Verveine Café & Bakery Redefines Gluten-Free Pastry in Cambridge
On a recent trip to Boston, we were excited to stumble upon Verveine Café & Bakery in Cambridge. As someone who is gluten-sensitive, I especially loved being able to order gluten free without worrying about which items I could eat while we were in Boston. We caught up with chef Monica Glass to hear more about the bakery and the path that brought her there.
Where did your love of pastry and cooking begin?
While my love began in my grandmother’s garden, scouring the rows for ripe produce, and as my dad’s sidekick in the kitchen, it honestly began in the small, unglamorous moments. The moments that made me tinker and think: something rising in the oven, the smell of butter browning, how raspberries picked from the bush could be transformed into an ooey-gooey jam. Pastry especially pulled at me because it’s precise and emotional and also beautiful at the same time. It’s chemistry, but it’s also comfort. I like to know the reasons why things work the way they do, and chasing pastry gave me that satisfaction.
What were you like as a young chef working your way through kitchens like Gotham Bar & Grill and Le Bernardin?
Hungry in every sense! I wanted to absorb everything: technique, discipline, the standard of excellence those kitchens run on. It was intense, humbling work, the kind that either breaks you or builds you. It built me, and I loved it. I learned what nonnegotiable means in a professional kitchen, and that standard never left me.
How did those years in fine dining shape the chef you are today?
They set the bar for me. They gave me a floor I never compromise below in precision, consistency, cleanliness, organization, respect for ingredients and respect for the guest. I learned true hospitality and how to apply that to so many aspects of my life. Even now, running a café and bakery, I hold the same bar I held at those fine-dining restaurants.
How did being diagnosed with celiac disease change your relationship with food and with your career?
It cracked everything open. I was 24, deep, or so I thought at the time, into a career built entirely around food, and suddenly the thing I loved most was the very thing hurting me. There was real grief in that before there was any clarity. But it also gave me a mission I didn’t have before: to make sure no one else had to choose between safety and joy at the table.
As a pastry chef, was there a moment when you realized gluten-free baking could become an opportunity rather than a limitation?
It wasn’t one lightning-bolt moment so much as a slow refusal to accept “good for gluten-free” as good enough. I wasn’t ready to become “the gluten-free chef,” so I was still baking “normal” food and able to test alongside gluten-full counterparts. If I was going to serve something, it had to taste the same. So I kept testing, kept failing, kept adjusting, and at some point, I realized I wasn’t just accommodating a limitation now. I was building something genuinely new. That shift from restriction to possibility is the whole reason WLDFLR and Verveine Café & Bakery exist.
What did you have to relearn about pastry when you began baking without gluten?
I wouldn’t say I had to relearn anything about pastry because, even now, everything I do is rooted in classic technique. I wanted to learn everything I could the right way so I could break the rules! What I did have to learn was all about different flours and binders and hydration and how they all behave to create structure. You have to rebuild the logic of a recipe from the ground up rather than just swapping an ingredient. It humbled me in the best way.
You’ve received major recognition throughout your career. What did becoming a 2026 James Beard Award semifinalist mean to you personally?
It meant the world precisely because of where I came from with this. A diagnosis that once felt like it was going to end my career was being recognized as the foundation of some of my proudest work. It’s also validation, not just for me, but for the idea that gluten-free food deserves to be judged by the same standard as anything else.
What part of your own story is reflected most strongly in Verveine today?
The insistence on not choosing between safe and delicious. Verveine exists because I refused to accept that those two things were in tension. Every recipe and every detail in that café comes from my own hunger to always keep learning and to create a space where everyone can enjoy food together. We all deserve a seat at the table.
When someone with celiac disease walks into Verveine and realizes they don’t have to ask what they can safely eat, what does that mean to you?
It’s everything! I remember what it felt like to not have that. Scanning menus (I still have PTSD scanning others’ menus now), anxiously asking questions and feeling like the burden at the table was so isolating. Watching the awe and excitement come over someone’s face and even a full-body reaction when they realize they can eat everything here, without that vigilance, is the whole point of Verveine in one moment.
After everything it took to get here, what are you most proud of when you walk through the doors of Verveine?
That it’s real. That it exists. That it’s full of people eating and laughing without a second thought, and that none of it happened by accident. It came from years of grief, trial, sweat and stubbornness. Walking in and seeing it full of happy people is still, honestly, a little surreal.
Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers? Gluten-free Cambridge
If you’re navigating a diagnosis, a limitation or something that feels like it’s closing a door on you, it might just be redirecting you toward something you couldn’t have built any other way.
I’ll also say that I just put together something I’m really excited about: my free Gluten-Free Kitchen Essentials Kit! It walks you through a full pantry audit, a hidden gluten-and-swap guide, my pantry staples list and the exact tools I recommend, so you can set up a kitchen you actually trust. It’s everything I wish someone had handed me when I was first diagnosed. You can grab it on my website, chefmonicaglass.com!
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