Norma's at Le Meridien

Whether it's glamorous or run-down, a hotel lobby is an indeterminate space: not private; not public. But the nicer the hotel, the more intense the surveillance. I feel the eyes of the hotel staff digging into me. I try to look busy, like I belong there: I scribble answers in the Times crossword; I make several phone calls; I adopt an impatient manner, fussing with my watch and craning my head this way and that. It's all bluff. I don't need to turn my head. The mirror in front of me reflects back to the 56th St. entrance. Straight ahead is the mirror-lined corridor to 57th St. To my left is the desk and to my right is the restaurant. Everyone coming in and going out is within my line of sight.

Even though I'm conscious of the eyes on me?the concierge, the porter, the hostess?I know I'm too cool for them. They won't figure me out. They know I'm not a guest. I'm not goofy enough to be a tourist, not fashionable enough to be rich and not shabby enough to be an actor or a musician. It's their own fault that they don't have a profile for a nebbishy, 30ish writer. Here's your fucking power breakfast!

The breakfast prices at Norma's, just a few steps up from the lobby, also put me in a murderous frame of mind. They're beyond hotel expensive, and they don't jibe with the quality of the food. The prices are high ($18 for an egg-white omelet) to create an aura of importance around breakfast and to keep the egg-and-porkroll crowd from intruding on the high-ceilinged, Danish-austere serenity that is meant for a different sort of customer... Was that Judith Regan I tripped over? That guy looks much too short to be Antonio Banderas.

I'm waiting for my old college friend, the busy doctor who even during his vacation can only spare 90 mid-morning minutes for a sitdown. When he shows up, 15 minutes late, we're given a choice between two loser tables?a deuce next to a stack of high chairs or a banquette, empty save for a nursing mother. For all my paranoia, the service is pleasant. Right away a waiter drops a liter-sized French press of coffee and returns immediately with a carafe of not bad but not great fresh orange juice?although if my two local fruit stores are anything to go by, this year's orange crop was a disappointment.

I have the red berry risotto served in an edible and "crispity" wafer bowl. Owing to an hilarious mixup, I am brought a bowl of rice krispies topped with raspberries. The real thing turns out to be actual risotto?gooey and tart, with whole warm berries. The wafer bowl doesn't stay crispity for long, but it keeps its shape long enough for me to eat all I can handle. The busy doctor's poached eggs with smoked salmon ("Upstream Eggs Benedict") are more than serviceable. Other items seen and not sampled from the Fuddruckers-goofy menu include a monstrous plate of chocolate-covered french toast that sent a young teenage girl into snuffled paroxysms of laughter, and a plate of latkes swimming in sour cream and apple sauce.

The busy doctor has two just-printed batches of photographs of his vacation to a kid-friendly Caribbean resort. The baby girl is walking. The boy looks more like his mother every day. I'm feeling like an awkward bachelor uncle. My friend is very comfortable here?arraying the photos as if he's at his own kitchen table. I can see why he recommended Norma's, and why he isn't bothered by the prices. The place, too, has a kid-friendly feel about it. It occurs to me for the first time that young parents like the busy doctor and his wife, the business journalist, do their socializing in the morning, when their kids are cheerful. They do it in light, airy spaces with high chairs and clean-looking waiters who don't tell you their names and who come by every few minutes to see if you need anything else.

Norma's isn't trying to rival 540 Park as the home of the power breakfast. It's hard to imagine Henry Kissinger ordering the "No-Hassle Grapefruit" or the "Lox & Lox of Bagel." Come to think of it, it's hard to imagine him climbing the short flight of stairs to the see-and-be-seen space in the back. At the same time, it's the kind of place?like the Temple Bar?that's so poserific that it's your responsibility to turn it into your personal playground: get sloppy drunk; snap the hip-riding thong-strap of the girl next to you; mistake Jennifer Jason Leigh for Bridget Fonda and keep hitting on her long after the jig is up. At Norma's, this means bringing a boatload of kids, having the waiters fill their juice bottles straight from the jug and clogging up the aisle with strollers and baby baskets.

Norma's, Le Parker Meridien Hotel, 118 W. 57th St. (betw. 6th & 7th Aves.), 708-7460.