UPPER WEST SIDE — An award-winning gluten-free bakery is about to sweeten up the Upper West Side.
By the Way Bakery — which got its start in Westchester in 2011 and has since gone on to earn critical acclaim for its gluten-free cupcakes, cookies, and other treats — is opening a store at Broadway between West 90th and 91st streets.
This will be the first Manhattan location for the bakery founded by Helen Godin, who made the midlife decision to quit her job as a lawyer and start a bakery devoted to gluten-free goods, said Faith Hope Consolo, who is part of the team at Douglas Elliman leasing the space.
Godin said she hopes to open the store, which is carry-out focused, just after Thanksgiving.
The bakery, whose goods are also dairy free, won a "Best of Westchester" award in 2012 and 2013. Its fresh-baked items will be delivered to Manhattan each morning from Westchester.
The menu features cookies, layer cakes, cupcakes, tea cakes, coffee cakes and muffins. The bakery's coconut cloud cake, pumpkin muffins and almond cookies are the current hits, Godin said.
Stumptown coffee will be served at the new location at a "long bar, reminiscent of the Italian train station," she noted.
The decor will be exactly the same as it is at the Westchester location, and its signature wooden rolling pin door handle will greet customers in Manhattan, too, Godin explained.
The move to the city was motivated by the strong response Godin had from selling her goods in Manhattan markets, including at Dean & DeLuca and Gourmet Garage, she said.
The strong response to her baked goods, with customers coming to the bakery from all over New York and other states, stems from her experiments perfecting each recipe.
"[The method] is bake, bite, throw out," she said of the trial-and-error process to which she brings "tenacity and intensity."
While she once wanted to downplay the gluten-free nature of her baked goods, that component will be more prominently advertised on the Upper West Side.
"Things have changed," Godin said. "Two-and-a-half years later, gluten-free has really exploded and the stigma is gone."
