A new bakery on East Flagler Street has been packed nearly every day since it opened its doors on Friday, Aug. 7, with lines forming for scratch-made croissants, babka, and sandwiches served from a small storefront with counter service and limited seating. Flagler St. Bakery sits at 12 NE First Ave. in Downtown Miami, in a space that was originally intended to become a Cuban restaurant before owner Julian Gheiler took it over.
Gheiler told Miami New Times that the bakery has been slammed almost every day since opening, and he describes the shop as a coffee shop as much as a bakery. Per the same account, Flagler St. Bakery makes all of its bread and pastry from scratch on site, which Gheiler says makes it the only bakery in Downtown Miami doing so. The pastry case, the outlet reports, has become one of the more distinctive displays in the city.
A Sandwich Eight Years in the Making
The bakery's signature item is the medianoche croissant, made with cross-laminated croissant dough and filled with ham, Swiss, roast pork, pickles, and mustard. The New Times reports the pastry takes at least three days to create and that Gheiler calls it one of his proudest creations. Gheiler has baked for eight years, starting at age 19 at Gigi, an early-2010s Wynwood restaurant that anchored the neighborhood's early dining scene, according to Humans of the Kitchen.
From there, Gheiler sharpened his technique at True Loaf Bakery in Sunset Harbour, a Miami Beach shop founded in 2013 by Tomas Strulovic that built a name for scratch-made sourdoughs and French-style laminated pastries, per Miami New Times' earlier reporting on the shop. He also studied at the Barcelona Baker's Guild in Spain before eventually running the bakery program at Four, a North Miami restaurant collective housed in the former home of Paradis Books & Bread, a bookstore, cafe, and natural wine bar that closed for good in February 2024 after sustained online harassment, according to Time Out Miami.
From Sunday Pop-Up to Permanent Storefront
Flagler St. Bakery's roots trace to a Sunday pastry kiosk Gheiler ran outside Over Under in spring 2026, an offshoot of the Lazy Brew coffee pop-up he had launched at the Florida-themed cocktail bar. Over Under opened in 2020 under former Broken Shaker bartender Brian Griffiths and has doubled as an incubator for local food concepts. Gheiler has said the Lazy Brew pop-up convinced him that Downtown Miami would support a full bakery, and he has since discussed a permanent version of the concept with Griffiths.
The bakery's name itself has a origin story tied to the neighborhood's transformation: Gheiler registered the Flagler Street Bakery Instagram handle after seeing a rendering of the Flagler Street redesign, and he later used that same name for a booth at a summer block party market in July 2024 after Ashley Richardson invited him to vend there. The idea for the bakery had begun taking shape at the end of 2023, and it followed a path similar to Fratesi's Pizza, another pop-up born behind Over Under that landed its own permanent storefront at 69 E. Flagler St. in 2025, according to The Adventurist.
A Menu Built Around Croissant Dough and Local Coffee
Beyond the medianoche, the menu includes a chocolate babka made with croissant dough, Nutella, and bittersweet chocolate — a pastry that's been associated with Gheiler in Miami for the past few years — along with a tahini babka finished with white chocolate, cardamom, and rose. There's also a miso caramel bar with an oat cookie base and brown sugar miso caramel custard, which Gheiler currently calls his favorite, plus ube butter mochi, an Earl Grey bun, a morning bun, and a labneh za'atar danish topped with cucumber, tomato, and mint.
Sandwiches join the lineup after 10 a.m., including a turkey avocado club on sourdough, a vegetarian option called La Rustica with roasted eggplant, confit tomato and garlic, goat cheese, and mozzarella, and the Morty Sammy, built on rosemary focaccia with mortadella, burrata, pistachio pesto, arugula, and balsamic glaze. The El Mikel sandwich layers jamón serrano and queso cabrales on pan de cristal con tomate, and there's a lox bagel croissant for those who want something closer to brunch. Coffee comes from Panther Coffee, the Wynwood roaster founded in December 2010 by Joel and Leticia Pollock that's widely credited with kickstarting South Florida's specialty coffee scene, according to Panther Coffee. Flagler St. Bakery makes its own syrups and drinks in-house, including the Flagler Fog, a double espresso with Earl Grey syrup and Earl Grey cold foam, and the Mamey Matcha, topped with mamey syrup and mamey cold foam. The bar staff carries roughly 80 combined years of barista experience, and Gheiler says he's holding back some of the more labor-intensive pastries from his pop-up days until his team settles into a rhythm.
Opening Amid Downtown's Long-Awaited Streetscape Overhaul
The bakery's debut lands just months after the City of Miami finished Section C of the Downtown Flagler Street Beautification Project, reopening East Flagler Street at NE First Avenue with wide, curbless sidewalks designed for foot traffic and festival closures. That $20.5 million-plus public-private project, backed by developer Moishe Mana alongside the city and the Miami Downtown Development Authority, had faced years of contractor changes and utility delays since launching in 2016. As Hoodline previously reported, merchants along the corridor have described the recovery in foot traffic as real but uneven, with construction detours on nearby blocks still weighing on some businesses even as weekend events and completed sidewalks bring shoppers back. Mana's continued investment in the district, including his $110 million purchase of the One Downtown office tower, underscores the institutional bet being placed on the corridor even as individual shop owners wait to see whether the momentum holds. Flagler St. Bakery remains in a soft-opening period as it works out its footing, but for now, the lines outside 12 NE First Ave. suggest the neighborhood has an appetite for it.
