Brighton Dispatch: Si Signore, Sydney St

Si Signore
12 Sydney St
Brighton
BN1 4EN
01273 671 266

by Sebastian Forks

It is Sunday. It is the afternoon. I am with my family. My son is pale. He is grunting. My wife can’t walk. I am hallucinating. We are yet to eat breakfast. We turn into Si Signore. It is almost empty. A man with a large moustache sits in the corner. He is sitting at a table for one.

A waiter approaches. He is wearing waiter clothes. He smiles apologetically. He sits us in the window. It is raining. We read a giant menu. My son wants a full English. I would like one too, but I am being a vegetarian. I order a veggie breakfast. My wife goes for a plain baked potato. I think the time and the menu and the man sitting in the corner have confused my wife. We are meant to be having breakfast.

My veggie breakfast arrives. What is this? There must be some mistake. There is a bowl in the middle of my plate. I look in the bowl. There is some red liquid in it. A light orange lump is floating in the liquid. It is the baked beans. The baked bean bowl is surrounded by a very small fried egg, some mushrooms, two sausages, toast and some broccoli. The sausages are the deep fried bars of vegetable mixture served up to vegetarians in the days when vegetarians didn’t eat proper vegetarian sausages on account of the fact that they reminded them of the sausages they should not eat. I poke one with my knife. A pea pops out. I examine the egg. It can’t be much bigger than a bull’s eye. The broccoli... I have never had broccoli for breakfast. It looks like it has been boiled or fried, and then buried in dried herbs. I take a bite. I am overwhelmed by oregano. I cannot swallow. I look at my wife.

‘Is that broccoli?’ she says.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Oh,’ she says, grinning.

My wife’s plain baked potato arrives. It is a bit bigger than my egg. It is surrounded by bits of lettuce. The lettuce is not dressed. It looks like grass. I grin at my wife.

‘It looks like grass,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘How’s the broccoli?’

My wife eats the potato and the lettuce in under a minute. She turns to my son. My son is fine. He does not seem to have noticed his bowl of beans. He has not mentioned the size of his egg. There is no broccoli on his plate. He is piling everything onto a piece of toast. There is blood in his cheeks and he is smiling and beginning to speak in words. My wife asks nicely for a bite of his bacon, and a sausage, and some mushrooms. They smile at each other.

When we finish, the man with the moustache gets up. He is tall and big. He goes behind the counter. He does some calculator stuff on the till. He hands me the bill and asks if everything was to my satisfaction. I look at the bill: £21.60. Yes, I say. I look at my son and my wife. They are grinning at me.

Op-Egg: National bacon week - time to pick sides

by Blake Pudding
I have commented in previous posts on unnecessary Americanisms creeping onto the British breakfast menu: English muffins and ‘French Toast’ for example. I have, however, noticed the opposite trend: lumpen English tastes inveigling their way into American-style breakfasts. Twice recently I have ordered that diner stalwart pancakes and bacon, and been give something closer to a piece of boiled gammon than the crispy bacon that I was expecting. It did not go well with the pancakes (though part of me thinks the whole idea of having bacon with something sweet is so inherently stupid that perhaps the flaccid bacon was actually a joke by the chef.)

As I am sure readers are aware, it is national bacon week. This is meant to be a time for celebrating the pig but I can’t help wondering how easily it could descend into factionalism or even civil war. On one hand there will be the no-nonsense Roundheads of the back bacon army and opposing them the Cavaliers of the porcine world, the smoked streaky eaters. At stake is what do you think the purpose of your bacon to be. The Roundheads say that it should be all about piggy meat whereas the Cavaliers demand crisply rendered fat even if it strays dangerously close to Catholic pancetta.

I make no bones about finding back bacon an aberration against breakfasts. If that makes me a Popish traitor in the eyes of most Englishman then so be it. I know that the true bacon is the streaky and the back an usurper who crept in probably around the time of Cromwell (I might have to do a bit more research on this.) Our American cousins’ crispy bacon culture is actually how things used to be over here. Of course they have taken it a little too far and made theirs positively brittle. And what is Canadian bacon (essentially ham) if not an attempt to distance themselves from their powerful neighbours to the South?

So this national bacon week, decide where you stand. Back or streaky? Are you with me or against me?

Homa, Stoke Newington

Homa
71-73 Stoke Newington Church Street
Stoke Newington
N16 0AS
020 7254 2072

by Mariah Dairy

I went whilst still recovering from the trauma of a fry-up a few blocks down at a place called Lydia's. Lydia, or someone who had been trained in her cruel ways, served me the worst breakfast I have ever paid for, leaving me entirely paranoid about this cupcake-heavy stretch of eating establishments. But despite (somehow it's never "because of") conforming wholly to the liberal North London cliché of sourdough, bugaboo pushchairs and locally smoked salmon, Homa turned out to be a tremendous place to eat breakfast.

There's comfortingly spacious minimal décor, all big elegant bay windows and a nice front garden. My Italian sausages were wonderfully fennel-y, nestling against perfectly grilled tomatoes and some sweet little button mushrooms fried in herby butter. The sourdough passed the squishing your tomato-on-top-test with flying colours, holding firm against the omnipresent threat of decomposition. And to top it off, my god, two of the best fried eggs imaginable: the Ritz compared to Lydia's Travelodge.

My companion was very pleased with an Italianised Eggs Benedict - sourdough topped with poached egg, speck ham, provolone cheese and hollandaise. And we were both pleased by the coffee, which had that proper, caramel coloured layer of crema rather than the silty, burnt offerings of too many cafes in the area.

Homa is a good place. It's worth coughing up the extra £3-4 for the Italian sausages alone. Never again will I be tempted to risk the terrifying fingers of brown meat so beloved of Stoke Newington's less reputable haunts. I sipped fresh orange juice: it made me feel as if I too could obtain the rosy glow of our fellow diners, gleefully bouncing angelic chubby cheeked children on their knees.