Doma; Chocolate Bar

A simple picture of a home illustrates Doma's menu. The place is an extension of your living room where the inhabitants are dug in with journals and textbooks and calculators and reports and stationery sets and stamps. Pens are more popular than keyboards here, although I saw some outlets. Little struggling plants sit in the windows and Henry Greenewalt's landscape paintings in greens and blues soothe. They run $350 to $1500. Decor is a mishmash that works. Assorted chairs, wooden tables that support mismatched salt and pepper shakers, sugar bowls that hold roughhewn brown and white cubes. Sheets of copper, white brick, glass lanterns, dark green double doors, a communal farmer's table and cream-painted walls complete the picture. There's a magazine rack and full bookshelves. Restful, homey and haimish environs; a stethoscoped doc in scrubs peers inside and declares, "I like the setup." Soft conversations (some of design), sounds of foam frothing and a track of jazz guitar lend to an evening's mellow mood. Although sometimes the staff favors a disc that sounds like Tom Waits singing show tunes, but worse.

Primarily a coffeehouse, but I find their brew winy and thin-bodied. Still, I get a refill, which I am charged for. Others seem to like the coffee fine, but there are plenty of alternatives here, including vanilla tea and hot chocolate. Loose tea leaves are served in an infuser. There are a lot of lone coffee drinkers here and not a whole lot of eating; sipping is the main activity, but you shouldn't miss out on some of the solid options. A chocolate chip muffin is serviceable with good-sized chips dispersed throughout and a sugared top. The cookies are better?pignoli ones have a crispy exterior and a moist almond paste-like inside. Mini-biscotti are nut-laden anisette with a loud crunch. The intriguing-looking pastry selection changes daily; there's flaky sfogliatelle, orange brioche and pasticotti?custard- or sweet ricotta-filled little pies. Skip the almond brioche, which is crumbly, the almond topping not quite affixed to the forgettable toast base.

There's an unseen guy in the back who turns out your sandwich or salad order with the lightning speed of a deli man, an incongruity at this laid-back spot. The Doma salad of mixed greens is glossily dressed and accompanied by a baguette. It has jewel-red baby tomatoes, cuke, sliced hearts of palm and very fresh fennel to fill your nose with licorice. Prosciutto de cotto panino is a ham and cheese for mature audiences only. Pungent Asiago and prosciutto are layered on an olive oil-moistened floured crusty ciabatta that gives your jaws a workout; balsamic vinegar adds kick. Cheese plates and "smoked bluefish pate" also on the menu. Egg sandwiches are available all day. Some take their tea outside in striped folding chairs to sit in the sunshine. A water bowl is provided for those with four legs.

On a late afternoon, there's no place you'd rather be as a pleasant breeze laps at you through Doma's swung-open doors. Track-panted and trademark black-spectacled Janeane Garofalo meets a gaggle of girls. Seems like a work thing. It's just apple juice for Janeane, so I can't ask her how she likes the food. The latest Sheryl Crow CD impedes my eavesdropping, but I notice she uses words like "utterly," "feminist," "vim," "manufactured," "legitimize," "saddled," "echoing" and "narcissistic." I use words like "Revlon," "shirring," "drinks," "open-toed" and "awesome." I would imagine Janeane did really good in high school English. I myself was not permitted to take AP English in high school, and was instead enrolled in the English elective "Acting." The guidance counselor responsible gave me a list in neat cursive of the colleges I should apply to. I didn't recognize the names of any of the schools. I took the list home to my mother, who identified them as "nice Christian girl's schools." The best school on the list was Kirkland College. Being Jewish, heterosexual and not a particularly nice teen, I threw the list away and began my own college search. I refused to fill out any applications that required an essay, which limited my options to the SUNY system and the engineering colleges of Pennsylvania. Fortunately, all of these would have me. My peers and teachers thought less of my academic abilities than even the guidance counselor had. I'd switched high schools mid-semester and held a solid C in trig from the first quarter.

At my old school, I didn't go in that often. I'd hide under the covers in the mornings. My mother would come into my room and scream at me for a while, but I knew that eventually she'd have to go to work. Sometimes she'd get energetic and try to rip the covers off, but I had an iron grip. Things were much smoother when she went to work in the city during the week, and was only home on weekends, as my dad saw no value in school whatsoever. He was surprised that I went at all. When I did go, he'd have a hot homemade meal waiting for me on the kitchen countertop upon my return; usually a crockpot or a pot pie served in our cornflower blue-patterned CorningWare. And somehow he stayed ahead of my milk consumption, always sure to have a spare half-gallon in the fridge. No demands were made of me. If my mother carped at me on the weekend, she'd as often as not be told, "Leave the kid alone."

But at my new school I liked choir and gym. So before the bell, I'd call the office from the payphone in the lobby and tell them I was sick. Then I'd tell the student taking homeroom attendance during choir to mark me absent, freeing me to go to the classes I liked and skip the classes I didn't. One night a choir concert ran quite late and I had a trig midterm the next day. So I skipped it. The following day, when I breezed in to inform the teacher that she had to give me a makeup, she said, "I was at that concert. I saw you there and you weren't sick. And the other kids who were out late at that concert came in and took the test." Dramatic pause. "I'm giving you a zero." For emphasis she showed me the "0" inked into her green spiral grading book. Even with my limited math skills, I could calculate that C + 0 + (how much this teacher liked me) = F.

Panicked, I bought an Amsco trig review book. For two weeks I'd come home after school, play records and work the problems in the book. I didn't like much on the radio, so I listened to my mom's records (Elvis, Buddy Holly, Sam Cooke) and cutouts that her officemate had got in for review that he thought I would like (Lene Lovich, Blondie). In trig class, the teacher gave us a pop quiz of 30 questions from past Regents. Everyone bombed. When we got the tests back, snotty Brian Hiller (who a few years later somehow morphed into a really nice guy) sitting in the front row asked, "Who did the best on the quiz?" With gritted teeth the teacher snipped, "Lane did." That wasn't possible, so Brian demanded, "Who?" Our student government president, also in the front row, fired at him, "Lane did!" The whooshing noise of 30 necks swiveling to stare at me in the back corner caused me to look up, interrupting my game of hangman. But Brian would still do the best in the school on the real Regents, beating me out by one point. The experience taught me to be nicer to math teachers. (The following year, when I didn't have my math homework done, my new teacher would say, "You're such a sweet kid, I can't get mad at you." I got an A in that class.) It also made me think there was a possibility I might be an underachiever.

Doma, 17 Perry St. (Waverly Pl.), 929-4339.

Chocolate Bar

You must leave Manhattan because you are tired of homeless people battering you, smokers throwing their butts in front of your building, "swipe card again at this turnstile" in infinite repetition, 3 a.m. fire alarms, rats and roaches underfoot in the streets, rich people talking about their rent-controlled apartments...

But then again, only in Manhattan can you stroll over to Chocolate Bar on a spring day. Four retro chrome orange-upholstered stools line a narrow corner counter. Your pleasant proprietors wear t-shirts that complement the white, brown and orange decor, as well as the chocolates that are precisely laid out on white tiles within a display case. Jacque Torres, Garrison Confections and Sweet Bliss products are sold here by the piece. Their insides have flavors like vanilla-pistachio, coconut, pear, raspberry and mint tea. Chocolate mint pastilles are blue sugar-sprinkled and contain mint cream. Individually wrapped truffles tempt near the register; a hazelnut sample is silkily coated, has a crispiness within and a center that explodes with nut butteriness.

But perhaps your favorite treat here is the Mexican chocolate brownie. A small square with a cracked glistening top; more fudgy than cakey, with a subtle chocolate flavor. A beverage of iced mocha is not too sweet, light enough to refresh, with a balance of dark coffee and chocolate flavors. Under the category of "Hot Hot Hot" is a libation called "Liquid Chocolate."

The staff is slightly frazzled ("I'm doing too many things at once") but speedy, considering that they are inundated with chocolate enthusiasts and congratulatory well-wishers. One customer looks as though she may cry when told they've run out of chocolate chip cookies. But the "fresh baked today" peanut-butter chocolate chip is thick, creviced, chewy and multitudinously chipped. The double chocolate, an inch thick at its center, is a heavy meal on its own. There's also an oatmeal version with dried cranberries and white chocolate. The cookies are big and $2 each.

Shelves in the back hold gift items like jars of raw honey and boxed sets of espresso cups and saucers. The FBI's issued another terror alert? Who cares, pass the brownies.

Chocolate Bar, 48 8th Ave. (betw. Horatio & W. 4th Sts.), 366-1541.