Joy in the morning

Morning Glory undertook to be a coffee shop with a difference — a liquor license. Owner Gretchen Valade — also proprietor of the Dirty Dog Jazz Café four doors down — promised dinner wines and java-with-a-shot, such as Spanish coffee (coffee liqueur and rum) and Irish coffee (Irish whisky and cream).

It's five months since the opening, and still no booze, so I gave up and visited anyway. When the liquor license does finally arrive, it's sure to boost evening traffic. A happy hour is planned.

Business is brisk already, though, not least because of the gorgeous baked goods made in-house by pastry chef Sandi Seaman. Right now you can see tall, bright-orange Halloween cakes ($25), chocolate or yellow or carrot cake inside, draped with spider webs, as well as amusing giant cupcakes, fresh fruit tarts — each a masterful composition of green, orange, blue, red and black on a custard background — croissants, scones, brownies, cannoli, muffins, beignets, lemon bars, raspberry ganache tarts, and the largest, roundest cherry Danish I've seen. 

Those are the good-lookers, but five rotating breads a day, by the loaf, are also on offer: Asiago, French, cranberry walnut, cinnamon swirl, Texas toast, challah, rye and multigrain for $4-$6.

The space is pleasing to the eye, as befits the Hill. There's a patio in front with Greek-style statues, bright-red iron café furniture, a glassed-in indoor-outdoor fireplace and heated floors. Inside, portraits of elephants and other African mammals grace one wall (Valade is an animal-lover). Dishes and flatware are not plastic. Prices are moderate.

The Morning Glory staff does almost everything in-house, from pounding pesto to dicing tomato relish to slicing or pulling the meats for soups and sandwiches.

I was happiest with panini, breakfast and pastries, less impressed with soups and smoothies. The menu — except for coffees and baked goods — is short.

A golden-toasted ham and cheese panini (the singular is actually panino, so when in Rome ...) used thick-sliced ham, Gruyére and a tomato slice on sourdough. Excellent. 

Equally fine was a chicken pesto flatbread, open-faced and drippy, the basil pesto soaking into the bread, with lots of shredded mozzarella. 

I've never quite understood the fuss over beignets, one of Morning Glory's biggest sellers, at 50 cents: Even in New Orleans, a beignet is a hunk of deep-fried dough, my friends. Maybe that's why the fuss, actually. Morning Glory makes them with a cinnamon sugar or powdered-sugar dusting, and if they're not exactly airy, they are, after all, a hunk of deep-fried dough.

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