BREAKFAST IS LE PEEP’S TRADEMARK

A couple of years ago a prison riot ended when authorities lured the inmates with the smell of coffee, eggs and bacon. I understand perfectly. In my family, anyway, breakfast was the only meal we actively looked forward to (in the evening Mother would eagerly tell us, “Tomorrow, we’re going to have . . . sausage and pancakes!”). Breakfast is special. Breakfast is America.

So now there is a restaurant chain called Le Peep--the first California franchise just opened in Orange--which serves nothing but breakfast (well, there are half a dozen sandwiches as well) and closes at 2 p.m.

Le Peep has nothing to do with “power breakfasting,” that new trend in hard-charging business circles. People who power-dine like power food, either avant-garde or aggressively old-fashioned, and Le Peep serves neither. It does basic breakfast stuff gussied up in the fashion of other restaurant franchises you may know, the kind that use joshing, ingratiating menu prose full of participles (things get folded, tucked, smothered, engulfed, encrusted) and personal addresses to you, the diner.

In short, this is a cute, button-bright place with balloons for the kiddies and heavy evidence of franchising. The menu will either charm the pants off you or make you feel that you yourself have become brightly colored and encased in plastic. Every other dish title, it seems, is trademarked, from Pa-ta-ta Frittata (TM) and Hawg-Wild Sausage Links (TM) to a salad called Chicken Ship (TM). But at breakfast, this goes down easily. After all, at home we’re always looking at brand names and joky prose on the cereal and the milk.

What really saves it, of course, is that the food is basically very good. Really fresh eggs, good ham, light pancakes, remarkable sausage (and besides the breakfast links there are outstanding garlic, sweet Italian and hot Mexican sausages), fresh orange juice brought in a pitcher like the coffee. A couple of the menu’s touted inventions are very good, too, particularly the Peasant Potatoes (TM), which are a version of cottage fries that are baked rather than fried. Gooey Buns (TM) are not quite as good as genuine sticky buns, but it’s easy to like English muffins with lots of butter and cinnamon sugar topped with toasted almonds, particularly when they come with a side of cream cheese and lightly cooked apple chunks known as Sassy Apples (TM).

And in the best breakfast tradition, the portions are huge, carefully shaped to lap the edges of the plate.

These ingredients are combined in lots of ways with colorful names. The Vagabond (TM) is Peasant Potatoes (TM) with bits of roast beef and onion and topped with lots of provolone cheese and a couple of eggs. Oom-pah-pah (TM) is garlic sausage on delicious lightly sauteed onions with fried eggs and horseradish mustard sauce. There are lots of omelets, including omelet marinara, in effect lasagna with Italian sausage using eggs instead of pasta, and the vegetarian Sun Valley omelet.

The small list of lunch-like items includes one remarkably good sandwich, the crazy horse: sliced beef with a mass of horseradish sauce and bacon on an onion roll. It comes with a very nice simple salad. Most of the other sandwiches resemble breakfast dishes on pita or a roll.

Some things don’t make it here, though. The French toast is as thin as a pancake and a little stodgy. The coffee is ordinary dull restaurant coffee, and the side of bacon is rather pricy--four or five strips for a nickel less than a big slice of ham. There is one glaring omission too: How is it that you can get a virtual breakfast lasagne, but not waffles?

And the pancakes make me uneasy. Not the pancakes themselves, but what Le Peep feels entitled to put in them. Wheat germ--well, OK, it makes you feel virtuous. But Dump Cakes (TM) contain granola and almonds (the menu somewhat incredibly credits a mountain miner for the idea). And Trail Cakes (TM) are flipped over on a griddle full of trail mix: dried pineapple, various nuts and carob chips.

Carob chips! Carob is practically chocolate. In fact, I bet carob leads to chocolate, and the very idea of chocolate at breakfast fills me with anxiety for our moral (though perhaps not our dietary) fiber. Le Peep, think what you’re doing!

LE PEEP 2139 Tustin Ave. No. 2, Orange

(714) 637-1342

Open for breakfast and lunch daily. MasterCard accepted.