Power Breakfast

Cracking eggs over the grill, Gary can tell you what this stretch of downtown was like back when the shuttered cinema down the street, the marquee of which still reads "Praise the Lord" in black letters, was the busy Cameo Theater. And how the street was vibrant with shops, bakeries, beauty salons and little family-owned cafes like Loretta's. Hers is the only surviving eatery, having outlasted all of its nearby contemporaries -- Mink's Café, Jim's Lunch, the Southern Café. There are still places to shop, though the strip now reflects the multicultural influences of the neighborhood.

The morning fare at Loretta's, however, remains pure Americana: flaky biscuits get a soft blanket of peppery gravy with hefty chunks of sausage; cheese oozes out the sides of paper-thin omelets; thick but light pancakes get grilled until they're just crispy around the edges. While Colombel and her colleagues at the BPU were busy deciding they wouldn't make rate-payers cover the cost of ice-storm damage and trucks were cleaning up debris all over town, I was going to work on the Garbage Omelet, an enticing concoction of eggs, cheese, chopped ham, peppers, onions and tomatoes, sided with a mound of O'Brien potatoes loaded with bits of crispy bacon.

This restaurant, after all, has been shoveling out these sorts of workingman's breakfasts for decades, and a plate of corned beef hash topped with a scrambled egg, accompanied by a stack of buttered toast, hasn't lost any of its allure -- even if the hash comes straight out of a can. Hell, it's the same stuff my mom still makes, from the same kind of can.

There aren't many places like Loretta's anymore, certainly not in this neighborhood. The cheeseburgers at the McDonald's up the street may be cheaper, but they're not any better. And if it remains as indomitable as its feisty owner, I suspect Loretta's Café will still be around when all of New York's sophisticates really do resettle in Kansas City, Kansas.