Breakfast is really two meals in one. There's the meal that's little more than fuel to get your day started, and there's the meal you eat to celebrate (or recover from) the excesses of the night before. The food served by owner Jerry Manley at the Flower City Diner is emphatically in the latter category. In business since 2001, but in its new location in the Renaissance Apartment building on the corner of East Avenue and Penfield Road only since June 2007, the Flour City Diner is a shrine to American comfort food, and no meal typifies comfort food more than breakfast where an imaginative cook can transform mundane eggs and sausage, potatoes and bread into something surprising and even inspired.

Manley is not one to cut corners - everything he can make himself, he does, including his own sausage, bratwurst, and corned beef hash; his own biscuits, pancake and blintz batter, and pie crusts; and his own fruit fillings and puddings for his much-acclaimed pies. Growing up in a restaurant, he learned "scratch" cooking from his mother and sausage-making from his father, imbibing their passion for "homecooking." His devotion shows in every gorgeous plate that comes out of his kitchen.

Flour City Diner serves breakfast only on weekends, and the lines can stretch out the door. The menu includes delectable variations on the familiar breakfast themes of French toast, oatmeal, chicken fried steak, omelets, and that brunch classic, the Monte Cristo, in addition to a robust roster of eggs, potatoes, toast, and other breakfast staples. The difference between this diner breakfast and any other is in the details. 

Take the Bloody Mary ($5.25), for instance. Very few restaurants make them from scratch anymore, relying instead on bottled mix. At Flour City, tomato juice, a drop or two of Worcestershire sauce, a blast of horseradish, celery seed, and dash of pepper and salt, produce a true tonic with just enough of the hair of the dog to rouse even the most hung over of breakfast guests. Even the celery stick poked into the glass is crisp and leafy. Thus sustained, you might want to start considering real food.

Portion sizes are huge, more than enough to share or take home with you for a late night snack. The bourbon raisin French toast ($5.95) is an excellent first choice - the thick cuts of fluffy bread, battered and finished with a sinfully rich sauce of butter, spicy bourbon, fresh nutmeg, and raisins could restore your will to live. The perfect balance of liquor and butter transforms a sauce that might have been merely heavy into something akin to a crшme anglaise or hot buttered rum. Accompanied by one of Manley's own bratwurst, this is a very hard meal to beat.

The sausage gravy and biscuits ($3.50) gives the French toast a run for its money. Two suitably flaky biscuits, halved and topped with an almost-yellow cream gravy studded with chunks of homemade pork sausage, it's a study in white. The flavor, though, is out of this world. Manley uses both heavy cream and chicken stock in his gravy, producing a smooth and flavorful sauce that complements rather than overwhelms the buttery goodness of his biscuits and the spicy, peppery zing of his sausage. Ordered along with a couple of fried eggs ($4.50), this would be a meal to keep you going all day, and likely sustain you well into the following one as well.

The corned beef hash ($5.95) is both substantial and surprisingly good as well. I have never been a fan of hash; most diners rely on canned mystery meat rather than taking the time to make their own. Manley's hash - a mixture of chopped corned beef, potatoes, onions, fresh garlic, and seasoning - closely resembles loose sausage. Fried on the griddle, it develops a lovely crust and provides a nice foil for both fried eggs and toast. (Even the toast is good here: rather than the pallid, soggy triangles of white bread that usually accompany breakfast, Flour City's toast is made with a hearty loaf and actually toasted so that it has not only a lovely dark-gold color but also a flavorful crunch.)

Eggs are the cornerstone of breakfast, and both the omelets and the frittata were wonderful. A light and fluffy omelet stuffed with goat cheese, roasted red pepper, and baby spinach was accompanied by both toast and some of Flour City's excellent home fries - crispy around the edges yet still moist and flavorful without being greasy. The andouillette frittata must simply be seen to be believed. The day I experienced this mountain of eggs, meat, onions, peppers, homefries, and two different cheeses, it had been oversold and Manley was forced to "stretch" the andouille (spicy cajun pork sausage) with a bit of kielbasa. Both sausages were fine examples of the sausage-maker's craft: rich without being overpoweringly fatty, studded with garlic and spices that complemented rather than obscured the meat. Fried with vegetables, potatoes, and eggs, the savor of the sausages diffused through the dish, lending it agreeably spicy and smoky notes. I was in no way equal to the task of finishing such a mountain of food, and the leftovers split into two very generous early dinner portions later in the day.

My 3-year-old dining companion found nothing to complain about in Flour City's Mickey Mouse pancake, a three-lobed, plate-sized creation with chocolate chip eyes and smile, and a whipped cream bowtie. While he delighted in eating off the "ears" and making a mess with the chocolate, I sampled the pancake and was very pleasantly surprised: a nice vanilla and subtle spice flavor and just enough "spring" in the batter to give it some backbone, but not so much as to make it rubbery. Accompanied with fresh maple syrup and butter, this pancake (and presumably the more "normal" shaped ones as well) was quite good.

I have to admit, I was skeptical about the blintzes, and I remained so when they came to the table. The batter itself is somewhere between crepe and full-blown pancake, nicely browned, filled, rolled, and topped with butter, wild blueberries, and a dot of whipped cream. The filling, though, is nothing short of heavenly. Cream cheese, ricotta, and cottage cheese combine with lemon zest and a bit of sugar to create something akin to mascarpone that blends in wonderful ways with the tang of the blueberries and the bready goodness of the pancakes themselves. These may not be traditional blintzes - the wrapper is much too thick and not nearly eggy enough - but I honestly don't care. I never liked real blintzes that much anyway. I'll take the ones on offer at Flour City any day of the week. 

Flour City Diner

2500 East Avenue

546-6607

Tuesday-Saturday 5-10 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday 8 a.m.-2 p.m.