I have half a mind to start going out to breakfast more often.

The reason is Half & Half, a new Clayton restaurant that's clearly as proud of its breakfasts as most restaurants are of their dinners. Add a coffee menu that will appeal to both connoisseurs and gulpers, and you have a perfect reason to treat yourself to more mornings out to eat.

Any number of people have remarked to me that Clayton really needed a breakfast restaurant, but they were ignoring the fact that Companion, City Coffee House and Creperie, Pomme Café, Posh Nosh and First Watch — plus a few I'm sure that I've missed — are all within a couple of blocks of Half & Half.

Nonetheless, Mike Randolph, who built his local reputation by importing an authentic Neapolitan oven to make pizza at the Good Pie in midtown, saw room for a new approach. While redoing the space that housed the blink-and-you-missed it Manjelou's pizza, he hired Mike Marquard, formerly the leader of education and customer service at Kaldi's.

Perhaps as an inside joke, a meal called Half & Half is the simplest entree on the menu: two eggs, potatoes and toast for six bucks, or $7.50 if you want bacon. From there, however, the morning meals get more and more elaborate.

Half & Half's take on steak and eggs ($11.50), for example, uses hanger steak, an infrequently seen cut like tenderloin. The steak, cooked rare, was cut into about half a dozen medallions, scattered with cubed-style seasoned hash browns and topped with a stack of battered-and-fried onion shreds. Two eggs below and a dollop of tan-colored hollandaise on top completed the tableau, which obviated the need for any more calories until dinner time. I always order my hanger steak rare, but I'm guessing that most customers would prefer to be given a choice.

Blackberry French toast ($8.50) was a blackberry-and-mascarpone sandwich that summed up everything that's right about Half & Half's approach. The dish was sweet but not overly so, with a hint of tartness from the starting-to-disintegrate blackberries and a voluptuous creaminess from the mascarpone cheese.

What Half & Half calls "brunch" is merely a weekend supplement of four slightly heartier dishes to its regular menu. One of these is a German pancake ($9). Think of a thin, light, dinner-plate-size pancake with a slightly crisp rim — a minimally filled deep-dish breakfast pizza, if you will. That filling, however, was maximally flavored by a jolt of lemon butter sprinkled with powdered sugar to form a rich, intensely lemony syrup.

A whole chunk of fatty, succulent pork belly seems like a natural alternative to sliced bacon for breakfast, but you can't just roast or braise one as quickly as you fry up some bacon strips. I'm assuming Half & Half cooks its pork belly ($9.50) first thing in the morning and holds it warm until finishing it for an order. My piece, however, wasn't all that crisp on its fatty side, and the attached meat wasn't all that moist.

Two types of coffee are featured daily, with Marquard serving the role of coffee sommelier by providing written descriptions of origins and flavor profiles. The coffee is brewed to order in your choice of processes: drip (about $3 for a 12-ounce mug and $6 for 24 ounces); espresso (about $2.50); and AeroPress (about $4), a small cupful made with what's basically a French press all 'roided up with a cylindrical hand-pump that forces the water through the grounds.

More traditional coffee drinkers can get a "bottomless" mug poured from a carafe for $2.75, although we saw the bottoms of ours way too frequently.

That highlighted a recurring service issue: Half & Half ran at too languid of a pace for patrons who weren't there to linger. The speed probably is OK when Half & Half transitions to the lunch hour, when sandwiches and salads augment the breakfast items on the menu, but it's going to dissuade early morning gotta-get-to-work types.

Still, the creativity of the menu and the high quality of the coffee are going to make for a lot of repeat visitors. I give the place much more than half a chance to be a big hit.

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Half & Half

Where 8135 Maryland Avenue, Clayton • More info 314-725-0719, halfandhalfstl.com • Menu Upscale breakfast items plus sandwiches and salads • Hours Breakfast and lunch, Tuesday-Sunday

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