Op-Egg: Advertisers, please just let bacon be bacon

by Hashley Brown
Walking to work the other morning I was assaulted by two wildly contrasting adverts for breakfast products. The first amazed me by how flawed it was; the other tantalized with its genius.

First off, for Weight Watchers bacon - "putting bacon back on the table" (or something) it screamed. I had to go back and check. It looked like a scene from ER, some sort of cauterized flesh, or healing scar tissue. This was bacon that had received a surgical procedure, precision engineered to remove every morsel of delicious flavourful fat. Probably with a laser. This isn't bacon in my book, it's bastardized pig flesh.

It troubled me deeply. If you shouldn't eat bacon because you're a bit chubby then hold off and eat it rarely, but eat good bacon, thick cut with all its flavour intact.

I couldn't shake this image until when rising up the escalator at Euston, like some pre-raphaelite vision of beauty a series of pictures flashed before me on one of those little TV advert things. "Saturday is breakfast day" it said as a flurry of close up, almost pornographic images flickered - an oozing poached egg, glistening almost weeping bacon - and then a big pack of Lurpak butter. This is more like it. Proper breakfasting should be sexy, indulgent and full of delicious fatty stuff, not some ascetic self-flaggelation. That's what muesli's for.

Paris Cafe & Sandwich Bar, Hoxton

Paris Cafe & Sandwich Bar
140 Hoxton Street
Hoxton
N1 6SH
020 7684 7407

by Paddy Hashbrown

What is Paris? Croissants on the banks of the Seine. A cafe noisette in Le Marais. Reposing in the Shakespeare bookshop near the Notre Dame. It can safely be said that enduring breakfast at "Paris Cafe" in Hoxton Street on a drizzly Sunday morning is not redolent of the dear French capital.

I am hoodwinked into visiting this emporium of grease 'n' mediocrity by a combination of a growling stomach, an out-of-bounds kitchen and sheer undiluted desperation for sustenance. I enter, relieved after trundling for twenty minutes round the grey roads of Hoxton. The smell of fried bacon entices and like Pavlov's dog I curl up at a window seat. I flirt with the idea of beans on toast, toy with the idea of a mushroom sandwich (despite a horrifying experience the week before at the Sheperdess on City Road) and salaciously eye up the Cafe Paris fry-up.

"Breakfast number 2" I mutter, eyes matted with sleep, stomach empty of last night's thimble of tomato soup.

I glance around at the clientele. A family nearby decked in noisy Le Coq Sportif apparel square up over the missing contents of The People. "Hooz got the sports sekshun? I don't want the telly guide. Where's the flippin' racing guide? Where's me flippin' breakfast? Oi! Waitress!"

I decide that I'd happily wait 30,000 years for my breakfast but to my horror it arrives within mere hours. I didn't order hash browns. I hate hash browns. What's going on? I didn't order sausage either, and certainly not three glistening cylinders of microwaved ersatz pig. Ah, rejoice, beans. If Britain was built on beans I can surely erect a tarpaulin of beans over the rest of my order. Where's my mug of tea gone? Ah yes, I drank it in one hours ago.

I leave a few minutes later, five pounds poorer and three mouthfuls fuller.

Never before in the history of greasy spoon documenting has so much food been wasted by so hungry a critic.

Blandford's, Marylebone

Blandford’s
65 Chiltern Street
Marylebone
W1U 6NH
020 7486 4117

by Shreddie Kruger

A trip to Blandford’s is not an undertaking one must, erm, undertake lightly. It requires days of planning and a clear schedule. A typical breakfast will take around 349 days to arrive. It’s the Guinness of the breakfast world – good things come to those who wait.

You must be prepared for the sort of surly service that makes you wonder how they stay in business. The guy in charge tends to wear faded jeans so tight you wonder whether he sprays them on in the morning. Or whether he put them on when he was 12, realised they were irremovable and was therefore doomed to wear them for the rest of his life. The look is topped off with an equally hugging, and no less fetching, white t-shirt. My hypothesis is that tightness of clothes is directly proportional to grumpiness.

As you order you get the feeling that he’s wondering whether he can be bothered to serve you. Maybe it’s all a bit too much effort. Or he doesn’t agree with your choices. It’s the sort of aloof charm that I love.

On a quiet weekday morning we were in the company of a very mixed crowd – two chaps in hi-vis vests pored over the financial column in the Daily Sport and a charming, bohemian girl was penning the finishing touches to her debut novel. Meanwhile we were admiring the tea coloured wallpaper and a faded mural from a Swedish naval battle that typifies the offbeat-retro-nostalgia this joint exudes.

Having had our request for a refill of tea dismissed, our breakfasts arrived. My “Blandford’s Special” consisted of an expertly fried egg, 2 rashers of sublime bacon that had been basted with extra grease (bravo), some oily mushrooms, some unwanted and wooly tomatoes and a disappointing sausage. I’ve only just twigged that it was the same components as Little Chef at Popham and had exactly the same flaws. The sausage was cheap and nasty, but without the Pot Noodle factor that would have redeemed its filthiness and the tomatoes were big and fluffy like car dice. It pains me to write this because normally everything is perfect. I wimped out and chose toast over fried bread, which, redeemingly, came cut at a jaunty angle.

Whilst my breakfast was uncharacteristically mixed, Ed’s scrambled eggs, bacon and beans could be held up to the rest of the class and an example for others to copy. Textbook stuff.

We emerged with the best part of a year taken off our lives, but full of beans to take on the rest of the day. Just remember, if you’re going to go to Blandford’s, make sure you’ve told your next of kin first. Otherwise, you’ll be gone so long they will send out a search party and report you to missing persons.

Cafe SO, Tower 42, Broadgate

Cafe SO
Tower 42
25 Old Broad Street
London EC2N 1HQ
www.tower42.co.uk

by Bloody Mary

Today, I breakfasted where I work - a security threat called Tower 42. It is my favourite skyscraper in London, a scored metal behemoth shaped in the celtic bud of the Nat West symbol, with a proud glowing blue head. Tower 42 used to be the tallest building in London but whilst it now stoops limply beneath Canary Wharf, its style keeps it firmly entrenched in Londoners' affections. Eerily, floor 13 of the tower does not exist - or rather, it is physically there, but in permanent darkness. No lifts stop there and the fire escapes block it off. Rumours of CIA/MI5/FSB headquarters abound.

The new Cafe SO at the bottom of the Tower is a "deli cafe". A deli cafe is a US freemarket invention, minus any nod to US customer service. A purchase involves pointing and grunting at someone dressed in plastic who probably hates you, in order to make up "sandwiches" from filmy, multicoloured filling variations plus mayonnaise, a choice of iceberg or a tomato slice, served on any of a choice of breads (all of which seemed to be bagels). Pre-coffee, it’s an imposing assault course. I know how to point at things, as I am a brilliant shopper. However, I am a terrible cook. I don’t know how foods like to be combined. This is why I go to restaurants.

Big steel army vats of “fried breakfast” were a nice addition to the sparse sandwich “bar”. The sausages looked sizzlingly hot and everything was sparklingly clean. It is difficult to miscombine a fryup, but I only knew everything was clean because most of the vats seemed to be empty. This at 8.30, their busiest time.

Though the staff were friendlier than anticipated, it’s unavoidably claustrophobic to breakfast at the bottom of a skyscraper. The heaviness of the floors above you, suits around you and hours before you weigh on your choices. I panicked. I chose anything that looked pretty. I pointed at prawns, then at an inoffensive bagel, then at cheese. This didn't taste as good as I had hoped. Thankfully the coffee - hot, strong and foamy - washed away the taste.

Café SO is challenging. Some people like challenges, but I’m afraid I need more help with breakfast. I might have to leave the plotting to the spies on the thirteenth floor.