Nano ESP32 not printing to IDE through Serial

Recently got a new Arduino Nano ESP32. Doing some basic testing. Blink works nicely, and my next step was to create a "chatty" blink which printed "Blink" to Serial every cycle. Nothing printed. Argh. So I modified the sketch (as below) to make a fast blink until Serial returned true, and then continue to make a slow blink in the loop() section. On one of my regular Arduino nano boards, the sketch drops to loop() as expected. But when loaded into the ESP32, I only get the fast blink, and (again) nothing gets printed. BTW pressing reset restarts the program, which drops to fast bink. Nothing appears in the Monitor Window.

I don't think it is the cable as I am using that to load the sketch, and loading works. Double/Triple checked the BAUD rate. Tried a both a faster and slower BAUD rate. I'm assuming successful loading also means the UART is working. Latest version of IDE. Of course, it could be something obvious that I am missing. At this point, I am just one lost hobbyist. Baffled. Suggestions?

Here is the code (with comments minimized):

void setup() {
  pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);
  Serial.begin(9600);
  while(!Serial){ // fast blink
    digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);   // on
    delay(400);
    digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);    // off
    delay(200);
  }
  Serial.println("Starting");
}

void loop() {
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, HIGH);
  delay(5000);
  digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);
  delay(5000);
  Serial.println("Blink");
}

The baudrate in Serial Monitor is the same (9600)

I know some boards don't respond well to that !Serial, try a different approach, maybe just a delay or millis loop.

A slight twist in the progress on this problem. It turns out that I've been putting the board into "boot loading mode" and then loading my sketch.
I mistakenly thought I was "resetting" the board to accept input when it failed to do so. Is it possible that I've overwritten the loader? If so, pointers to how to restore the loader would be appreciated.

@weymouth look at post number 3 in this link

always useful info to have

Bingo! That did the trick. Everything works now, as expected! Thanks all.