The London Review of Breakfasts

"Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper." (Francis Bacon)

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Special Dispatch: Fire Bar and Bistro, Mawgan Porth, Newquay, Cornwall

Fire Bar and Bistro
Mawgan Porth
Newquay
TR8 4BA
01637 860 372

by Eggmund Hillary

If ever a breakfast was in need of being ‘comfort food’, this was it. After a six-hour drive from deepest Brixton to the heart of Cornwall, we arrived just before sunset at a beach with perfect waves breaking, one after the glorious other. We opted to set up camp, have a leisurely dinner and rent our surf boards the next morning. However, the morning sea which confronted us bore an uncanny resemblance to a sheet of glass, a pancake, or a Belgian landscape: no ripple, no movement, no hope.

Thank heavens for the Fire Café. The friendly welcome, delicatessen-filled shelves and bright red and orange interior lightened our mood. We ordered two full English breakfasts (one veggie, one meatie) and settled down on their wooden-board terrace with delicious lattes plus Saturday papers. A large sign read ‘To whoever broke a glass bottle in the car park, you clearly have no children, and no morals’. As signs go, it made a change from our usual ‘Firearms incident outside McDonalds. Can you help? Call the Police on…’.

A waiter came out to check that we had ordered. Seeing my girlfriend he did a double take. He was in love, clearly. Totally smitten. Though not with her - it was her bright yellow VANS cap he was after. For the first of four times in all he placed his foot up high on our table to show off his “Cornish tartan’ VANS trainers.

The breakfast? Absolutely delicious. Eggs cooked to perfection, hash browns just the right side of crispy, wholesome buttered brown toast and veggie sausages that for once didn’t taste of peas and carrots that had been pre-masticated by a herd of cows. With a platter as comforting as this, even a lack of waves and the repetitive presence of a foot on the table were no distraction whatsoever.

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