Sunday Dawns--and Residents Emerge to Resume Their Lives : Routines: After four days of remaining sequestered in their safe neighborhoods, people venture back to ‘the zone,’ trying to return to normalcy.

The Beverly Hills salon owner and her husband the artist woke up earlier than usual Sunday morning. After four days of staying close to home, they were restless. It was time, they decided, to try to get on with life.

That is how Bezzetti and Robert Brent ended up sipping cappuccino in an airy La Brea Avenue cafe at 8 a.m. Sunday--the first customers to eat at Campanile since rioting closed the restaurant’s doors last week.

Directly across from where the couple sat, a looted Radio Shack had been picked clean. Up the road, north of 6th Street, a scrawled sign on a computer store said “Looted and Empty.” But over scones and a vegetable torte, the two Angelenos said there was no place they would rather be.

“This is our first time out into ‘the zone,’ ” Brent said, adding that even in their undamaged neighborhood near Roxbury Park, the last few days have felt like being under house arrest. “I was getting cabin fever. It’s important that everybody get some normalcy back.”

For many of this city’s well-heeled residents, normal on Sunday means brunch. And on the fourth morning after the Rodney King beating verdict, dozens visited the sky-lit mid-Wilshire eatery at 624 S. La Brea Ave. to reclaim that favorite weekend ritual.

There were writers and actors, a talent agent, a television director and a local shopkeeper and his family. There was a woman who eats breakfast at Campanile every day--by interrupting that routine, she said, the riot had reduced her to tears. And there was a Los Feliz couple who had attended for the first time--attracted, they said, by the chance to see first-hand some of the damage the riot had wrought.

“We have no morals in this country--ever since Watergate. Boesky, Milken, that scumbag Keating--they rob everybody and we do nothing to them,” said James Quinn. The television director, who has worked recently on the series “Law and Order,” was among many trying to explain the riots.

“We’re all guilty for it because we sit on our fat asses in our nice cars and don’t do anything about it.”

Across the table was Arthur Taxier, the actor who plays Lt. Carl Zymack in the television series “Midnight Caller.” He said he had visited Campanile--his first excursion outside the San Fernando Valley since the Wednesday verdicts--to try to get a sense of the extent of the city’s scars.

“It’s like trying to find out if a person died,” said Taxier, a regular Campanile customer. “You want to know: How distorted is your future going to be?”

Jason and Gail Asch were wondering the same thing. Their business--Diamond Foam and Fabric Co.--is also on La Brea Avenue, and beginning Thursday night, they had watched the looters arrive in BMWs, limousines, even a school bus.

Instead of fleeing to Malibu, an option they considered, the Aschs decided to hunker down in their nearby home and wait for calm. Sunday morning was their first meal out in four days, which they said was something of a record. In addition to the fact that their store had been spared, they said they had found a silver lining in the sooty black clouds that had hung over their burning city.

“We usually eat out a lot,” Gail Asch said, stroking the head of her 3-year-old son, Aliyah. While the city was under siege, she said, “We’ve been forced to cook at home. And you know, it’s really brought the family back to where it should be.”

Would the newfound domesticity endure, now that the riots appeared to be over?

Sarah Asch, 8, said yes.

“My dad’s going to cook more,” she said.

Nancy Silverton and Mark Peel, the owners of Campanile and the adjoining La Brea Bakery, live with their two children in an apartment above the restaurant. So when the looting began, they had more than their business at stake.

Silverton took Benjamin, 7, and Vanessa, 9, to her sister’s house in the Valley on Thursday night, while Peel stayed with the restaurant. He imagined he would try to put out a fire if one started. But none did.

On Friday, Silverton returned, baked more than 1,000 loaves of bread and gave them away to local residents. On Saturday, she drove with her sister to the First AME Church in South Los Angeles and dropped off a carload of baby food. On Sunday, as well as opening her doors to the breakfast crowd, she was gathering clothing to donate to the relief effort.

“If you want to look on the bright side, maybe things are going to be better for a while--everyone’s got (the tension) out,” she said Sunday, as she greeted her customers. Despite the boarded-up windows nearby, she was glad to be where she was.

When she had driven into the Valley to retrieve her children Friday night, she was troubled by how unaware some people seemed--walking their dogs, using their leaf blowers and generally acting like nothing was amiss.

“It looked like Fantasyland over there,” she said. “I’m glad I live here. This is reality. This is L.A.”