Ozone Coffee Roasters, Shoreditch

Ozone Coffee Roasters
11 Leonard St
Shoreditch
EC2A 4AQ
ozonecoffee.co.uk
020 7490 1039

by Homefries Bogart

My breakfasts on the internet have taken a skyward theme. The last visit had seen me enter a cloud and this time I was in Ozone, although oddly both places seem to be at street level. And they told me my research was off. Hah! 

I am not an early breakfast person, which is why at 9am, overlooking the chefs from my bar seat at Ozone Coffee, I was surprised to have ordered a ricotta maple pancake with candied walnuts and dried fig. 

Pancakes are not my area of expertise, but it was safe to say that neither I nor my Belgian or Canadian companions had ever seen a cake of such tectonic proportions. I mean this thing was the Earth's crust, a 'platter' pretty much the size of Tibet. I tried to explain this to a fellow baker later on in the day, and he didn't understand a word I was saying.

Was it any good? 

The Canadian wasn't sure. It was a little cakey for her. The Belgian was politely speechless (probably still taking in the vastness). But I say yes.

It wore its size with confidence. Its crispy crust alone was probably thicker than most other pancakes. I felt like I was on the breakfast table of Honey I Shrunk The Kids. In Tibet. 

It was on the cakey side, but that's not to say it wasn't fluffy and light. The maple syrup had drizzled through nicely, and although I thought I was going to get away with it, ended up ordering a tad more, which I do every time. 

I find that when fruit comes with a pancake it can make the affair a bit polite, but the combo of the ricotta, walnuts and dried fig had an elevated earthyness and did a damn good job at telling the bacon where to stick it. 

Perched up high in this spacious urban coffee shop with benefits, I was ready to climb down the mountain and be on my way. A few raised eyebrows from my new Ozone friendlies at the almost emptied plate and I was out the door wondering where breakfast will take this adopted Antipodean next.

The Breakfast Bible: what people are saying

Last updated: 26 February 2013.

Here is a round-up of what everyone's been saying about our book The Breakfast Bible.

Eleanor Morgan, The Observer: "Is it funny as well as practical? Of course... Among the lovely breakfast recipes from around the world, the book has surreal interludes such as the page dedicated to a dream Freud once had about a breakfast ship... We say: Seb is to breakfast what Brian Cox is to space." [Read more]

India Knight, on Twitter: "This book about breakfasts is a small masterpiece." [Link]

John Koski, Daily Mail: "Food Book of the Week: What a sizzling-in-the-pan treat it is, a witty, informative and irresistible celebration of the history, philosophy and practice of the ‘most important meal of the day’. Like one of those build-your-own-breakfast menus, this is a book where you can pick and mix whatever takes your fancy and be guaranteed a rewarding read." [Read more]

Extract in the Financial Times here: "The meaning of breakfast: is it the best meal of the day? A new book looks at the idiosyncratic – and delicious – dimensions of the morning meal."

Stylist Magazine: "Every witty, wise and wonderful thing you can do with words about the first meal of the day is found in The Breakfast Bible."

John-Paul Ford Rojas, (front page of!) The Daily Telegraph: "Seb Emina, author of The Breakfast Bible, said that swapping a proper breakfast for a rushed meal on the way to work might be responsible for giving people the feeling that they were much busier than they really were." [Read more]

Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian: "Should we talk over breakfast? Heavens no, argues Seb Emina, author of The Breakfast Bible... My fear is that Emina is legitimising the insane sensibilities of the morning grump who refuses to engage in human interaction until they've had their coffee." [Read more]

Oliver Pritchett, The Daily Telegraph: "Breakfast is the best time for couples to talk, I believe. Although Seb Emina, author of The Breakfast Bible, has suggested that we eat our corn flakes without exchanging a word, I’m convinced this is the time when the quality of communication between husbands and wives is at its peak." [Read more]

Virginia Blackburn, The Daily Express: "Seb Emina has just come up with the best piece of advice I have heard for years: people should not talk during breakfast. "If there are other people in the room don't feel obliged to speak to each other," the author of a book called The Breakfast Bible said." [Read more]

Amy Verner, The Globe and Mail (Canada): "The author of a new book titled The Breakfast Bible is quoted in the Telegraph as telling BBC’s Radio 4 that people need not ‘“feel obliged to speak to each other”’ nor ‘“feel offended if the room is completely silent.”... Anyone who devotes a whole book to breakfast – musical accompaniments, recipes, international fare and more – might simply be making a case that we should be eating better before the noon hour." [Read more]

Agenda, The Independent: "Bring some serious joy to that most important meal of the day with this new book of recipes, tips, essays and musings." [Read more]

Richard Godwin (contributor), Evening Standard: "At the London Review of Breakfasts — the online journal established by my friend Malcolm Eggs in 2005 after a slightly disappointing experience in a Kentish Town greasy spoon — we have come to view breakfast not only as an excellent source of puns, but as the embodiment of the city." [Read more]

Maddy Hubbard, The Mancunion: "While firmly focused on the subject of breakfast, the form is more literary than food blog.... Clearly, this is a man that respects breakfasts and treats it with due reverence and sincerity. One would be a fool to visit London without referring to the London Review of Breakfasts, and now his new book will enable lovers of breakfast to create the perfect breakfast at home as well." [Read more]

Hot List, Fabric Magazine: "Chock full or recipes, advice, illustrations and oh-so-appetising info on everything from famous last breakfasts to Freud's breakfast dream, this is the most important manual on the most important meal of the day." [Read more]

Jessica Carter, Fed Up and Drunk: "Within its almighty pages, this book holds a wealth of divine knowledge, supreme guidance, and righteous advice that (I reckon) we could all do with in our lives – especially first thing in the morning." [Read more]

Henry Jeffreys, Henry's World of Booze: "It’s a book to cook from and to savour in bed. As a contributor to the book and the website, I can with all disinterest say that it’s timeless masterpiece." [Read more]

99 ways to have breakfast

Here's a guest illustration by Badaude featuring Oxfork in Oxford. To view, just click and enlarge:

Our book: The Breakfast Bible

Our book's cover

We love going out for breakfast but we also love staying in for breakfast. We love it when, while still lazing in bed, we decide what we want and then realise we have the ingredients we need. We love the comforting crackle of a grill full of bacon and the promising hiss of a tea-bound kettle. We love it when it all comes together just so and we sit down to a plate on which the food is hot, the yolk is runny and the toast is buttered, and there is a hot drink, and a cold drink, and our guests are delighted and our day is already worthwhile. That's not to say we don't love the solitude of a breakfast before work, the way in which we strive to make the morning's toast, porridge or cereal just a bit better than yesterday's. We love that too.

Simply put, we love breakfast – all of the breakfasts, all of the time.

So we are pleased, excited and a little nervous to announce the publication of our book, The Breakfast Bible. Published by Bloomsbury, it will hit the shelves on the week of 11 February 2013. There really couldn't be a better week in which to release a book about breakfast than one containing both Pancake Day and the inexplicably forgotten Collop Monday, on which it is traditional to gorge your face with loads of bacon and eggs.

The Breakfast Bible is in part a compendium of recipes for the classic and time-honoured dishes of breakfasting tradition around the world. Alongside an exploration of the magic nine ingredients of a full English breakfast, it contains methods for everything from eggs Florentine to the perfect Bloody Mary, as well as the best pop and rock songs to boil an egg to ('Listen to your Heart' by Roxette is one perfectly-timed song) and a note on Sigmund Freud's 'breakfast dream', which we think gives a new insight into his true beliefs about what drives us all. And much more.

The book was largely researched and written by a team of five – Emily Berry Richard Godwin, Henry Jeffreys, Peter Meanwell and me. But in the spirit of collaboration from which this website was born, there are contributions from breakfasters across the world.

To be honest, Bloomsbury have created an object so beautiful that it almost doesn't matter what we wrote.

Find it in your nearest bookshop or online, for example here at the Foyle's website, here at Bloomsbury or here at Amazon.

Seb Emina, Editor-at-large
3 February 2013