Brown Cafe.(Restaurant review)

It's been said that people look like their dogs, but they can also take after their restaurants. For instance, at brunch on a recent Sunday afternoon at Brown Cafe there was not a blond in sight. Instead, the hip storefront (metal grate still visible, no sign) was filled with hip, hungover customers devouring pain au chocolat and eleven kinds of eggs. They wore sneakers with Velcro, and sunglasses inside; they tended to be of the dark, attractive, bedheaded type. An Italian papa perched his bambino on the back of a Vespa parked outside. The scene was momentarily intimidating. But what if you sat down with the beautiful people and they were really, really nice?

"I'd go for the Albarino," a hostess said, recommending one of the menu's least expensive bottles of white wine. Her easy sophistication mirrored that of her boss, Alejandro Alcocer, who as a teen-ager left Mexico City, where he was born, to follow the waves. Somewhere along the way, he learned how to cook. Having fallen in with the sort of creative nomads whose line of work necessitates craft services, he opened ...