The Perfect Ensemble

Look, up in the sky! It’s a clothing boutique! It’s a bakery! It’s a cafe! Why, it’s Anastasia Cafe in Laguna Beach, a clothing store that happens to serve breakfast and lunch . . . and recently began offering dinner three nights a week.

I’ve been coming here for years, mostly in the early morning. That’s when you can enjoy a full complement of local color along with a foamy latte and terrific homemade granola. Anastasia is just a few doors down from the popular Cafe Zinc, but it’s invariably more quiet, and the regulars appear far more reclusive. A number of Laguna artists like to sketch on the cafe’s terrace.

I often hang out on the terrace in winter, when the tourist crowd has thinned, to while away mornings and savor the delicious breakfasts. One of my favorites is eggs Anna: poached eggs, prosciutto and arugula on toasted country white bread. I’m also big on the caramel toast, made with hot caramel sauce and candied walnuts.

This is a hot spot at lunch too. The menu runs to rustic salads, giant sandwiches and heady pastas, and the lunch crowd is unfailingly well dressed. Pain bagnat is like a salade Nicoise between two slices of slipper-shaped Italian bread called ciabatta. The best lunch pasta is probably pasta a la Anastasia, where your choice of linguine, penne or angel hair is tossed with pine nuts, sauteed tomatoes, herbed goat cheese, garlic and finely minced basil.

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, the cafe metamorphoses into a real restaurant. At night, strategically placed lamps illuminate the cafe’s many works of art (most of which, in Laguna Beach restaurant tradition, are for sale). The polished metal cafe tables are covered with tablecloths and set with napkins folded into towering cylinders. Red rose petals grace service plates.

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One Anastasia trademark is its wonderfully eclectic soundtrack, which can be anything from progressive jazz to hypnotic New Age Wyndham Hill stuff. The owners are savvy enough to keep the boutique portion of the business open during dinner hours--every diner is treated to a fashion show from a constant stream of glamorously dressed shoppers.

The evening menu is ambitious--and not always entirely successful.

This is Laguna’s temple of tall food, offering several dizzyingly lofty dishes of elaborate architecture. The best tall dish is the entree called quickly sauteed Santa Barbara shrimp. The wonderfully flavorful shrimp look like pylons around a tower of porcini, mashed potatoes and fried shredded leeks. I’m also impressed by Anastasia’s Atlantic smoked salmon, artfully arranged 3 inches high on fried mashed potato pancakes and drizzled with a frothy mustard sauce.

The appetizers and salads are strong. One is an artfully pungent salad of shrimp and white beans with tomatoes, lemon juice and endives. Another is nicely firm steamed asparagus served simply with chopped tomato, lemon juice and extra-virgin olive oil.

The Caesar salad is properly crisp, though I’d prefer the dressing more vigorously flavored. The superb spinach salad includes sauteed onions, shaved Parmesan, a honey-mustard dressing and lots of bacon. Best of all is a simple salad of butter lettuce topped with candied walnuts and an unusually appealing pomegranate vinaigrette, the menu’s lone allusion to the owners’ Iranian roots.

Anastasia’s entrees tend to be quite heavy. I like the idea of osso buco on basmati rice pilaf, and the meat was properly tender and flavorful. But the dish was marred by an excessively strong meat reduction, and the sauteed vegetables that accompany this and most entrees are often woefully overcooked.

A nice piece of grilled swordfish comes with garlic mashed potatoes and what must be a foot-high stack of crisp fried onions, not to mention a serviceable beurre blanc under the fish. There’s baked halibut in a nice macadamia nut crust with a pleasant papaya salsa on the side, but the crust and salsa don’t make up for the fact that the fish doesn’t have much flavor.

Rack of lamb (at $21, the menu’s big-ticket item) has a cloying, heavily reduced cherry sauce; a fine double breast of chicken is pounded, grilled and served with nice roasted potatoes. I don’t care for chicken Napolitan, a New Age meat roll. Pieces of white meat chicken are rolled around a gooey, overwhelming mixture of arugula, prosciutto, roasted red peppers and smoked Gouda cheese.

Anastasia makes a few desserts, most notably a cloud-like chocolate souffle that must be ordered with the main course. On my first visit, the restaurant was simultaneously hosting an art-show opening, and the overload proved too much for the kitchen; my souffle was burned. The second time, though, they got it just right. And the accompanying creme Anglaise and warm chocolate sauces were great.

Anastasia’s bakery makes cake-like, but very good, chocolate-chip pecan cookies, a fine strawberry rhubarb crisp and, yes, the inevitable tiramisu. It’s a pity that scarcely any of the customers seem to order dessert. But I suppose that’s understandable. After all, it is a clothes boutique, and Laguna is nothing if not a body-conscious beach town.

Anastasia is expensive. Starters are $7 to $8.95. Salads are $6 to $7.50. Pastas are $9.50 to $14.95. Petite entrees are $8 to $9.50. Entrees are $12 to $21.

BE THERE

Anastasia Cafe, 470 Ocean Ave., Laguna Beach. (949) 497-8903. Open daily, 7:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Dinner 5-10 p.m. Thursday; 6-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. All major cards.