Happy Cake Bistro

Tres leches pancakes lead a Latin brunch

Brunch runs the menu at Happy Cake Bistro, and it runs on Dominican terms. The tres leches pancakes are the signature, a dessert idea rebuilt as a breakfast plate and served as a full order rather than a side. Around them the kitchen sets Los Tres Golpes, the Dominican breakfast plate, and a sweet plantain chicken and waffle that pushes the same sweet-and-savory logic across something larger. Yellowfin ahi tuna tartare sits at the other end of the list for anyone building a cooler, more restaurant-style meal. It is a Contemporary Latin cafe and bistro that reads as a brunch room first.

A cafe counter that turns into a bistro

The room sits in Inwood, at the top of Manhattan, and it works in two registers across the day. Early it behaves like a cafe: coffee, croissants, chocolate mousse and a case of pastries, taken quickly or slowly depending on the morning. Later it fills out into a seated bistro used for birthdays, long brunches with friends and dinners that go on. The decor is warm and deliberately polished, which is why the second register works; the room can carry an occasion without turning formal. Dominican pride is explicit in how the place presents itself, and that shows up in the cooking as much as in the design.

Build the table around the pancakes

Order the tres leches pancakes first, then balance them. Los Tres Golpes is the obvious savory counterweight and the most direct Dominican plate on the menu. The sweet plantain chicken and waffle works if you would rather keep the whole table in the sweet-and-savory register, and it eats as one large plate rather than something to split lightly. Yellowfin ahi tuna tartare is the plate to add when someone wants something cooler and lighter than a brunch platter. If the visit is a short one, the pastry case and a coffee cover it: croissants and chocolate mousse are the cafe side of the same kitchen, and they do not require sitting down to a full meal.