The Glass Door is one of those hang-awhile places on the brink of urban discovery. But some of the regulars who have already caught on would prefer that never happens.

Perched on the fourth floor of the Porto Vista Hotel & Suites, the restaurant has everything going for it in terms of food, wine, design and views, not to mention a diverse gay-friendly vibe fueled by gay and gay-friendly staff.

Within minutes after a companion and I arrived to the twinkling glow of more than 40 Moroccan lamps dangling overheard, two friends (a straight couple) whom I hadn’t seen in a while disembarked unexpectedly from the elevator, which delivers passengers from a chic lobby directly to the restaurant’s reception stand. Admitting we were first-timers to The Glass Door, they immediately began effusing about the place, saying they’ve been visiting three times a week since it opened in August. And knowing full well what I was doing there, they frowned at the prospect of their darling hideaway receiving publicity.

Sliding floor-to-ceiling windows separate the bar and dining room from a long, narrow balcony that is highly inviting. There, customers can gaze over Little Italy and the Downtown skyline while seated on solid, sturdy high-tops made of “polywood.” Ceiling heaters accommodate every table. And my dinner companion, a cigar smoker, was thrilled when a staffer furnished him with a traditional heavy-glass ashtray.

The views extend inside as well, where those Moroccan lights and a teardrop-shaped window looking into the kitchen add to the motif a whimsical Arabian touch. The trappings are otherwise contemporary without being pretentious – cherry wood flooring, black table linens, a glassy illuminated cocktail bar and a commodious red velvet booth accenting one end of the dining room.

The dishes we tried were refreshingly inventive, an Asian-Moroccan-Euro fusion of flavors that are sensible rather than dizzying. Chef Rob Conaway, a graduate of the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco and the Royal Thai School in Thailand, cheffed his way throughout California and Vietnam before landing here. Given the The Glass Door’s extensive hours of operation, he devised all of the menus, saying that some of his recipes have undergone 10 years of tweaking.

Local black mussels, for example, are spared the usual wine-butter-garlic bath (which I do like) in lieu of coconut milk, lemongrass, kaffir lime and horapha, a cousin of sweet basil. Or an entrée of seasonal grilled vegetables, which on paper might even strike vegetarians as tiresome, was anything but boring. Conaway uses creamy white polenta and smoked chile romesco sauce to pep up a medley of yellow squash, zucchini, onions and red peppers.

Also on the dinner menu is Duroc, the Black Angus of pork derived from Midwestern, red-haired pigs. Despite its firmness from being a tad overcooked by about a minute, the bone-in chop was extra juicy and took on French-Asian qualities from soubise (onion puree with butter) and a gentle glaze of sweet soy.

As an accompaniment to our entrees, we asked for the celery root mash that comes with braised short ribs. (The staff seems amendable to these kinds of requests.) Celery root is an ugly, turnip-like vegetable in the same family as grocery-store celery, but consumed for its bulbous “root” instead of for its stalks and leaves. In some of the unadulterated mashes I’ve eaten at other restaurants, I found they tasted too fibrous and chalky. Conaway might possibly agree, as his mash contains about 75 percent organic red potatoes, which reassigns the celery root to a more delicious, subordinate role.

Every wine that passed our lips was clean and balanced and not “baked” by the recent heat wave. The list is lengthy, with bottles averaging about $45. Yet there are some bang-for-the-buck picks available by the glass such as a fruit-heavy Llama Malbec from Argentina, spicy Consilience syrah from Santa Barbara and an oaky blend called Red from Sonoma.

Sipping long past our meal, a mini surge of late-nighters began filtering in for cocktails and a small-plates menu that rolls out daily at 10:30 p.m. Word of The Glass Door is apparently circulating, at least within the immediate area.

Service is friendly and efficient. The demerit in the rating stems from trying to reach the dining room several times by phone only to get voice mail with no return calls. If you’re hell-bent on making a reservation to a live voice and can’t get through, and if you arrive in spite of it to a full house, chances are good that you won’t mind lolling in this room with a view until a table opens.