Kyra's: dedicated gluten-free in Lake Oswego

Kyra's Bake Shop in Lake Oswego has been a gluten-free landmark for a long time, and it's worth a second look for its vegan options, though only some of the pastry is plant-based. Founder Kyra Johnson, a Le Cordon Bleu graduate, built it as a dedicated gluten-free bakery café after a health diagnosis, in a city where too much GF dessert felt like a compromise. The shop is a celiac-safe facility where no gluten comes through the doors, and the vegan items are a labeled part of the menu.

Here's what counts as vegan, going by what the product pages say. There's the vegan Danish, which the shop describes as flaky pastry made with plant-based ingredients and its own twist on a classic, and there are Vegan German Chocolate Cupcakes, with vegan chocolate fudge cake, coconut pecan caramel and chocolate coconut caramel mousse. On the whole-pie page you'll find Vegan Apple Cranberry Crumb (also written as Vegan Cranberry Apple Crumb) and Vegan Triple Berry. The faq adds that the danishes and hand pies are vegan, that there's always at least one vegan cupcake on the weekly menu, and that the savory side can include vegan biscuits and gravy. The wedding cake flavors listed as vegan are chocolate fudge, gingerbread and pumpkin, by request.

Plenty of other things on the menu aren't vegan, whatever someone at the next table tells you. The pumpkin pie is labeled dairy-free, and that's as far as the label goes. The honey pecan pie has honey in it, and the caramel apple and chocolate peppermint mousse aren't labeled vegan. The faq lists the muffins and doughnuts as dairy-free, which also falls short of vegan. Custom orders come with dairy-free and vegan options, and those are two separate lists.

Pickup is at the flagship location, and the official city is Lake Oswego. The official pages checked for this guide don't print a street address, and the hours widget shows a Square placeholder in San Francisco, so no address is listed here. The hours on those pages conflict too, with a custom block saying Monday through Saturday 9 to 5 and closed Sunday, the policy text saying the shop is open seven days a week, and the Square placeholder saying something else again, so treat the hours as unknown. The one policy that stays consistent is pickup by 3 p.m. Questions go in by email, and the address for that is on the shop's website. Custom pastry needs at least four days' notice, and wedding tastings are four custom samples for $60.

A celiac-safe bakery that also sells a labeled vegan Danish is a genuinely useful find, and it's what keeps regulars coming back. Order the vegan Danish, or the vegan German chocolate cupcake if it's on this week's menu, and a vegan pie if you're feeding a table. When you tell your group chat about it, call it a gluten-free bakery with some vegan things, since that's exactly what it is.

The essentials are on the Kyra's Bake Shop page.