Ghaya

The savory pastry that explains the place

Ask for the ham-and-cheese mille-feuille first. It is eleven layers, roughly half cured sliced pork and half emmentaler, stacked on a sliced and toasted croissant, brushed with brown butter and crisped, and it comes with a small side salad to cut it. It is also the clearest statement of what this place is: laminated-pastry technique aimed at lunch instead of dessert.

Ghaya is the self-titled Long Island City bakery-café of Ghaya Oliveira, the James Beard Award-winning pastry chef who left the Boulud group at the end of 2019 to open it. The through-line is pastry, with café food and warm drinks arranged around it rather than the other way around. Very few neighborhood cafés are run by someone with that background, and the mille-feuille is where you notice.

An all-day counter for the neighborhood

The room works as a neighborhood café rather than a destination: counter-led, casual and modern, used for pastry and coffee early and for brunch or a light lunch later. Regulars are the point, and the service is personal rather than transactional. It is not a heavily designed space and it does not try to be, because the work is on the plate. The all-day framing is accurate: the room changes register as the day goes on without ever changing what it is.

The drink list runs wider than coffee. Chai latte, spiced golden latte and turmeric latte are the ones people return for, and any of the three sits naturally next to a croissant or a cruffin. Ordering a warm spiced drink instead of an espresso is not a compromise here; it is closer to the house register.

What to order after the mille-feuille

Once the savory signature is on the table, move to the laminated pastry. The chocolate croissant is the strongest of them, the macarons come in a run of colors, and the cruffin is the richer choice if you want one thing rather than two.

There is also a Tunisian thread worth following: pkaila, a spinach-and-chickpea stew, sits on the menu beside the French bakes and nods back to Oliveira's own cooking. The smartest order is layered. One savory signature, one laminated pastry and a warm drink such as chai or turmeric latte will show you most of what the kitchen can do in a single sitting.