Joanne Sherif says her love of cardamom dates back about 20 years, when she began using the camphorous, lemony spice in braided holiday bread. The recipe originated from a Julia Child cookbook at a time when most Anglo home cooks hadn’t discovered cardamom’s alluring flavor, let alone uttered the word in their culinary discussions. Still an outsider to many household spice racks, Sherif’s brings these aromatic, Far Eastern seeds to the forefront at Cardamom Café and Bakery in North Park.

Bare wood tables, multi-colored linoleum flooring and purple and mint-green walls generate a funky scheme reminiscent of North Park’s pre-renaissance days, when the Big Kitchen was the sole provider of meals served in a 70s-throwback environment. As a newcomer, Cardamom captures a similar hippyish spirit, where you can drift in wearing a dashiki shirt and start knotting together a macramé plant hangar without anyone raising an eyebrow.

Open for breakfast and lunch only, the namesake spice lands primarily in the morning fare: crepes; sour cream coffee cake; the aforementioned braided bread; teas; and if requested, coffee. And for those who have never laid eyes on cardamom, Sherif keeps a bowl of the “pods” in the front window, although the bewitching aroma inherent to their seeds remains largely muted until the pods are cracked open.

The crepes, called “bliss cakes,” were downright dreamy. They perfectly celebrated the complex flavor of cardamom, which if used too heavily, results in a blunt eucalyptus-type of tongue burn. Sherif doesn’t cross that line. The round, thin cakes, firmer than traditional crepes or flapjacks, tasted zingy from a generous yet acceptable amount of the spice. They’re served with seasonal fruit and a scoop of honey-mascarpone cheese, which proved to be significantly more exciting than butter.

The sour cream coffee cake is also a must. Shaped like a muffin, the cardamom in the batter dances with swirls of cinnamon, brown sugar and pecans. Wherever the sour cream lies – perhaps in the almond glaze – it imparts fertile richness.

A chorizo omelet oozing with jalapeno cream cheese was surprisingly palatable, given the fact I abhor overcooked eggs. There wasn’t a yellow spot to be found on the omelet’s exterior. Perhaps the cream cheese started out overly chilled, taking too long to melt in the cooking process. Or as the common bane leading to brown omelets, the burner was running above medium.

Moving to the lunch menu, my companion and I rejoiced over the London broil sandwich heralding in a hand-made ciabatta roll. The juicy meat was further accented with super-sweet caramelized onions, melted cheddar and horseradish mayo. For $7.25, it’s a big fat steal.

We also tried the tarragon chicken salad on rather boring whole wheat bread. (I’ll opt for semolina rosemary bread or ciabatta next time around.) The chicken salad, however, is blue-ribbon worthy, offering a sweet snap from the tarragon and copious cranberries, and a polite crunch from toasted almonds. It’s all bound together with restrained measures of mayo, sour cream and buttermilk. Curry chicken salad with cashews and currants is available as well.

As a side, we ordered the bulgur wheat salad with pomegranate vinaigrette. Basil, walnuts, cranberries and specks of jalapenos spared these wheat kernels from tasting macrobiotic. If you prefer your salads more caloric, there’s a medley of romaine lettuce, Black Forest turkey, blue cheese crumbles, boiled eggs and avocado drizzled in homemade Green Goddess dressing.

From the bakery counter customers can purchase breads, rolls and pastries that are made fresh daily, except Mondays and Tuesdays when the business is closed. The goods are trustworthy, stemming from a repertoire of recipes that Sherif has tried and tested ever since she started baking at the age of 10. But what gets fairy dusted with cardamom stands out on the palate as particularly unique and obscure, shedding light on what Sherif calls, “a beautiful spice.”