Best breakfasts in L.A.

M Café de Chaya
The macrobiotic fare at this Culver City outpost of the original Melrose Avenue cafe has moved way beyond the hippie fare of the ‘60s. Clever and attractive, the kitchen’s take on breakfast includes a smoked salmon Benedict on a grilled whole baguette with steamed kale standing in for the spinach and hollandaise based on soy instead of butter. There’s a substantial breakfast enchilada stuffed with lightly scrambled tofu, avocado, chile-laced beans, soy mozzarella and a little tempeh (soybean) bacon. That faux bacon accompanies the tasty scrambled tofu along with sweet potato hash and grilled country bread. They’ve got great juices and smoothies too. In short, this is a breakfast that everybody, not just health fanatics, can appreciate. The scene in the morning is very local -- folks on their way to work, mommies visiting over soy lattes and pastries. M Café de Chaya, 9343 Culver Blvd., Culver City; (310) 838-4300; and the original location at 7119 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles; (323) 525-0588; www.mcafedechaya.com. Breakfast served 8 to 11:30 a.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekends in Culver City; 9 to 11:30 a.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekends on Melrose Avenue.   (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

Comme Ça
What a difference the morning makes at Comme Ça when light streams in the French windows of this handsome bistro from Sona’s David Myers. Jugs of juices are lined up on the bar. Newspapers and style magazines are draped over bamboo sticks and the noise level is more subdued. If you’re not all that hungry, order toasted baguette and terrific walnut and house-dried-raisin bread and a flaky croissant. The omelet, though, is curiously pale, missing the variations in texture that make a proper example so delicious. One morning it took three tries for the kitchen to get the coddled egg right. Never mind, there’s still a custardy pain perdu (“lost bread,” or French toast) made from fat slices of brioche dusted with powdered sugar. Also, Bruno’s quiche laced with Gruyère is fabulously rich and delicious. Another great choice is eggs Norwegian, which feature house-cured gravlax with a poached egg and hollandaise. Comme Ça, 8479 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood; (323) 782-1178; www.commecarestaurant.com. Breakfast served 8 to 11:30 a.m. Monday through Friday; brunch 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.   (Stefano Paltera / For The Times)

Anisette On Wednesdays and Saturdays, breakfast at Alain Giraud’s Santa Monica brasserie is mobbed with shoppers stopping in after the farmers market, ready for croissants and coffee. And that is exactly what you should have at Anisette. The croissants are textbook perfect. With its red banquettes, mottled mirrors and tiled floor, Anisette looks the part. Some mornings there’s delicious, fresh-squeezed tangelo juice too. But eggs Benedict or Florentine come on a mediocre English muffin, which sits on a dense rectangle of hash browns. English and American breakfasts are piled unappetizingly on top of the hash browns too. The omelet is more like a frittata, flat and round with cubes of unmelted goat cheese feta sitting on top. Huh? Croque-monsieur is quite awful, slathered in inch-thick béchamel. Then again, if you wait until 11 or so, you could have a dozen oysters for breakfast -- why not? Or a fine steak tartare. Best advice: Stick with coffee, juice and a croissant. Anisette Brasserie, 225 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica; (310) 395-3200; www.anisettebrasserie.com. Breakfast served 7:30 to 11 a.m. Monday to Friday; 8 to 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday; and brunch 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.   (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Rustic Canyon
On Saturday mornings, with an eye to catching the lazy morning crowd and folks who’d like to hang out after the farmers market, Rustic Canyon serves a splendid breakfast. Pastry chef Zoe Nathan starts baking at 3 a.m. and keeps it up all through the morning. The goods are all laid out on the bar -- glorious crumbly maple-bacon biscuits with cream cheese and chives, croissants stuffed with Valrhona chocolate, pretty galettes filled with grapes and plums, frittata embellished with fennel and sausage, and tall wedges of old-fashioned coffee cake. Don’t forget the chalkboard that lists the hot dishes. That’s where you’ll find the French doughnuts, a bowl of what looks like doughnut holes rolled in cinnamon sugar. Inside, they’re soft and custardy, irresistible. Also recommended: the fried-egg sandwich outfitted with Niman Ranch bacon, Gruyère, wild arugula and a dab of aioli. Early birds get the best tables. Rustic Canyon, 1119 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica; (310) 393-7050; www.rusticcanyonwinebar.com. Breakfast served 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday only   (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Breadbar
A Century City shopping mall seems an unlikely place for breakfast, but Paris boulanger Eric Kayser’s Breadbar is open every morning with a full array of pastries and breads. The croissants are no match for the ones at his Paris shop, but they’re better than most. The pecan-raisin scones are terrific, though, and the basket of bread for two offers plenty to munch. Cooked dishes are excellent too. Perfect sunny-side eggs are served with a fresh jalapeño salsa, ripe avocado slices and buckwheat toast. Ham and Gruyère omelet doesn’t come loose and runny as ordered, but the flavors are classic. The best deal is “Two by Two,” two eggs any style with two slices of raisin-walnut bread. Breadbar, 10250 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles; (310) 277-3770; and 8718 West 3rd St., Los Angeles; (310) 205-0124; www.breadbar.net. Breakfast served 8 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

LA Mill. On the east side of town, this Silver Lake coffee boutique turns out a polished breakfast designed by Providence’s Michael Cimarusti. Vegetarian-hen eggs come either softly scrambled or baked in an earthenware cocotte (small dish). My vote goes to the wild-mushroom cocotte with lardons of Niman Ranch bacon and a sprinkling of fines herbes. Instead of oatmeal, there’s stone-ground polenta swirled with butternut squash and pecans. There’s house-made granola with Marcona almonds, hazelnuts and dried sour cherries and some of the best coffee (roasted at LA Mill’s own plant) anywhere. Choose your method: French press, Chemex or the entertaining Japanese siphon presentation in which your coffee rises from one glass chamber to another and then falls back down, perfectly brewed. LA Mill, 1636 Silver Lake Blvd., Los Angeles; (323) 663-4441; www.lamillcoffee.com. Breakfast served 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.   (Carlos Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

Gordon Ramsay
Britain’s celebrated tow-headed chef offers a proper hotel breakfast in the posh new London Hotel. The Japanese bento box includes grilled salmon and whitefish, green tea noodles and buckwheat soba, a dipping sauce, beautiful rice and Japanese pickles. Some other dishes could use more attention to detail. Juices aren’t squeezed to order as you’d expect at these prices, and while toast served in a silver-plated toast rack is lovely, what’s up with the eggs Benedict? The English muffin is supermarket quality, toasted on one side only; however, the hollandaise is silky as can be and the eggs are impeccably poached. English breakfast features quite ordinary sausage, crisp delicious bacon, a grotty-looking wedge of portabello mushroom and, in my case, perfect sunny-side-up eggs for $24. Citrus French toast is cloyingly sweet and, oddly, comes with sweetened butter for another sugar rush. Scottish smoked salmon is luscious, though the bland soft scrambled eggs and undercooked potato blini that come with it leave something to be desired. Still, the setting is swell, service is attentive and it’s quiet enough to talk, just not the top-notch experience you’d expect from a chef of this caliber. Gordon Ramsay at the London, 1020 N. San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood; (310) 358-7788; www.thelondonwesthollywood.com. Breakfast served 6:30 to 10:30 a.m. Monday through Friday.