OC LIVE : RESTAURANTS : Our Sunday Best : These Five Brunch Spots Can Eat Up Your Afternoon

Sunday brunch can make an entire afternoon disappear. Jousting with Mimosas, basted eggs with smoked salmon and creamy pastries leaves barely energy enough to doze off during the football game. Here are five inviting venues in which to partake.

San Francisco is famous for lavish brunches, making Scott’s Seafood Bar and Grill heir to a noble tradition. The first Scott’s opened in San Francisco in the mid-’70s; six years ago, Scott’s opened a showcase restaurant in the South Coast Plaza mall area.

It is one of O.C.’s more impressive dining spots: a languid, earth-toned interior with a gleaming copper kitchen and a dining room flooded with ambient light from overhead. It’s quiet here on Sunday mornings. The subdued clientele is made up mostly of nattily attired theatergoer types. Bloody Marys flow like wine.

Scott’s serves brunch a la carte from an insert menu, punctuated by terrific, crusty San Francisco-style sourdough. Entrees are similar to those you’d get in the City by the Bay. One standout is the fisherman’s breakfast, a tempting combination of charbroiled sea bass and beef tenderloin hash, topped with a poached egg and a chili cilantro sauce. The hash is lean and delicious.

Stuffed golden French toast has a light spread of Chambord liqueur-infused cream cheese and fresh strawberries in the center, and the dish isn’t sweet or overbearing. The classic eggs Benedict is swooningly rich; a fine smoked Norwegian salmon omelet has fresh spinach, mushrooms, roasted garlic and a dilled Hollandaise.

Look to the regular menu for a superb, pepper-crusted poivre lox appetizer, served with herbed cream cheese, sliced red onion and delightful mini-bagels.

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Scott’s Seafood Bar and Grill, 3300 Bristol St., Costa Mesa. (714) 979-2400. Lunch and dinner daily. Sunday brunch is served from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. with entrees ranging from $8.45 to $10.45. All major cards.

Vegas meets Riverside at Tut’s Bar and Grill, a restaurant with an Egyptian theme, housed in the atrium of Brea’s resort-like Embassy Suites Hotel, a tropical atmosphere laden with palm trees and exotic shrubs.

A huge gilded statue of Tut himself guards the main entrance to the restaurant; ersatz gold friezes and other replicas of Luxor-style relics are placed throughout. Beyond the front door, one of those huge Sunday buffet spreads that one normally associates with Vegas is laid out on a series of long tables.

The food is better than average, and there are several nice touches. One is an omelet and pasta bar. Another is the excellent pastry table, jammed with Napoleons, eclairs and fancy French cakes.

Clearly, this is a different crowd than the one at Scott’s. It is distinctly more suburban, a dining crowd clad in Polo shirts and linen suits that is not ashamed to eat COLUMN 1 ENDS heartily. A pianist and singer perform arias while plates are piled with such items as salmon, iced assorted shellfish, roast beef from the carving station, doughy bagel halves, fresh fruit and the expected lineup of composed salads.

Dense, delicious waffles are cooked to order; muffins like apple spice are especially good companions for the coffee.

Service is attentive and friendly, but the smiling, chatty waiters need to change the silverware more often.

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Tut’s Bar and Grill, 900 East Birch St., Brea. (714) 990-6000. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. The Sunday buffet brunch is served from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and is $16.95. All major cards. *

Ask any long time O.C. resident where to brunch with out-of-town visitors, and odds are the response will be Las Brisas in Laguna Beach.

Mariachis no longer stroll these magnificent grounds on a regular basis, as they did when Larry Cano of El Torito fame owned the property. But Las Brisas is still a drop-dead gorgeous place, a flower-filled blue-and-white tiled restaurant hanging out over bluffs perched above the Pacific Ocean.

Brunch here is no small production. Everyone of age gets unlimited house champagne, along with a starter fruit cocktail topped with pink whipped cream, plus a choice of shortening-rich Mexican sweetbreads. I paid extra for a Las Brisas fizz, a refreshing tequila-based drink whipped into a froth with egg whites and sugar. Then I had another.

After you have been sufficiently revived by refreshments, a choice of heavy-hitter brunches is offered.

Huevos rancheros come with a nice piece of steak, woefully overcooked. A seafood omelet filled with a mixture of crab, shrimp and spicy salsa is served with a scoop of lumpy mashed potatoes and a tart cucumber salad. One more possibility is pollo y camaron mostarza, a grilled chicken breast topped with a poached shrimp in a grainy mustard sauce. When all this is finished, there is chocolate ice cream pie and coffee.

Come early, especially if you want a window table. The only drawback to this strategy is that you have to listen to the overly officious team of managers berating the staff before the rush gets started. I’ve had good waiters at Las Brisas, but maitre d’s are snooty. Next time, I’m going to buy one of them a fizz.

When brunch is finished, be sure to stroll along the footpath in nearby Heisler Park to drink in the bucolic coastal scenery.

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Las Brisas, 361 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach. (714) 497-5434. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. The Sunday champagne brunch is served from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and is $16.95. All major cards. *

Foul mudammas is the standard breakfast throughout much of the Middle East, in cities as diverse as Cairo, Damascus and Beirut. It’s mostly just a dish of hot baked beans and olive oil, usually cooked to a soupy consistency and scooped up with pieces of hot pita bread or a similar flat bread.

Byblos Cafe in Orange does it right. Until recently, this place was a humble sandwich shop. In February, the owners threw off the chrysalis and turned their cafe into a full-fledged sit-down restaurant. I’d be happy to brunch on these delicious marinated kebabs, toothsome rice dishes or terrifically gooey Levantine desserts, but there’s something even better.

Lebanese breakfast is not on the cafe menu (though more and more customers have been asking for it, according to a waitress named Bertha). Two eggs cooked in olive oil are sprinkled with chopped parsley, then served with a side of foul mudammas and a creamy schmear of labni, the coolest condensed yogurt this side of the Red Sea.

Wash everything down with a demitasse of muddy Turkish coffee and then choose a rose water scented pastry. One of the best sweets is burma, a buttery, crackling pastry filled with whole roasted pistachios and suffused with honey. Another good one is walnut baklava, made with flaky phyllo pastry and chopped fresh walnut. If the Lebanese idea of brunch isn’t for you, Byblos Cafe also serves fine stuffed grape leaves, a thick hummus dip and powerfully penetrating pickled turnips, complements to the kebabs, rice pilafs and Mediterranean desserts.

Byblos Cafe, 129 W. Chapman Ave., Orange. (714) 538-7180. Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. Lebanese breakfast $5.50, includes coffee. *

Marriott’s Laguna Cliffs Resort, formerly the Dana Point Resort, has the irresistible Watercolors Restaurant, where chef Peter Striffolino has been cooking up a storm since the late ‘80s. The lovely Cape Cod-style room faces onto a flower-filled knoll overlooking Dana Point Harbor; it is one of the most pleasurable spots on the entire West Coast.

The ambience and talent, however, do not justify the hefty price tag of the Sunday champagne brunch, a whopping $36. Yes it is true that the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel is even more expensive than this, and yes, it is true that the champagne is extra at the Ritz. But the Ritz does serve such luxury items as lobster, smoked salmon and even caviar with its brunch, while here you’ll have to be content with iced shrimp, medallions of beef in Madeira sauce and upscale items of that ilk.

Also take into account that the house champagne is Rocar Extra Dry, a low-priced commercial champagne from Mission San Jose, and the value seems even more questionable.

That said, this is a beautifully presented spread and the food is often a treat.

A few of the more compelling components of this brunch are a superb peppered chicken; hot salmon in lobster sauce; a great pasta station with a variety of fresh noodles, good sauces and a chef who actually listens; hand-carved leg of lamb, and well-crafted pastries.

Four of us lingered over this brunch. Afterward, we went for a stroll in nearby Lantern Bay Park, wondering how life could get any better.

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Watercolors Restaurant at the Marriott Laguna Cliffs Resort, 25135 Park Lantern, Dana Point. (714) 661-5000. Sunday champagne brunch is served from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. $36 for adults, $16.95 for children 12 and under.