Checkers: Morning Becomes Extraordinary : Where breakfast is waiting to be discovered

Checkers, 535 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. (213) 624-0000. Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $50-$90.

Here I am at my desk eating another tuna fish sandwich from the cafeteria upstairs. I know it’s bad for my image; most people expect me to go out for a three-course lunch every day. I’d like to, but like most people in Los Angeles, I just don’t have the time.

Look at it this way: considering the traffic, you’ve got to allow at least 45 minutes to get anywhere. Another 45 minutes to get back. Even with a quick lunch, you’ve just lost close to three hours.

If you happen to work in the right part of town, this is not a problem; some lucky people are surrounded by good restaurants. But downtown, despite all the recent improvements, is still not exactly food heaven. Lunch around here usually comes down to light Japanese noodles at Daisuke in Weller Court, heavy Chinese noodles at Mandarin Deli just down Second Street, or robust Italian noodles at Tuttopasta.

There are a few other options in the area. If we’re feeling really ambitious we might walk up the hill to Panino at MOCA, but the sandwiches are awfully small. Bernard’s at the Biltmore is within walking distance, but it’s a pretty chichi place to eat an ordinary lunch. Rex is lovely, provided somebody else is paying. If the new Engine Co. 28 were a little bit closer (or if they had valet parking in the daytime), we’d probably eat there a lot. But it isn’t (and they don’t), so we don’t.

But I’ve just discovered a reason to say goodby to the cafeteria. Checkers has finally opened.

Checkers is a new hotel owned by the people who own Campton Place in San Francisco. The hotel itself sounds pretty swell: small and luxurious, it is the sort of place that offers personal fax machines, a valet to unpack your clothes, and the opportunity to have your suit pressed at two in the morning. Campton Place did most of those things, too, but the most important thing it did was revolutionize hotel dining by bringing in a really good chef (Bradley Ogden) and creating an intimate restaurant so wonderful that you forgot it was in a hotel.

Even the breakfasts there were (and are) fabulous; Campton Place quickly became the place to eat breakfast in San Francisco. So far nobody seems to have discovered breakfast at Checkers. They will.

The room, which is annoyingly anonymous later in the day (it seems to have been designed primarily so as not to offend anybody), is soothing in the morning light. You sit down in all that beige sunshine, look at the rose on the table, and instantly notice that the orange juice has not a trace of bitterness. Then you dig into the basket of extraordinarily good breakfast breads and decide you never want to leave.

There are wonderful tiny sticky buns, great little scones, a superb bran muffin. The baby Danish is fresh and crisp and richly topped with fruit and cinnamon. The butter is sweet. A basket like this would keep me happy all day.

But there are lots of other choices. Scrambled eggs are soft and perfect, sitting on little spears of asparagus and topped with tangy Asiago cheese. The pan roasted potatoes are crisp and virtually greaseless.

Pancakes are made with lemon and poppy seeds; there is a different waffle every day. And for the adventurous there is duck hash, a concoction made of chunks of duck meat sauteed with onions, red and green peppers and lots of rosemary. Like any good ordinary hash, this one is filled with little crispy bits and topped with a poached egg. Unlike ordinary hash, the poached egg is topped with orange Hollandaise. The combination is daring but not outrageous and the result is a wonderful dish that could make your mouth sing all day.

After a breakfast like that, you probably won’t be wanting lunch. But lunch is the big meal at Checkers; already, reservations are hard to come by. And no wonder. If you want a calm downtown place for a business lunch where the service is good, the food is ambitious and the prices are not in the high luxury stratosphere of Rex, Bernard’s or the Seventh Street Bistro, this is your best bet.

The menu is innovative without being outre. Take the zucchini blossom fritter appetizer. The blossom is stuffed with a lemon-drenched avocado and cream cheese mixture, battered, lightly fried and served in a smoky tomato sauce that punctuates the flavors and brings them together. A dice of zucchini adds a lovely crunchy note. The chilled pea soup is everything you want such a soup to be--a beautiful pale green with the flavor of just-picked peas and the lightest sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds on top. And the pickled beet salad is a colorful, simple dish that juxtaposes strong flavors in an unusual way. Rounds of tiny beets are topped with the diced yolk of a hard boiled egg mixed with crumbled goat cheese and then surrounded by a halo of baby beans. It is a colorful and very appealing dish.

The most exotic entree is crisply grilled duck breast served with peppered mangoes and a buckwheat salad; the dish has promise, but when I tried it the mangoes weren’t ripe, which robbed them of their flavor. Similar, but less adventurous, is a simple grilled chicken served with a tiny spinach salad and crisp onion strings. The single pasta dish is prawns served on lemon linguine with a tangle of basil, tomatoes, peas and fennel. There’s usually a plain grilled fish of the day, and there is always a fried soft shell crab which at any given time seems to be in front of half the people in the room. And no wonder: the fat little crab is stuffed with tartar sauce, fried and then served with coleslaw and a heap of shoestring potatoes. The other sandwich is roast leg of lamb.

Both lunch and dinner are served with a basket filled with exotic breads (these seem to change from day to day, but have included dill rolls, pumpkin madeleines, sunflower seed bread, and irresistible onion rolls.) They are so enticing that you will be tempted to eat the entire basket. Be warned: you will want to save room for dessert.

Desserts here are American and absolutely splendid. The only one I haven’t liked was the rather stiff tapioca. The devil’s-food cake is so dark it is almost blue, very intense, not very sweet, and the sort of thing you wish you could have on your birthday. The Boston Cream Pie is the best I’ve ever had. There’s a rhubarb tart baked like a Linzer torte in an almond crust and a spectacular hot apple turnover served with both caramel sauce and homemade rum-raisin ice cream.

Dinner at Checkers tends to be calmer than lunch. If you plan to be downtown for theater or the Music Center, you will be very glad that it’s here, but I’m not sure you would make a special trip. What’s best? Among the appetizers I especially liked: oven roasted onion with pine nut aioli and the fine scallop ceviche. Grilled sweetbread scrapple, on the other hand, left me cold.

Most of the entrees are fairly safe; the most interesting is the saltimbocca. Little morsels of rabbit are very successfully substituted for little morsels of veal in the dish, which is served with fettuccine and morels. There are a couple of fish, a mixed grill, a rack of lamb and the inevitable steak. And then, of course, there is dessert. Did I mention the strawberry shortcake?

This is shortcake as it’s meant to be: not too sweet, not too soft and tasting primarily of berries. The thought of eating it at noon could get me through the morning. So if it’s lunchtime, and I’m not at my desk, you might look for me at Checkers.

Recommended dishes: Breakfast: basket of breads, $4; scrambled eggs with asparagus and Asiago, $8.50; Duck hash, $11. Lunch: zucchini blossom fritter, $5.50; pea soup, $4; grilled duck breast, $15; crab sandwich, $11.50; apple turnover, $5; devil’s-food cake, $6.50. Dinner: roasted onion, $4.50; scallop ceviche, $7.50; rabbit saltimbocca, $24; strawberry shortcake, $6.