RESTAURANTS : Counter Intelligence : Big Daddy’s Pride and Joy : It’s new, but the El Monte restaurant feels like an institution. One bite of cheese steak explains why.

Big Daddy’s Drive-Thru is sandwiched among a Chinese restaurant, a Cuban place and a fancy Jalisco-style seafood restaurant, where you may see mariachis on a cigarette break sweltering out front in their brocaded black suits. That’s good old Peck Road for you, in good old multicultural El Monte.

The drive-through is a tiny fast-food building in the ‘30s or ‘40s style; it looks like an overgrown sugar cube with a takeout window. It has room at the counter for four or five stools and parking spaces for about eight cars around the building. Curiously, there’s a narrow patch of neatly trimmed lawn at the back of the parking area, and I suppose you could picnic there if a total lack of amenities didn’t bother you, but I’ve never seen it used for anything at all.

The sign advertises hamburgers, burritos, breakfasts and Philadelphia cheese steaks, and this odd combination seems to work perfectly well around here. On one of those counter stools you’ll usually see a regular customer schmoozing with the owner, a sturdy East Coast urban type who will volunteer that he once ran a hoagie stand back in Philadelphia. Some of the regulars even seem to know his short-order cooks.

Altogether, the place has the manner of an age-old neighborhood institution, but it’s actually been around only a couple of months. It’s certainly aiming to be an institution, anyway. The boss is talking about opening 24 hours on weekends.

The best thing here is the Philadelphia cheese steak, though the bun could be a little puffier. If you sit at the counter, you can watch a moderately complex process: A stack of frozen thin slices of beef is fried directly on the griddle, then cooked on top of a mound of browning onions, then chopped to shreds (still on the griddle) and mixed with the onions and cheese and piled into the bun.

The result is a memorable gooey mouthful, chewy, aromatic with cheese and beef and intermittently sweet when you bite into some of the browned onions. Be careful how you eat it--it’s a handful of mess, just overflowing with stuff. The molten cheese that ends up on the foil wrapper congeals on it like Elmer’s glue. No kidding--once it’s cooled, it’s impossible to lick it off the wrapper. Ask the man who tried.

I wouldn’t mind if there were some pickled peppers around, but this is a major piece of American fast food as it is. Surprisingly, the chicken cheese steak, usually just a sop to people who fantasize that there could be such a thing as a diet cheese steak, is about as good as the beef here. On the other hand, the pizza steak strikes me as less good. Tomato sauce seems to dilute the shamelessness of the steamy, sticky mouthful of cheese steak.

When the menu advertises fajitas, expect something rather like cheese steak with onions and bell peppers in it. The chicken fajita sandwich is like chicken cheese steak gone south of the border. Likewise, the carne asada in the tacos and burritos seems to be cheese steak meat plus cilantro and hot green peppers.

The hamburger is the usual ground meat patty, though. The secret sauce seems to have a hint of horseradish in it. And you can guess what the cheese on the cheeseburger will be like.

The biggest surprise about the place is the chili, mentioned in passing at the bottom of the menu. This is one of the most distinctive chilis I’ve ever had. It seems to be pinto bean puree or refried beans mixed with fried ground meat and a sweet spice mixture (cinnamon and cloves?) with just a hint of red pepper. It’s savory and satisfying and really pretty good on its own terms, but Californians and Texans accustomed to a hot, cuminy bowl of red (this stuff is a dark tan) probably won’t consider it chili at all.

Breakfast is the usual egg and meat deals, pancakes with packets of syrup and breakfast burritos stuffed with hash browns, eggs and the meat of your choice. The burritos are lighter than you’d expect.

Basically, I’ve liked everything I’ve tried here except the pastrami, which is dry and has an oddball flavor. (If you don’t like it, really stay away from the pastrami burrito, which is just a bunch of pastrami in a tortilla.) Even the coffee’s pretty good for a fast-food place, but maybe that’s because it’s not fast--Big Daddy brews it to order; give him four minutes.

BE THERE

Big Daddy’s Drive-Thru, 3819 Peck Road, El Monte. (626) 279-7000. Open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. No alcohol. Parking and drive-through. No credit cards. Lunch and dinner dishes $1.25 to $4.55.

What to Get: Polish sausage breakfast burrito, cheese steak, chicken cheese steak, carne asada taco, chicken fajita sandwich.