Glaze Ending This Chapter; Closing on September 4

Like the exquisite, twenty-layered baum cakes that have been spinning inside its imported rotisserie oven – affectionately dubbed the Red Dragon — the past few years, Glaze is a restaurant with many strata. It opened as a bakery, became a joint sushi bar-bakery for a brief period, then earlier this year morphed into a bakery with a Japanese-inspired lunch and dinner menu courtesy of chef Kris Padalino. 

But on Friday the eatery will add a not-so-sweet layer to its story: Glaze, the Baum Cake Shoppe will be closing for good at 6 p.m. Owner Heather Alcott declined to comment, but according to a front-of-house employee, the restaurant side of the operation has already wrapped up. Bakers, however, “are doing a ton of baking so we have a decent inventory,” she added.

I hope that means plenty of citrus Mont Baum, a cake with higher peaks and a sweeter batter than the traditional white baum cake. When I reviewed Glaze last fall — during its Glaze by Sasa era, with food under the direction of Sushi Sasa owner Wayne Conwell – that cake wowed me. And I was also wowed by the restaurant itself, which earned a spot on our list of the 15 Best New Restaurants of 2014. But then the Glaze/Sushi Sasa alliance came apart, and now the place is closing altogether.

But maybe Glaze will have a sweet ending, after all. A posting on the restaurant’s website suggests as much: “Although we’re sad that this chapter is ending, we are excited for the new challenges to come. We hope that you will join us on that journey.”