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 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.