchen with a gluten-free bakery at the centre.
Vegan kitchen, gluten-free bakery
The bakery is the anchor and everything is both vegan and gluten free, but the menu reaches well past a pastry counter. Sandwiches, burgers, salads, hot entrees and sides sit alongside breakfast, baked goods, smoothies, coffee, tea and lattes, which puts the place closer to a bakery-restaurant hybrid than to a stand-alone sweets shop.
The name matters when you are comparing. Sunflower Cafe, its sister restaurant, is a separate room in Berry Hill on the south side of Nashville, and the business distinguishes between the two rather than treating them as branches of one thing.
One counter, several kinds of visit
The range is built to carry more than one kind of visit. Breakfast, baked goods, smoothies and the coffee, tea and latte list handle the morning and the café side of the room. Sandwiches, burgers, salads, hot entrees and sides push the same counter into lunch and dinner without changing what the kitchen is doing.
The baking programme also extends beyond what is sitting in the case. Special orders are part of how the bakery works rather than a favour bolted onto it, which matters if you are feeding a group with the same dietary constraints the whole place is built around.
Start with the bake, then decide what kind of meal it is
Begin with the vegan, gluten-free baked goods, since that is the part of the operation everything else is arranged around and the clearest test of whether the kitchen is any good. From there the choice is what the visit wants to be: coffee or tea with something from the case, a latte and a pastry, a smoothie, or a full plate built on a sandwich, burger, salad or hot entree.
For anything larger than a single order, take the special-order route, because the bakery treats arranged orders as a core part of its programme.
Frequently asked questions
What is on the menu at Sunflower Bakehouse?
Everything is vegan and gluten free. The bakery case is the anchor, and around it sit breakfast, smoothies, coffee, tea and lattes for the morning, plus sandwiches, burgers, salads, hot entrees and sides for a full meal. Special orders from the bakery are part of the programme rather than an exception to it.
Is Sunflower Bakehouse the same as Sunflower Cafe?
No. Sunflower Bakehouse is the Donelson room, built inside a former muffler shop with the gluten-free bakery at its centre. Sunflower Cafe is the sister restaurant, in Berry Hill on the south side of Nashville. The business itself distinguishes between the two, so the name matters when you are comparing them.
Compare nearby places
| Venue | Type | Area |
|---|---|---|
| Star Bagel Cafe | Bakery | Sylvan Park |
| HiFi Cookies - East Nashville | Bakery | East Nashville |
| Van Leeuwen Ice Cream | Bakery | The Gulch |
| Little Rad Market | Café | Belle Meade |
| Elegy Coffee East | Café | East Nashville |
