Cilicia, Broadway Market
Cilicia
1 Broadway Market
Hackney
E8 4PH
by Malcolm Eggs
Cilicia, right at the end of the lovely, bustling Broadway Market, is a Turkish restaurant with a justly formidable breakfast-making reputation. What brings this publication here is a splash of innovation: a full English with a mediterranean twist. The 'Cilician breakfast' keeps the egg, the hash brown and the mushrooms but replaces sausage with fried spicy salami, the bacon with grilled halloumi and throws in a handful of stuffed olives just, you imagine, to see what happens. The result? Largely worthwhile.
You can't argue with halloumi - and this was at a perfect stage of golden succulence. The spicy salami made a welcome, moreish change from standard-issue sausage and the presence of a deftly fried egg (and friends) was enough to satisfy the purist factions of my tastebud population. The one gripe was the olives which, stuffed as they were with garlic and chillies, constituted a slightly over-zealous intrusion. Splendid terracotta terrace, though, on which to prepare for a glorious sun-soaked day at the tail-end of an English summer. Just make sure you leave with plenty of time if arriving via that surreal, barely functional Silverlink rail-line, which is surely just a forgotten entry on some distant Texan share portfolio.
1 Broadway Market
Hackney
E8 4PH
by Malcolm Eggs
Cilicia, right at the end of the lovely, bustling Broadway Market, is a Turkish restaurant with a justly formidable breakfast-making reputation. What brings this publication here is a splash of innovation: a full English with a mediterranean twist. The 'Cilician breakfast' keeps the egg, the hash brown and the mushrooms but replaces sausage with fried spicy salami, the bacon with grilled halloumi and throws in a handful of stuffed olives just, you imagine, to see what happens. The result? Largely worthwhile.
You can't argue with halloumi - and this was at a perfect stage of golden succulence. The spicy salami made a welcome, moreish change from standard-issue sausage and the presence of a deftly fried egg (and friends) was enough to satisfy the purist factions of my tastebud population. The one gripe was the olives which, stuffed as they were with garlic and chillies, constituted a slightly over-zealous intrusion. Splendid terracotta terrace, though, on which to prepare for a glorious sun-soaked day at the tail-end of an English summer. Just make sure you leave with plenty of time if arriving via that surreal, barely functional Silverlink rail-line, which is surely just a forgotten entry on some distant Texan share portfolio.
posted by London Review of Breakfasts |
1:32 PM |
5 Comments:
I eat here every Sunday morning. I think it's important, and quite interesting, to note that the "Full English Breakfast" is in fact the best fry-up available in a one-mile radius. Ignore the halloumi and the superfluous salami. These fellows are bacon and sausage experts
This was one of the first reviews ever posted on the LRB, and recently Stephen Fry-Up paid a new visit and offered the following verdict:
You may of late have been wondering to yourself exactly why it is that there have been so few breakfast reviews posted by the great Stephen Fry-Up. Well, there is one pretty straightforward answer to your question (and, to be honest, I’m surprised you hadn’t worked it out yourself): and that answer is, simply that I don’t eat breakfast very often. Or rather, I don’t eat breakfast out very often.
Of a weekday, breakfast is but a bowl of the usual frugal muesli at the desk. And, come the weekend, my appetite mysteriously disappears. And so it was that I took last Monday off work in order to search for breakfasts. I rose late and my flatmate, Katie, and I ambled out of our ostensibly edgy council estate, across London Fields, and towards Broadway Market.
Katie, as I’m sure you are aware, is a classy girl, and certainly not the sort to choose a greasy fry-up for her first meal of the day. But I was feeling far too insecure to face those intimidatingly organic places that seem to have sprung up along the length of Broadway Market. And so, alas, we compromised.
We opted, rather bizarrely, to breakfast at Solche Cilician Grill, Mezze, and Bar. The place itself is nice, and at least it was quiet – although the Bedouin-style music grew a little nauseating after a time. The service was fine and my tea was big, but the food was pretty poor and came with some slightly inappropriate lettuce on the side. I’m sure this is a lovely place in which to eat some tapas or drink a cocktail, but quite why they bother with breakfast is beyond me. And quite why I chose to break my breakfast fast here: well, that is the real tragedy of the story.
marry me stephen fry-up!
love mary bacon butt.
p.s i like my eggs fertilized.
back off, hes mine!
- Katherine Cupofteaplease
Why anyone would want to marry someone who doesn't eat breakfast very often is beyond me, out or in.
A. Brekkcionado
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