RESTAURANT REVIEW : Old Town Bakery Goes Full-Service, Sort Of : Pasadena site becomes a marble-topped-bistro-table facility, but its languid service reasserts itself after a few weeks.

The Old Town Bakery in Pasadena used to be mostly a bakery with a light lunch menu. It was a nice place to go if you wanted to read the paper and drink a good caffe latte from a big cup. That is, it was a nice place to go if you didn’t mind the deplorable service--you might have read most of the paper before you actually received that caffe .

Recently, the Old Town’s baking facility moved to a factory in Vernon and the Pasadena location became a full-service restaurant with marble-topped bistro tables indoors and little green tables with umbrellas and plastic chairs outside on the patio.

I have to admit, I was dubious about how full the full service would be at a place where a cup of coffee was often as elusive as the Holy Grail. But the first few times I ate at the Old Town Bakery, when the restaurant first opened, everything ran like clockwork: We were greeted immediately, seated, given menus and ice water. The food arrived swiftly and was awfully good. I loved the perfectly composed rotisseried lamb dinner: succulent slices of medium-rare lamb served with grilled polenta and delicious spinach. At breakfast, I was sold on the individual fruit tart served warm with smooth house-made vanilla yogurt.

Overall, the menu is unusual and idiosyncratic. There is a nightly Supper Pie, a hefty bowl of alternately chicken or lamb stew that has been sealed in wonderfully buttery pastry. Four fat juicy chicken tacos are made with chewy house-made tortillas and served with not-so-great black beans. Rotisseried chicken comes with a choice of three marinades: spicy black bean, citrus and buttermilk herb. I tried the citrus-marinated chicken one night and found it overdone; it was served with some awful red cabbage slaw and rather limp fries. The fries did have an excuse: They’re hot-air cooked and contain no oil. Hey, I’ll sacrifice a little crunch to cut out about a zillion calories.

At breakfast, the blueberry pancakes are terrific with their lemon syrup. On the other hand, the crumpets--two discs of an unremarkable bread product topped with bland ricotta cheese and house-made fruit jam--are real duds.

Salads are all meal-sized. The Caesar is adequate; the chopped salad, with chunks of cheese, tomato and cucumber, is juicy and fresh, although a few too many pepperoncini gave it a strong pickled flavor.

A plate of bow-tie pasta comes with big chunks of cooked garlic and lots of ricotta and fontina cheese. The Organic Beef Burger is a huge, luscious sandwich with mixed baby greens, grilled red peppers, good beef and Cheddar cheese. It comes with more of those virtuous but lifeless fries.

Portions are ample, so much so that dessert lovers must practice self-restraint to save enough room for a piece of one of the glamorous pies or cakes languishing in the cold case.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long--a few weeks, in fact--after the Old Town Bakery became a full-service restaurant that its old flaws began to reassert themselves. If you walked in and observed the “Please Wait to Be Seated” sign, you could read a couple sections of the newspaper before anybody noticed you. And when someone did finally greet you, he or she would invariably wave a hands languidly at the seating area and say, “Oh, sit anywhere you can.”

A similar lack of attention also manifested itself at the table. On successive visits, I ordered a lamb pizza and got a lamb dinner; I ordered a “buttermilk rotisseried chicken pizza” and received a chicken-sausage pizza. I ordered my favorite breakfast--the warmed tart with homemade yogurt--and, after a long time, received a cold, stiff tart on a plate, no yogurt, no warmth.

If I am grousing, it is because the Old Town Bakery is potentially a favorite haunt. The glitches in the food don’t worry me so much; any young new restaurant will amend and revise its menu as the clientele establishes itself. I must say how lovely it has been to eat good food outdoors in a lovely courtyard. But I must also add how disappointing it has been when this idyll has been tempered by careless and indifferent service.

Old Town Bakery, 166 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. (818) 792-7943. Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. MasterCard, Visa. No alcohol. Street parking. Dinner for two, food only, $15 - $40.