Why you will fall in love with Wilmington's newest bakery

Here is the reason I fell in love with pastry chef and baker Lydia Clopton and you will too: She thinks about us eaters when the ovens crank up in her kitchen.

Sure Clopton has an impressive resume (working for the award-winning restaurant team at 5&10 in Athens, Georgia, and most recently at PinPoint Restaurant downtown.) In late July, she opened Love, Lydia, a bakery and coffee shop on Third Street next to Benny's Big Time Pizzeria.

Clopton has just about every pastry skill under the sun, but can't we agree that loads of bakers can make food look pretty. It takes something else to make people fall all over themselves to get to your pastries because they taste so good.

She had us eaters in mind when she developed her method for homemade focaccia bread (often served at PinPoint.) For starters, she broke several "focaccia rules" in her method.

Bakers, she explained, are supposed to take the bread right off the sheet pan once it comes out of the oven. Apparently, you don't want the bread to sit in all that olive oil from the pan.

"But I actually leave it in there," she said. The result is the oil soaks through the bread perfectly and the bread continues to brown and crisp up -- almost fry in it -- before it cools down.

Then she covers the top in sesame seeds instead of rosemary for a unique flavor twist.

At Love, Lydia, she must have been thinking about people like me when she decided she would serve coffee, espresso, cappuccinos and other drinks in real glasses. Nope, no sad paper cups here, unless you order something to-go. Customers can even order tea by the glass or in a teapot served to the table. The coffee is the real deal too, coming from a roaster in Athens, Georgia, called 1,000 Faces.

One of the most popular drinks on the menu is the Vietnamese iced coffee -- iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk poured over top like you've seen on food travel shows.

There are the massive cookies, because Clopton said she wants her customers to eat with their eyes first. There are chocolate chip cookies with rich and salty bites of dark chocolate, oatmeal and cherry and tahini cookies instead of peanut butter. Gluten-free lovers rejoice because Clopton has some flour-less brownies behind the glass case and she said expect her gluten-free game to go up a notch in coming days.

When she launches into serving full breakfast dishes soon (think avocado toast on homemade bread, biscuit sandwiches and croissants), we will all be in trouble for what she has up her sleeve. Clopton warned me she's trying out Belgian-style waffles with crunchy pearl sugar that caramelizes in the waffle maker.

A few days after Clopton and I dined and dished, I went back to take photos of pastries. Low and behold there was (by some miracle) still some foccacia bread for sale though it seems to sell out quickly. The olive oil was glistening around the edges of the bread inside the glass case.

It took every bit of self control to not rip off a little corner of the focaccia in the car; the paper bag carrying it starting to bleed oil in my passenger's seat.

They say diamonds are a girl's best friend, but I ask you -- have you ever seen olive oil on focaccia bread sparkle?