Sanborns isn't quite Denny's. It's so much more than that - especially since it gobbled Denny's up for breakfast. And in Tijuana, it provides 24 hour splashdown for carousers, stranded travelers, and foreigners who want a "real breakfast" with real coffee.

A venerable institution in Mexico City, where it's all-night hours, eclectic menu, fancy desserts, and bottomless coffee made it a mecca for nightowls, politicos, and clandestine, Sanborns branched out all over the country. Unlike the U.S, where Denny's or Carrows are blue-collar to no-collar eating utilities, in Mexico places like this with chrome and formica and uniformed waitresses are considered somewhat posh. Important guys bring beautiful women to eat there. They are places women dress up to go. Or course, a Mexicana would doll up for a dogfight, but you get my point.

But even given Sanborn's cachet and esteem there are sure a lot of them in Tijuana. Two within four blocks on Revolución, for instance. That's because Denny's saw a good opportunity in Mexico, where a Denny's would be a semi-swank restaurant, and went for it. And it worked: Denny's was instantly a Place To Go. But foreign investors in Mexico frequently run into stacked decks and Sanborns pulled a reversal on the Capitalist Gringo Exploitation Myth and took over Denny's, turning them all into Sanborns. So there are actually shopping centers with two Sanborns.

The Sanborns on "Revu" are the ones of most, if any, interest to travelers, of course. And they are the opposite poles of the Sanborns experience. Up at the corner of Eighth, and taking up a whole block South of the Jai Alai, is the classic Sanborns, a sprawling emporium in the style of the original mercantile cathedral in Mexico City. It has a bar the size of many restaurants, a huge dining room with porch tables outside, one of the better bookstores in the city (a source of foreign magazines and newspapers, by the way), and a long counter crammed with mouth-watering chocolates and other sweet fancies. And a huge sales floor offering perfumes, handicrafts, men's gadgets, stereos and music, jewelry, and all things elegant and expensive. It's a sort of time capsule, really. And not a bad place to eat, though it's even more over-priced than Denny's back home. An interesting place for breakfast or Sunday buffet, though. And you can sit there and eat pie or drink coffee refills all day (coffee refills are not commonly done in Mexico).

Down between Third and Fourth, by the Caliente casino and frenetic marimbas of La Placita, is the Sanborns that obviously used to be a Denny's. Tourist buses drop their herds right in front of it. This is not a dress up place, actually. It mostly features foreigners, businessmen, and tourists. But it's open all night. Those little owls are not part of the Denny's drygulch, they're an original Sanborns concept and several TJ branches are 24 hour, including this one and the one in Playas. So what good is a 24 hour restaurant to a traveler? Tijuana is not exactly the City That Never Sleeps (though decidedly the City That Never Stops Making Noise).

Well, you just might end up needing some coffee after closing down one of the many obnoxious discos on Revu. Or you might have messed up and need to wait six hours for a bus. Or, as often happens, you come out of a club at 2am and suddenly realize that you aren't going to make the last trolley, so your two dollar trip back to the San Diego Hostel just went up to forty bucks. And it's a weekend, so the town is full. By now even the whorehouses are renting out rooms for just sleeping. What to do until 5am when the trolleys start up again? Well, amigo... there's this place on Revu that's lit up all night.

Meals are steep, but you can chip around the edges, so to speak. Consider Molcajetes - a split bolillo, or French roll, topped with refried beans with cheese melted over the top. Think of it as a Mexican mini-pizza. Sort of. The cakes are pretty good... try Tres Leches or just call for the dessert cart and grab something that looks right. And coffee, coffee, coffee. They even have decaf! The dark hours will pass. And look at it this way... at least they don't have a marimba band.