Ciao, Gloria

Italian-American baking on a blue counter

The Mediterranean blue counter at Ciao, Gloria fronts a deep case: tricolor bars, limoncello bars, croissants, banana bread and coffee cake. Renato Poliafito opened the Prospect Heights bakery-café in Brooklyn in 2019, bringing the dessert-and-pastry lineage of Red Hook's BAKED, which he co-founded, into a daytime neighbourhood format. His Italian-American background runs through everything on the counter, from biscotti and amaretti to crostata flavours, focaccia sandwiches and cinnamon rolls, and the room is set up for coffee, breakfast and lunch rather than dinner.

What the case holds

The tricolor bar is a Neapolitan take on the Italian rainbow cookie, and the limoncello bar sits on a salty shortbread and pistachio crust. Espresso-tinged coffee cake, flaky croissants filled with pistachio cream and banana bread under whipped mascarpone fill out the sweet side. Beyond them the case runs to biscuits, scones, muffins, cinnamon rolls, danish, a ham and cheddar croissant, the Morning Gloria cookie, chocolate chunk and black and white cookies, oatmeal cream pie, brownies, Il Milionario, fruit crumb bars, orange olive oil bundt, carrot cake, torta caprese, almond fruit torte, citrus polenta torte and a limoncello pistachio tart. Bomboloni are made on Saturdays only, and vegan and gluten-free items are marked on the menu. Coffee, tea and sodas run alongside from the morning bake through to the afternoon sweets.

How to order, sweet then savoury

Start with the tricolor bar, the clearest single read on the place and a refined version of the rainbow cookie idea. Then build for contrast: the limoncello bar for citrus and that pistachio crust, the pistachio cream croissant for lamination, the espresso-tinged coffee cake if you are ordering coffee anyway, or banana bread with whipped mascarpone for something richer. Biscotti, amaretti, black and white cookies, oatmeal cream pie, torta caprese, citrus polenta torte and the limoncello pistachio tart all fit the same trip. For lunch, the Italo Disco Club is the one to know: smoked turkey breast, crispy prosciutto, avocado, tomato pesto, provolone, greens and Calabrese aioli on house-made focaccia, which Time Out New York has named among the best sandwiches in the city. Other savoury choices include Bella Ciao, Miss Mortazza, Mr. Beefy, The Paolo, The Capri, a chicken Caesar salad wrap, insalata mista, a summer grain bowl and Nonna's focaccia with tomato, mozzarella and basil.