Lunch Anyone? Finale

Finale specializes in homemade desserts, including gourmet cakes, cupcakes, tarts, pies, and cookies. Customers can order pastries directly from the dessert case for the perfect ending to a light lunch. Photos by Esther Ro (COM’15)

At Finale, dessert is the name of the game.

The undisputed highlight of this Boston restaurant (it’s conveniently located next to the Park Plaza Hotel),  is the dessert case at the front, which proudly shows off all the cakes, pies, tarts, and other treats that the bakery has become famous for. A burgundy counter nearby, at first glance, appears to be a bar, but is actually the area where the pastry chefs prepare Finale’s homemade desserts each day.

We stopped by recently for lunch. And as tempting as it was to simply skip lunch and go straight for the dessert case, we decided that a sandwich would act as the perfect palate cleanser before consuming one of the bakery’s heavenly pastries.

Finale’s lunch menu is small, but it offers an impressive range of options. There were lunchtime classics, like the tuna salad with chopped onion, celery, tomato, and romaine lettuce on multigrain bread ($6.79) and the BLT with Monterey Jack cheese ($6.79), but there were also items that had more culinary flair, like an apple mango sandwich ($6.49), a mélange of sliced apples, mango chutney, goat cheese, caramelized onions, arugula, and walnuts on multigrain bread, and a turkey club ($7.29), which featured smoked turkey, Gruyere cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mustard mayo on ciabatta bread.

The menu also allowed for creative combos. Sandwiches are served a la carte for from $6.49 to $7.29, but for $8.49, you can opt for a “Mix-n-Match” lunch that consists of half a sandwich with either a cup of the soup of the day or a small salad. And, for an extra $1.69, you can also order your favorite sandwich as a salad—the sandwich fixings are placed over a bed of fresh mesclun greens sans bread for a lower-carb lunch option.

Finale’s also features an array of beverages to wash everything down with—cold sparkling juices and Italian sodas are perfect for keeping cool in the summer, while the selection of house-made hot chocolates, hot cider, espresso drinks, and coffee will (almost) make up for frigid Boston winters.

After perusing the menu at the counter, we decided on the chicken pesto sandwich ($7.29), a roasted chicken breast with spinach, Gruyere cheese, caramelized onions, and pesto on a ciabatta roll. The flavors of the cheese, chicken, and spinach worked well together, but the heavy-handed pesto overwhelmed the rest of the ingredients.

We also decided to order a Mix-n-Match combo that included a prosciutto sandwich ($8.49) and a small mesclun salad with a sweet balsamic dressing. The sandwich came with fresh mozzarella cheese, vine-ripened tomatoes, basil leaves, and olive oil on ciabatta. The combination of ingredients was flavorful and savory, but with only one slice of prosciutto, the sandwich left us wanting more.

The highlight of the meal was the chicken salad sandwich ($6.49), a medley of poached white-meat chicken mixed with pecans, grapes, onion, celery, and a dash of mayonnaise on multigrain bread. The chicken salad was moist without being overwhelmed with mayo, and the mix of fruit, nuts, and veggies made the sandwich more flavorful than standard lunchtime fare.

While tasty, all three sandwiches were light on filling—we agreed that the bread was fresh and delicious, but it overpowered all the other ingredients. And while we were satisfied with the quality of what we ordered, we still had ample room left in our stomachs for more. It may be that Finale likes to skimp on the sandwiches so its patrons will have room for dessert. If so, the strategy worked on us.

Dessert at Finale is the culinary equivalent of the closing number of a Broadway musical—extravagant, indelible, and delightful. The case at the front of the restaurant featured a mixture of eye-popping cakes, cupcakes, pies, tarts, and pastries. It was impossible to choose them all, so we went with three of the most popular of the bakery’s selections: the chocolate symphony ($6.29), three tiers of decadently creamy Valrhona chocolate mousse (bittersweet, milk, and white) with rich chocolate cake; the crème brulee ($5.29), a chilled version of the well-known treat with melt-in-your-mouth custard underneath a layer of crunchy browned sugar; and a whoopie pie ($2.99), a bite-sized concoction with velvety cream cheese frosting sandwiched between two chewy fudge brownies. All three, we can happily report, tasted as good as they looked. Our collective sugar high propelled us all the way back to BU with full stomachs.

Finale is the perfect place to satisfy your sweet tooth after a day of shopping, a trip to the movies, or a theater matinee. Come for a light lunch, but be sure to leave room and stay for the desserts.

Finale is located at 26 Park Plaza. Boston. Hours: Monday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to midnight; and Sunday, noon to 11 p.m. Phone: 617-423-3184. View the menu here. Finale accepts all major credit cards. To get there via public transportation, take any MBTA Green Line trolley to Arlington St. 

This is part of a regular series featuring Boston lunch spots of interest to the BU community. If you have any suggestions for places we should feature, leave them in the Comment section below. Check out our list of lunchtime tips on Foursquare.

Samantha Pickette can be reached at pickette@bu.edu.

This Series

Brunch Bets: Gen Sou En Tea House

Also in

Lunch, Anyone?

• April 18, 2018

  Lunch, Anyone? La Befana

• April 11, 2018

  Lunch Anyone? BB.Q Chicken

• March 29, 2018

  Lunch, Anyone? Bennett’s Sandwich Shop

Series home