True to its name, Burlington’s Feral Gnome Bakeshop is small and can be elusive. The business is the downsized offspring of Nunyuns Bakery & Café, which closed last May after 16 years as an Old North End mainstay. In November, Nunyuns co-owner Paul Bonelli, 50, quietly resurfaced with a new home-based bakery. He launched with holiday special orders and then rolled out a limited wholesale delivery roster of everyday treats, from pillowy, cream-bellied whoopie pies to his Pop-Tarts-inspired frosted and filled pastries.
Feral Gnome has no website nor published delivery schedule. Those who follow the bakeshop on social media get real-time updates after Bonelli has delivered to a handful of regular accounts: J&M Groceries and Momo’s Market in Burlington, the Cup & Leaf coffee shop in Essex, and Mule Bar in Winooski.
But gnomes are unpredictable — feral ones, especially — which is part of their charm.
“He delivers what he wants when he wants,” Momo’s Market owner Erin Malone, 44, said with a grin. “That’s the thing about the Feral Gnome.”
Cup & Leaf owner Michael Sands, 40, started ordering from Feral Gnome after Bonelli read about the newly opened coffee shop and messaged him.
“Paul’s got this Willy Wonka thing going on,” Sands said. “He’s kind of a baking genius.”
Malone has been a fan of Bonelli’s baked goods since the Nunyuns days. After she learned he was baking again out of his Department of Health-certified apartment kitchen, the market owner jumped at the chance to support another local entrepreneur and offer his wares to her customers.
“His creativity was missed,” Malone said. To taste Bonelli’s pastries, she continued, is to know that “he must really love baking.”
Feral Gnome’s lemon tea cakes, for example, are “off the charts: moist, dense, with the perfect ratio of icing to cake and lemon brightness,” Malone said.
Bonelli’s chubby, chewy “funfetti” sugar cookies boast a crisp, caramelized bottom and iced, rainbow-sprinkled top. The sandwich cookie savant pairs lacy, brown-sugary oatmeal cookies with silken vanilla frosting. Sturdy, crunchy peanut butter cookies can barely contain swirls of unctuous, peanuty filling.
Feral Gnome has offered limited runs of some seasonal Nunyuns signatures, such as risqué Nudie cookie people and sassily inscribed heart cookies for Valentine’s Day, and “Twonkies” in honor of Fauxstess February.
Since December, Momo’s has churned through orders of 60 to 70 items weekly, most of which sell for $4.99. Over that time, Malone said, only three pastries have gone unsold before their “best by” date. Bonelli’s version of Pop-Tarts, especially, “evaporate,” she said, and his fluffy-crumbed, square English muffins sell briskly at $6.99 for a bag of four.
In March, Feral Gnome partnered with Burlington’s Simple Roots Brewing for a pastry and beer event. Pairings included the brewery’s Good Neighbor IPA with a roasted jalapeño and cheese scone, and its Nightfall porter with a chocolate-cherry whoopie pie.
As one might expect from a feral gnome, Bonelli prefers to stay far from the limelight but answered questions by email. He said he has no more pop-up events planned but may do some as opportunities arise.
He picked his new bakery’s name, he said, “because I didn’t want to sound pretentious. There’s a lot of hoity-toity stuff out there.”
The baker reiterated that he does not miss the work of running a storefront, though he does miss key employees, and longtime customers and their dogs, several of which he listed by name.
Starting June 3, Bonelli might get to see his dog friends regularly again. At the very least, customers can count on in-person sightings of the gnome and his baked goods when he starts vending weekly at the Old North End Farmers Market in Dewey Park.
For more, email feralgnomebakeshop@gmail.com, find Feral Gnome Bakeshop on Facebook or go to @feral_gnome_bakeshop on Instagram.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Wild Flour | Former Nunyuns co-owner Paul Bonelli bakes again as the Feral Gnome”
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This article appears in May 14-20, 2025.
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