Bennett: Breakfast at Snooze is a waker-upper

At Snooze, there’s breakfast and then there’s breakfast.

One is rubbery scrambled eggs, oily hash browns and overly buttered toast, and the other is a prosciutto-and-Teleggio-cheese Benedict on a toasted ciabatta topped with cream cheese Hollandaise and a salad of balsamic-splashed arugula.

One has been an all-American staple for over half a century. The other landed in Tustin this summer via Delorean from the retro-themed future in Denver, Colo., where the established open-til-2-p.m. chain first began eight years ago.

At Snooze, breakfast isn’t just morning sustenance, it’s a ride through Tomorrowland. And with build-your-own stuffed spuds, 10 kinds of clever pancakes, six versions of Bennies to mix and match plus a full bar, it’s even making the first meal of the day — gasp — fun.

Snooze is the first place where I’ve been able to break my fast not just with an everyday bloody Mary or mimosa, but also with a whipped cream-infused screwdriver (Orange Snoozius), a sparkling wine-splashed paloma (Palomimosa) or a so-called Snoozed Fashioned, made with Elijah Craig bourbon, cold-brewed coffee from Santa Ana’s Contra Coffee, blueberry shrubs and bitters.

The meal moves into hyperdrive with breakfast tacos a la Austin, corned beef hash not from a can, omelets as creative as stoner dreams, and the Breakfast Pot Pie, an abstract take on down-home biscuits and gravy that drowns a single buttery puff pastry with a lava flow of rosemary sausage gravy. Hash browns, the perennial breakfast side, come not crisp and flattened across the whole plate, but as an inches-high cylindrical cake where, beyond the protective top layer, all is a glorious mush of shredded taters.

Though sweets for breakfast aren’t always my preference, Snooze’s have proven themselves too good to resist. In addition to dessert-themed flavors like peach pie, pineapple upside-down cake and peanut butter cup (with a layer of actual peanut butter on top), the daily special is always something intergalactic, like banana cream atop an espresso chip pancake or a bacon pancake with bacon butter cream.

Can’t decide? Get a flight. Or be a super-glutton like me, and replace your regular order’s toast with a cinnamon roll pancake bigger than your head sprinkled with candied walnuts and doused in a rum-maple reduction for $3.50.

Orange County has its fair share of greasy-spoon diners (I even worked at a great one, Harbor House, for many years) and a hefty helping of worthy weekend brunches, but when it comes to restaurants dedicated exclusively to contemporary takes on pre-noon food like Snooze’s, only a few places even skim the category, none of which are in Tustin.

This may explain the severe hype surrounding Snooze’s opening almost two months ago. And it almost certainly explains why, for most of its hours of operation, despite being both a non-local creation and an eatery tucked in an awkward corner of the Tustin Marketplace (or is every corner awkward in a shopping center that large?), the wait for a table always tops an hour or more. Luckily, you can grab a complimentary cup of coffee, run a few errands at the nearby stores, or play a round or two of cornhole on the patio in the meantime.

But more than once on my visits, I’ve skipped adding my cellphone number to the list altogether and hovered until there was room at one of first-come, first-served bar stools that faces not the window to the kitchen where orders come up but shelves of liquor bottles, tap handles and a flat screen TV. It was there that I discovered possibly the only thing (besides two-hour waits for pancakes) not to like about Snooze.

Because even though the decor is full of nostalgic optimism, the staff is genuinely friendly and the menu is the first I’ve encountered in a long time where every single item I’ve eaten is something I’d order again, the supreme backup and constant churn of tables (where you may never get the same server twice) leaves little room for the local-diner vibes wrought by regulars who post up each morning at the typical service counter, swilling coffee and sharing the latest gossip.

That kind of “Hey Bob” daily community of regulars might not be what Snooze is trying to cultivate with its youthful energy and snappy presentation, but in suburban Orange County — where walking is for exercise only and coffee is often procured via drive-through — it would be nice to see a makeshift meeting space crop up where so many people are starting their day.

For now, if you want to run into your neighbors, you’ll still have to get out of your car at Starbucks (or hit up your nearest old-school diner for that all-American combo). But if you want to bring your neighbors with you and get tipsy on morning cocktails and sugar drunk on pancakes that you can’t find anywhere else, Snooze is finally here to save you from another basic breakfast.

SARAH BENNETT is a freelance journalist covering food, drink, music, culture and more. She is the former food editor at L.A. Weekly and a founding editor of Beer Paper L.A. Follow her on Twitter @thesarahbennett.