Restaurants : breakfast: berkeley or truck-stop style

Latimes

Restaurants : breakfast: berkeley or truck-stop style"


Play all audios:

Loading...

Choosing a breakfast place for out-of-town visitors isn’t easy. You could try making a big impression at a first-class hotel, but that sort of generic luxury doesn’t really convey the


essence of Southern California living. Cafe Zinc and Belisle’s do. Yet they couldn’t possibly have less in common. Cafe Zinc in Laguna Beach has no real competition that I know about. It’s a


Berkeley-style hangout, the closest thing to Alice Waters’ Cafe Fanny in this part of the state, and almost European in its casualness. I’d eat there every morning if it was convenient.


It’s a tiny, free-standing building with a cramped, plant-filled outdoor patio. Local residents keep the place jammed, so be prepared to read the paper or feed the pigeons while you wait for


a table. You stand in line until you get to the zinc-topped counter where you order some of the best muffins, fresh juices and breakfast treats this side of Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. You


can take your breakfast to one of the indoor tables where a Vivaldi concerto might accompany your meal, but I prefer the patio, really a short course in Laguna Beach life style. Athletic


men in Shimano jerseys discuss the latest advances in bike-frame technology. Sharp-eyed women sketch with charcoal as they sip on lattes and mochas. You almost forget to eat. Start with a


remarkable bowl of cappuccino, intensely flavored with foam dense enough to carve your initials in. Millet muffins, with tiny crunchy pearls of the grain providing New-Age texture, have a


sweet, seductive aftertaste reminiscent of farmhouse corn bread. Wonderfully springy cranberry muffins burst with the fruit. The bicycle-touring crowd favors the complex carbos. Breakfast


wheat with dried fruit and steamed milk is the austere path; a heady granola made from almonds, oats, sesame seed, orange rind and brown sugar is the indulgent one. For the more traditional,


there are good poached or boiled farm eggs served with sourdough toast. For the European set there are _ frittatas--_ Italian versions of quiche without the crust. I sampled one with


asparagus, sun-dried tomato and red pepper. It tasted moist and fresh. All Cafe Zinc pastries are made on the premises, with the exception of the sugar-crusted cinnamon twists (which is


uncharacteristically sweet for this crowd). Juices are always fresh. If you bicycle over, you may want to cool off with a Zinc cooler, a yogurt drink with crushed pineapple and crystallized


ginger. It’s a great refreshment. A world away from the Zinc is Belisle’s in Garden Grove, one mile south of Disneyland. It’s been around since 1955, and I’d say this restaurant, along with


the food it serves, is ready to be bronzed and put into a museum. It’s definitely the first place I’d take a visiting sumo wrestler, and I’m told that members of the Rams, Angels and Dodgers


like to drop by whenever they are working the Big A. Good morning, y’all. You get the message as soon as you walk through the door. Eye-popping, frosted cinnamon rolls at least five times


the normal size, and towering pies and cakes in glass cases make an immediate impression. I’ll never forget watching a Swedish tourist, cinnamon roll held firmly in her two hands, staring at


it in awe as if she had found the Holy Grail. She never did bite into it. Eating breakfast here is straight from a chapter of Gulliver’s Travels. Food is served on giant platters that must


weigh five pounds apiece. Beverages come in 32-ounce glasses. The selection is mostly giant portions of American truck-stop fare: grits, biscuits, corn bread, and the usual egg and meat


dishes. Does any of it taste good? Well, better than you might think. Pulpy fresh grapefruit juice, served in a boot-shaped glass, is cold and astringent. I like it better than the orange


juice, which is also fresh-squeezed. Omelets (made with four eggs) are good, too, especially the Denver. And the breakfast meats--thick country bacon, outsized sausage links, generous


portions of ham--cannot be faulted. Stray beyond that, however, and you are really pushing your luck. Something that may never take America by storm is Belisle’s “southern-fried mush,” which


tastes vaguely like polenta. It comes in foot-long slabs, four to an order. Doughy biscuits taste of baking powder and little else. The house chicken-fried steak is an overcooked expanse of


tenderized beef with a peel-off breading and some gluey cream gravy underneath. Hot cakes and waffles are huge and innocuous. Smear them with the cloying honey butter, or smother them with


sorghum syrup sold in bottles by the door. Serious eaters will want to know about the 26-ounce steak included in the Texas breakfast. Unless you are a lineman or an anthropologist, I


wouldn’t recommend it. Cafe Zinc is inexpensive. Coffees are 80 cents to $1.75. Pastries and muffins are $1.45. Egg dishes are $2.75 to $3.75. Belisle’s is moderately priced, but the prices


can be misleading because some of big-ticket items can feed an entire family. Breads are $1.45 to $6.25. Omelets are $9.95 to $14.45. Super breakfasts are $23.95. Beverages are 80 cents to


$1.75. Lunch and dinner are similarly priced. CAFE ZINC 350 Ocean Ave., Laguna Beach (714) 494-6302 Open Tuesday through Saturday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Cash only.


BELISLE’S 12001 Harbor Blvd., Garden Grove (714) 750-6560 Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All major credit cards accepted. MORE TO READ


Trending News

Sony To Make Movie Based On Ubisoft’s ‘Rabbids’

Sony Pictures and Ubisoft Motion Pictures are teaming on a full-length feature film based on the Rabbids, the bad guys f...

An ironic mexico-set adventure novel has its swashbuckling cake and mocks it too

Book Review The Bullet Swallower By Elizabeth Gonzales James Simon & Schuster: 272 pages, $27 _If you buy books link...

Uk weather forecast: freezing fog to continue

Most places will remain dry, although northern and western hills may see some light rain as the day proceeds. Eastern Sc...

Champions Trophy: Australia opt to bat first against unchanged India in first semi-final - The Statesman

Australia have won the toss and opted to bat first against India in the first semi-final of the ICC Champions Trophy her...

John kasich is banking on a contested convention

Brian Cahn/ZUMA Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free _Mother J...

Latests News

Restaurants : breakfast: berkeley or truck-stop style

Choosing a breakfast place for out-of-town visitors isn’t easy. You could try making a big impression at a first-class h...

My take | my two cents on teachers, anti-teachers and teachers’ day

I had the worst rating and rudest comments from undergraduates the year I first worked as a teaching assistant in the ph...

Warner bros. Boards feature adaptation of ‘black’ comic from studio 8

EXCLUSIVE: Studio 8 announced this morning that Warner Bros. has acquired _Black_, the feature adaptation of the Black M...

Towards an absolute light pollution indicator

ABSTRACT The growing concern about the negative impact of artificial light at night on biodiversity and human health inc...

Review: liminar makes mexico's carrillo look like the next great rediscovery

Julián Carrillo was the great problem of Mexican music. Born in 1875, he invented a system of microtonal music in the 19...

Top