A friend of ours keeps a list of New York truisms such as: “There is an automatic $20 penalty for setting foot out of your apartment building,” and “Garbage collection never happens on the day when you put your bags at the curb.” But our favorite of these is: “It is axiomatic that if you wander around the West Village for longer than a few hours, you will run into Ethan Hawke.” So when Chopper and Mr. Coffee took us to Doma Café & Gallery recently, we were not surprised at all to hear them warn us that the place might be crowded, “and especially if Ethan Hawke and the celeb gawkers are there–he often is.” Of course, Doma sits at the corner of Perry Street and Waverly Place…so Q.E.D.

Perhaps we were not in the neighborhood quite long enough for the Ethan Hawke Rule to kick in, because we did not see the former Mr. Thurman as we sat, sipping our cafés au lait and nibbling on our desserts. Instead, we saw a well-worn little coffee house with a cheerful hodgepodge of thrift store furnishings that made all four of us want to grab a book or a newspaper and sit for a while. I returned three more times over the next two weeks–never seeing Mr. Hawke, incidentally–and got the very same impressions each time I returned. Doma, it seems, is Starbucks’s disheveled aunt, the one with the grow-lights in the basement and the 14,000 Guatemalan afghans in her bedroom, but also the one that everyone in the family secretly loves best.

Food plays no small part in the affection locals feel for the place. The café does not make its own pastries, but it has mastered the tricky art of sourcing excellent baked goods–something many other coffee shops in town, save Joe’s–get disastrously wrong. On our first visit, we sampled a delightful marble bundt cake that was satisfyingly dense and moist, with a tender, cakey crumb and runnels of icing suspended in mid-drip across its exterior. The staff refused to tell us where they purchase their pastries, brushing us off with a cryptic, “It’s someplace local. Not too close, but still nearby,” but no matter: we are now officially on the lookout for that bundt cake. Until then though, we are happy enough to grab a slice at Doma, especially with a mug of their solidly good coffee (although espresso drinks tend to be better than brewed coffees here).

Be forewarned: during the daytime, laptops preponderate, so if you plan to visit and use the café’s free WiFi, be prepared to compete for a table–and good luck finding an outlet. That is especially true now that on the weekends, the café has instituted an unevenly enforced ‘no plugging-in’ policy, so things get even trickier for the power-hungry. However, after seeing how absolutely jammed Doma becomes in the late morning and early afternoon on a Saturday, we find it hard to argue with any ban that frees up an open chair or two. And if it means that it takes Ethan Hawke a few extra months to complete his third novel, we can live with the guilt.

Doma Café & Gallery, 17 Perry Street (at Waverly Place), 212-929-4339.