Yo! Sushi, Gatwick Airport

Yo! Sushi
North Terminal Airside
Gatwick Airport
West Sussex
RH6
01293 602 070
www.yosushi.com

by Hashley Brown

Fast, fun, fresh breakfast. Not a bad slogan for the holy meal, although I'd probably take issue with speed being an integral part of the breakfasting canon. And some may say that putting a box of Coco Pops on a conveyor belt is pushing the fun definition a little too far. But as one who has grown weary of below par airport breakfasting, I thought I'd take Yo! Sushi at their word.

Now when leaving Tokyo, I always take the opportunity to partake of one more steaming bowl of ramen noodles, some pork dumplings and a glass of beer, especially if at breakfast time. Yo! Sushi, who are in danger of re-branding Japanese cuisine for the English until it resembles pub food on a conveyor belt, couldn't quite help me there, and at first glance this seemed to be no more than revolving cereals for sale. Fresh fruit, some pancakes, all whizzed past my saddening eyes, until I met the offer of a hot Japanese breakfast.

Component parts of the 'Full Nippon' include grilled fish, hot rice, some pickles and a bowl of miso soup. At best this is an elegantly simple way to start the day, at worst a grease free belly filler, and Yo! Sushi's efforts fell somewhere in between. Good rice, excellent miso soup, and a tasty piece of salmon that in an effort to be more 'fun!' had been liberally and unnecessarily smeared with a spicy marinade. More effort with the pickles would have been welcomed and the inclusion of a salad that was so lifeless it looked like it had been grilled with the fish, only served to strengthen my feeling that British airport restaurants don't actually care what they serve their customers.

But walking away I felt full and content, and for only £5 I didn't feel cheated either. Nice try Yo! Sushi, but maybe Breakfast! doesn't need that extra exclamation mark.

Coffee Cake, Finsbury Park

Coffee Cake
4 Blackstock Road
Finsbury Park
N4
020 7704 3100

by H.P. Seuss

Opened: 9am, Tuesday 19 September, 2006

Sun sign: Virgo

You are the Zodiac's virgin maiden, clean and white, unsullied and unassuming. You are helpless, eager and obliging, hoping to spread goodness through sweetness. You belong to the 6th astrological house: that of service. "Bite me" you say, giggling, "and protect me", fixing the gaze.

You are an elemental feminine force, offering sensual comfort: frangipan cakes and custard tarts, quiches and focaccia, eggs and muesli of a morning. Your ruling planet, Mercury, speaks of a strong mind/body connection; your ingredients are well-sourced. You are fair and so are your prices.

Poppy Tartt, a freshwater Pisces, found her croissant too salty. H.P. Seuss, a saltwater Cancer, found his eggs more muddled than scrambled, his mushrooms bland, but his sourdough wonderful. Virgo is more baker than chef. A plum and rhubarb tartlet was a stolen kiss.

You are fussy and fastidious. There is a certain snobbery in you, a judgement of your customer which will irritate him, even as you collapse into his arms. You fall easily into hero worship, unconsciously modelling yourself on men you look up to. The City and Islington College, the fine modernist cube up the road, hasn't failed to notice your imitation of his bold, sleek whiteness. Curves would be more becoming. Your fridge buzzes ever so loudly. You are a bit annoying.

Virgo's unplucked status may leave her permanently frustrated. Only in a truly loving relationship will you fulfill your earth mother potential. In your eagerness to please, you often make unsuitable choices. You hope your Ottolenghi-style elegance will raise the tone of garbage-strewn Finsbury Park. Beware cruel, dirty men who will take your cakes and leave, or worse, walk on by, oblivious.

The Pineapple, Kentish Town

The Pineapple
51 Leverton St
Kentish Town
NW5

by Hashley Brown

How often do I wake up with a throbbing head and a deep-seated unnatural need to eat? How often then does that need translate into dithering, mind-numbing indecision as to where to find fulfillment? And how often then does the Pineapple appear on my list of possible venues? Always.

It feels a bit naughty. It's a pub you see and they don't really do breakfast. They don't even do coffee, but they do serve a great ham, egg and chips, and in my book that's a meal with a pork and egg ratio of an incontrovertible breakfasty nature.

The tale of the Pineapple is one of lore, and one that I can never quite remember. It involves it being a great pub that was about to be butchered into flats and then was saved by some famous Primrose Hill types standing proud amongst the disaffected locals, and so it stayed a pub that stayed great.

They have a pretty beer garden, lots of old rickety furniture and an enormous collection of pineapple-shaped stuff. In fact the only place there wasn't a pineapple was on top of my thick moist slice of hot gammon ham. But what was there instead was a lovely fried egg surrounded by hot crispy chips. The leaf salad that came with it reminded us that as it was 2pm it was probably officially lunch (although I'd argue that breakfast is a state of mind) and the lack of a coffee machine means the tendency to accompany this ham with a bloody mary is exponentially increased. But then again, I'd argue that on a sunny Sunday that's not such a bad thing either.

Acoustic Cafe, Newington Green

Acoustic Cafe
Denver Road
Newington Green
N16 5JH

by H.P. Seuss

"Now, miliy moi", said Peshka, proferring two clenched fists, "which is it to be?"

The café was pale amber, with a Mediterranean air and a mercifully unfulfilled promise of live music. It reminded Peshka of Aleppo, site of his famous Philidor rebuttal in '56. He insisted that I wheel him outdoors to take the plein air, though there was not, in truth, a great deal of air to take on that bright white day.

I nodded at his right hand, which revealed an ivory pawn. "White you are", he said, his legs twitching under a tartan shroud.

A waitress hovered. Knight took coffee; king took tea ("black or white?" — indeed!). Both took Full English. Time took toll. We launched into a perfunctory 1) e4 e5, 2) Nf3 d6, 3) Bc4 Nf6? 4) Ng4!

The waitress shimmered back with our plates. The mushrooms were pawns, weak and many, nimble supporters of bishop bacon and knight banger. The bread was queen, precious and everywhere. The egg was a poached king, fresh and kindly. The beans, sequestered in a separate dish (have the chefs of N16 taken the hint?), were fragrant rooks, key endgame players. The tomato was a draughtsman, a boy in a game of men. The whole was quirky but satisfying.

Play continued: 4)... d5 (the tempo was mine) 5) exd5 Bc5 (prompting a Queen's side castle from me later) and 6) b3 (for the fianchetto). We exchanged queens. My bishop held his king in a mortal grip. I feared for faded Peshka, who sighed throughout, reminiscing about the Baden-Baden bienniale of '37, site of his infamous Gambian gambit.

But just as I was mopping up the endgame, Peshka sprung a trap so fiendishly intricate, so perfectly simple, I nearly choked on my knight. Bean took bacon, mushrooms were outflanked, my egg was swamped. "Checkmate", said Peshka.

I looked up — and he was gone.

The Pancake Café, Bloomsbury

The Pancake Café
28 Museum Street
Bloomsbury
WC1A
020 7636 2383

by Vita Bicks

Bloomsbury smiled in the balmy September sunshine as we took our seats on the pavement outside the Pancake Café, filled with the benevolent optimism that only a sunny Saturday morning can bring. We settled on spinach and cheese pancakes for me, bacon and apple for Mr Bicks, and scrambled eggs on toast for our charming companion, who knows what she likes and likes what she knows. Our choices made, I went up to order, and that was when the problems began.

“Two coffees, please,” I opened.
“Tea?” asked the man behind the counter.
“Coffee,” I replied.
“Cappuccino?”
“Just filter coffee, please.”
“Cappuccino?”
“Filter coffee.”
“Latte?”

And so we continued, until he threw me off the scent entirely with an offer of beer. At 11am. Beaten, I retreated to my seat and hoped for the best.

The food, when it came, was equally odd. The pancakes, crispy and frangible, resembled nothing so much as poppadoms. Mr Bicks’s apple appeared in the form of uncooked slices, while the top of his pancake was, in a moment of truly cherishable strangeness, buttered. The only problem with our companion’s scrambled eggs was the fact that they were, unequivocally, an omelette. Salt and pepper, delivered to our table on request, turned out to be pepper and pepper. I began to wonder if I was dreaming.

The food at the Pancake Café wasn’t awful, exactly; it was just… peculiar. The celebrated bon vivant Sir Clement Freud once famously remarked that, “breakfast is a notoriously difficult meal to serve with a flourish”. Were it not impossible to imagine him partaking in such unaccredited fare, one would be tempted to assume that here was where his moment of insight had occurred.

Ponti's, Stansted Airport

Ponti's
Landside Concourse
Stansted Airport
Essex
CM24
01279 664098
www.pontis.co.uk

by Hashley Brown

Skulking on the outskirts of our great metropolis, Stansted Airport stands as a throbbing beacon to mediocrity. Spiritual home to the cut-price airlines who have single handedly robbed international travel of the last vestiges of mystery and panache, it embodies at all times of day the desperate unhappy masses - queuing, delayed, hungry.

So it was that on a bright Sunday Morning I found myself betwixt Hibernia and Scandinavia ensconced in Stansted's cavernous interior. Hopes are never high when in transit as airport catering has become synonymous with over-priced rubbish, but a glimmer of hope flickered when i saw the familiar Ponti's logo. Not haute cuisine but readers will no doubt be familiar with the 24-hour sausage sandwich potential this chain of Italianate Cafés offers to the East End nocturnal reveller.

Yet how cruel the Gods. From the self service line-up to the final half-finished meal this was deeply upsetting. Aside from the sizeable herby cumberland that divided my plate like a porcine meridian, I had queued up for, splashed out on and emotionally invested in sub-standard canteen food. The scrambled eggs resembled the humble oeuf in name only, the mushrooms were so watery that there was a synchronicity in their swimming, and the bacon? Well it was just cold, because I had to queue for so long to pay for it.

I fear, dear reader, that the airports are taking us for fools. Perhaps it's time for flyers to demand fair fayre.

Starvin' Marvin's, Greenford

Starvin’ Marvin’s
BP Service Station
Central Parade
Western Ave
Greenford
UB6
020 8998 5132
www.starvinmarvins.co.uk

by Poppy Tartt

According to legend, a tornado swept across Kentucky fifty years ago, carrying off the state’s homesteads and restaurants. Luckily for the residents of Greenford, Ealing, a freakish gust carried one shiny aluminium train carriage of a diner clear across the Atlantic and dropped it, intact, just at the edge of the B452. Unfortunately the staff fell out somewhere over Ireland, but the owners managed to hire a few local girls, dressing them in impolitely tight black trousers and advising them to consider each order as carefully as if it was a GCSE exam question.

Authentic American diner Starvin’ Marvin’s is, according to their motto, ‘not just a diner, but a way of life’. The first booth we were shown to had one seat so squishy it might actually have been padded with American pancakes. This is going too far, I thought.

As you might expect, we ate the American breakfast: two eggs, two pancakes, bacon and maple syrup. The portions were small enough to justify their confiscation under the un-American Patriot Act, but we later came to believe that excess is the mother of regret. The bacon was the grey, overly curly kind that looks as if it has been grated from the pig with a giant pencil sharpener and picked up off the sty floor some time later. Still, it all tasted all right – even if the cook had translated ‘over-easy’ as ‘over-pretty-tricky-actually’, as in, turn the eggs over, do some tough algebraic equations on a chalkboard provided for the purpose, then take them out. And it’s my belief that the cook was not a mathematician.

Kentucky is a long way from Greenford, Ealing, but then so is Hackney. Long journeys can diminish destinations unfairly. By the way, the bit about the tornado was a lie.

Fifteen, Shoreditch

Fifteen
15 Westland Place
Shoreditch
N1
0871 330 1515
www.fifteenrestaurant.com

by Yolko Ono

This was my second visit to the wooden and faintly rustic domain of Jamie Oliver. I steamed in late and was ushered in by a chummy waiter. Numerous staff – both waiters and chefs - bustled around the open plan kitchen on the ground floor, giving it a vibrant but not hectic buzz. Apparently Fifteen’s profits go towards taking on 30 unemployed youngsters every year to train as “the next generation of chefs”.

My coffee, although served in charming crockery, was both too hot and stronger than Andre the Giant. As for my Full Monty, it consisted of tasty but slightly overcooked Cumberlands, sweet cured and perfectly fried bacon, organic fried eggs that were not too googy and not too firm, black pudding which I poked timidly but found a tad threatening for my foggy morning, chunky mushrooms that looked great but were ultimately uninspiring, and deep crimson Isle of Wight tomatoes, which were juicy and deliciously sweet. One of my buddies had the Bubble and Squeak, which was a good-sized portion that she could happily wolf it down without feeling more like a blimp than a bubble. My other companion chose the veg brekky, which at £6.50 is more “pukka” for your pound: creamy scrambled eggs, those big mushies and succulent tomatoes on sourdough. If and when I get back there it’ll be the veg brekky that gets my vote.

It’s an enjoyable experience and I’ll admit the trimmings make it more so - the scented candle in the loo, the nice crockery, and the friendly but not overbearing staff, and of course the “love Jamie O xxx” on the base of every menu left me feeling all warm and fuzzy. Cause he really cares.

The Prince Regent, Herne Hill

The Prince Regent
69 Dulwich Road
Herne Hill
SE24
020 7274 1567

by Orva Easy

It was an unsettling morning. The weather could only be described as weird, possibly even spelled with a y. Humid, blustery winds buffeted us and made plastic bags and old newspapers dance wildly along the street. Dark clouds loomed but never made good on their threat. Everything looked yellowish, as though it had been lightly buttered. In other words, it was the kind of weather you get just before an alien invasion.

Reasoning that should said invasion occur we might not get another opportunity to fortify ourselves for a while, my companion and I made determinedly for the nearest breakfast establishment – in this case, the Prince Regent pub.

The menu, on a blackboard in the non-smoking, wood-clad dining room, was small but adequate. After one of those brief flirtations with the idea of eggs benedict, we settled on a full English for me and kedgeree for my adventurous companion, plus a rather nice bottle of Sauvignon de Touraine. The kedgeree was pleasant, but the curry level and generosity of fish (and indeed the colour, which was approaching pistachio) were found wanting. The traditional English was just that – juicy mushrooms, flavourful grilled tomato, a large and meaty, if not particularly memorable, sausage, piquant bacon and a slightly underdone egg. As requested, they held off a little on the beans. I found the hand-written addition of a 10% service charge rather impudent, especially since the service was fluid at best. As a polite English person, I would no doubt have left more otherwise. Fools.

One is hardly spoilt for choice, breakfastly-speaking, in this still not fully gentrified part of town, so the morning out-diner could reasonably venture here. But it is somewhat lacklustre and hardly a satisfactory coda to the end of the world as we know it.

Special Dispatch: Agora at The Copper Kettle, Cambridge

Agora at The Copper Kettle
4 Kings Parade
Cambridge
CB2

by Poppy Tartt

Ah, Cambridge. Little ornamental teapot of a town, sloshing full of the tealeaves of the future, a place where great minds hide inside mousy-looking women sporting fish plaits and unfashionable coats, and there is a preponderance of bicycles.

One morning I found myself here, visiting a great mind, or perhaps a great aunt, it's hard to recall. In my mouth my tongue lurked like a pumice stone. A gong was beaten, announcing the mistakes of the night before. I murmured "oh god"‚ repeatedly. As if my stomach hadn't been punished enough, my thoughts had turned to breakfast.

The Copper Kettle is not, as its quaint name might suggest, the historic site at which great literature incubated whilst a woman affectionately known as Dot served imperfect eggs to swaggering poets - though it does exhibit an emphatic range of copper kettles. It was once, I am told, a rather horrible canteen frequented by the elderly and certain students obsessed with the chic of rubbish places, but these days it has been buffed up and anaesthetised, like a granny on a holiday.

My breakfast was a battle, the site of a war between food and its faithless competitor and sometime lover, the hangover. In between routs I managed to enjoy a rare pair of sausages and bacon, lashings of bread and marmalade for afters. The unfortunate tomato, to which the grill had barely blown so much as a kiss, was jilted twice, and drowned.

Meanwhile a pair of Japanese tourists held hands earnestly above a roast dinner; two old ladies in their Sunday best bent very low over scones, whispering about the twenties, while a mysterious foreigner forked her way through a whole plate of scrambled eggs. In my teacup, the leaves of the future stuck ominously to the sides.