Belonging is Baked In

Belonging is Baked In

“I love the community that’s being built here”: A conversation with Tony Palmieri of Cromwell’s Tony’s Flour Shop

By Alex Dueben

Before he opened the award-winning bakery and coffee shop Tony’s Flour Shop in Cromwell, before he owned a flower shop in Middletown and worked as a florist for more than two decades, Tony Palmieri grew up in a family of artists. 

“My dad painted motorcycles and did really fine woodworking, and he could do anything artistic. My mom’s medium was food,” Palmieri said in a recent conversation. “I grew up in an Italian family, and the boys didn’t usually get to cook or bake or clean or learn any of the important things like that, but my mom had a debilitating illness. I was the youngest by a lot, so fortunately for me I helped out with cooking and baking, and I liked it.

For years baking was simply something that Palmieri did. “I owned a florist in Middletown, but I always liked to bake. When my kids got married, I made cookies for their weddings, like my grandmother did,” he said. “When I was stressed out, when I was happy, it was a thing that I went to.”

He had closed his florist shop before the COVID Pandemic, but like as for everyone, the pandemic changed a lot. “I spent the whole summer outside planting food in the yard, landscaping. As soon as it became clear that the pandemic was gonna’ keep going, I was like, okay, comfort food. I was baking and baking and baking,” Palmieri said, describing ordering 25-pound bags of yeast wholesale. “At that point I was in a relationship with a man and a woman, and the three of us only eat so much, so I was leaving food on my kids’ porches, on my sister’s porches.”

Opening a bakery, and opening a store, wasn’t something that he planned, but once he started thinking about it, it started to fall into place. “As soon as the name occurred to me, Tony’s Flour Shop, I was like, well, now I have to do it,” Palmieri said. “When I closed my floral shop, I was never ever going to be an entrepreneur again. Never. I’m never going to have an employee again,” Palmieri laughed. “I have more employees now than I ever had.”

The cafe has gained a lot of attention on social media for its monthly specials. From Pride month, which had drinks named after Alison Bechdel and Oscar Wilde, to Christmas in July, to September’s County Fair inspired specials, to October’s Stephen King tributes. “My sisters who are older than me were like, what do you mean you’re opening a bakery? How are people going to know? I’m going to put it on Facebook and Instagram,” Palmieri said with a laugh. “It’s the only kind of promotion we do. I try to be myself on social media.”

Opening the coffee shop involved the same process that he used for baking, working with local companies and suppliers like Saccuzzo Coffee in Newington. “They’re a family business that runs the way we run. That’s important to me. We’re supporting them, and they train my staff. When I get new people, they’re welcome to go there and get training. I think that’s incredible. Our tea comes from Fable in Southington, and Tina blends the tea there. That’s the kind of care that I want to be able to pass on,” he said. “It was important to me that the coffee was done with the same care.”

Palmieri described the creation and naming of projects as a fun group project with all employees collaborating on working out themes and names and ingredients, planning months in advance. “We try to have everything planned by the middle of the month before,” he said. “Creating the media takes me time, and we make some of the syrups ourselves, he said describing the two-week process they utilize to make some of the fruit-based syrups.

“Most coffee houses have a larger, regular menu, and do two or three specials a month, but this is fun for us,” he said. “What I want is for the baking to be as thematic as the drinks are. Some standards, but then also—he hesitated to find the right words. I suggested, fun? 

“We’re working on going back to our roots. We found that we got stuck in a situation where we were baking like a coffee shop. The same things over and over again,” he said. “I think that what people really love that about us is that the menu is different.”

This means not just different pastries and varieties. “We try and always have one or two options in the case for vegans and gluten-free people. We keep testing recipes,” Palmieri said. “We’ll keep trying. But until then, I’m not going to sell it. Our peanut butter cookies happen to be gluten-free. My grandmother’s almond paste cookies, a batch that makes, I think, 12 dozen cookies has two tablespoons of flour. I wondered what happens if I put cornstarch in? They’re exactly the same.”

The Flour Shop

The shop itself has an aesthetic of its own. There are books for children and adults, Taylor Swift and Tori Amos, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty and Where the Wild Things Are. In the window a copy of his ex’s novel is on display. The walls feature family photos and seasonal decorations. A vertical chess board on the wall. They fly a Pride flag outside.

In our conversation Palmieri spoke about his siblings and his children, his grandchildren and his exes. His son bringing his grandchildren in for breakfast. How they had Thanksgiving dinner at the restaurant to accommodate the entire family. He’s built a queer, welcoming space that has managed to incorporate all the aspects of his life, but I was struck by what he said about growing up in a traditional family where the boys weren’t taught to cook or bake, despite the fact that many of the recipes Palmieri got from his mother came down from her father, who was a baker.

“Coming out was hard. I got married when I was eighteen to a woman, because that’s what you do. Then, I came out when I was twenty-four. If I had grown up in a more open environment, that wouldn’t have happened. I certainly don’t regret my children, but it wasn’t fair to the woman that I married. It was hard to get my family to understand that I’m the same person they always knew. We’re there now,” Palmieri said when I asked about queerness.

“It was a struggle for me, and it’s part of the reason that having a safe space for queer people, queer youth, is really important to me,” Palmieri said, talking about seeing queer couples and trans people and families with children together in the cafe. “For Brianna’s book launch party—she’s my ex—we had a tea party. This woman who’s a regular came in with her son, who’s maybe four or five, and he’s wearing a skirt. She said, we’re so happy to come here, this is one of the only places he can come where he can dress how he wants to dress, and no one’s going to make fun of him,” he said.

“That, as a counter to the way that I was raised, is a beautiful thing for me,” Palmieri said, clearly emotional. “I’ve lost some very good friends to suicide, some very good gay friends to suicide, and a lot of the way that they lived their lives was influenced by the fact that they were greeted as young people with opposition from their families. It’s something that unfortunately goes along with being a gay kid.”

Palmieri looked around the cafe. “Growing up with that, I just didn’t know what to do with the feelings. My therapist said, you’re doing it, you’re creating a safe space, this is how you’re combating it.”

He’s lived and worked in the area for much of his life, but Palmieri wanted to open the bakery in Cromwell. “This is where I grew up. I came back here to open this bakery, and I didn’t know how I would be greeted in this town, but it’s been great. I’ve had support from people I went to school with, support from the general community, outside the community, the queer community.”

“It’s been really, really moving, the way that people have reacted.”