Big Jones, Chicago, USA

Big Jones
5347 N Clark St., Chicago
773-275-5725
www.bigjoneschicago.com

by T. N. Toost

I found myself, on 5 July, breakfasting with a former Tokyo dominatrix, a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu champion/stand-up comedian, and a prostitute.

I could have predicted breakfast with Natsuki and John; she has been my best friend since college, and it was natural that I’d want to meet her amazing new boyfriend. Having breakfast with an honest-to-God prostitute was something I never would have predicted. But the previous day, the Fourth of July, we’d all gone over to pick Nora up at her apartment – or, rather, one of her apartments, because she did business out of one and lived in the other. She called it the “HOstel.” She asked if we wanted to come up to see it, and, in reality, I didn’t, but I did anyway to be polite, and, in reality, I kind of did want to see it.

Prostitution is something that I intellectually believe should be decriminalized. People should be able to sell their services and their bodies in any way they wish, provided they don’t harm others and are not being exploited. Plus, to a certain extent, we all sell sex in some way; as Brendan Behan once quipped, the difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs less.

At the same time, I had a visceral negative reaction to being in a functioning brothel that I never would have anticipated. Standing in the living room of her work space, next to a strap-on dildo and variously sized paddles and two massive deer heads hanging on the wall, listening to a detailed account of how long it took to paint the 20-foot walls, and how the massage table only cost $150, and how they had to have a pile of new sponges for washing toys, and how they had elaborate plans to soundproof the rooms from the family living below them – standing there, I realized that my arms were tightly crossed in front of my body, and my mouth was drawn grimly against my teeth, and that I was very, very uncomfortable. I forced myself to uncross my arms and relax my face, and I listened, without comment, to a story about the fight she was having with her landlord to get a separate buzzer for her room so that her clients could be independently buzzed in and wouldn’t be seen by the clients of her partner.

Writing this, one week later, it strikes me that she is actually running her business pretty professionally – the only thing that gives it any salaciousness is the fact that society is so hung up on sex. She has to think about how to report her income, and securing business, and competition, and advertising, and government overreach, and land use issues, and overhead. She has databases to check whether potential clients are deadbeats, and online forums to discuss new business developments. When she goes out of town on business, she calls it being “on tour,” and she has to find places to work, new clients, and negotiate fees ahead of time to cover her travel expenses. And she thinks of little details, like filling her fridge with coconut water and cans of San Pellegrino. She didn’t say this, but I think she had San Pellegrino because of the foil cap on the cans that you peel back in order to sip it. It makes people like me feel less worried about drinking it; the foil acts as a condom, keeping germs from getting on the can and thus to my lips. I sipped it, delicately, as she told us that one of the persistent hazards of her work was sharting.

Prostitutes also pay close attention to their health. As she sat across the table from me that beautiful, clear Chicago morning, she was sweaty, after having biked 15 miles along the shores of Lake Michigan. When the food arrived, she had a huge plate of buckwheat pancakes topped with raspberries; they were gluten free, and she paired it with a Sazerac. I had “Eugene’s Breakfast in Mobile, circa 1930,” a dish inspired by a jazz musician who decided to become a chef. The catfish was delicious, the breading was light brown and flaky, the plantains and beans and rice were all seasoned perfectly. I washed it down with strong, black coffee.

And then there was the question of etiquette that might only come up when dining with a prostitute. I had no problem passing along a piece of catfish and plantains to her, but then she reciprocated. When she cut off a piece of pancake, placed a raspberry on top, and passed it onto my plate with her fork, I paused. She saw five clients a day, at times, and I thought of the dildo on the wall, and remembered how she had licked powdered sugar off of her fork as if it were a lollipop. That was the same fork that had speared the raspberry and the pancake and then had dropped both pieces of food onto my plate, on the edge, so it wouldn’t mix with my food. I swallowed hard for a second, considering how I might decline.

But I didn’t. She was my friend before she was a prostitute.

And her pancakes were, admittedly, delicious.

The Terrace Cafeteria at the House of Commons, Westminster

The Terrace Cafeteria
House of Commons
Westminster
SW1A 0AA
(MPs, certain staff and their guests only)

by Marge E. Reen

Parliament is prorogued—ie on a break between one session and the next—and the MPs are, according to the press, ‘on holiday’ but actually they’re more likely to be in their constituencies worrying what to do about UKIP. It’s a May morning just after the local council elections and I take advantage of the calm by having a leisurely breakfast in my workplace. The Terrace Cafeteria is where I come most days for lunch but, as I don’t want to end up like Sir Nicholas Soames, I don’t usually breakfast here as well.

The Terrace is comfortingly old-fashioned with a Pugin-tiled serving area and a wood-panelled, green-carpeted dining room which overlooks the Thames. According to a friend who went to one, it’s like being in a boarding school refectory, and on this unseasonably rainy morning, I feel especially cosseted from the outside world. Modernisms have crept in—to my dismay they now have an electronic screen, which announces the menus of the day, but, for the most part, it’s as unchanging as Michael Fabricant’s hairdo.

At 10 am the Terrace is busy with burly builders, fat policemen and thin researchers. The canteen staff are, as ever, friendly and professional. Breakfast items sweat gently under a heat lamp on the serving counter. I take one rasher of bacon, one sausage, one hash brown and one spoon each of scrambled eggs, tinned tomatoes and mushrooms along with one small cup of filter coffee. All this comes to £3.60. An absolute bargain. It tastes good too. The scrambled eggs are creamy, the sausage herby and plump, the bacon entirely decent and the hash brown a slightly naff guilty pleasure. I do like the fact the tomatoes are tinned as fresh tomatoes can be so hard and tasteless. The mushrooms are a particular delight: unctuous with dark, savoury juices. After all this I feel ready to stride the corridors of power and look David Cameron straight in the eye should I bump into him, which of course I don’t.

Op-Egg: Why I Hate Going Out for Breakfast

by Fyodor Toastoevsky

Before moving to London from a sleepy West Midlands town I’d never given breakfast 'out' much thought; it was only when time or location necessitated it that I’d reluctantly take my eggs à la God-knows-whom, and it was precisely because it was necessitated that the food’s quality had never really mattered.

The difference between a greasy spoon breakfast and a breakfast at home is enormous; I have time for the former, as I am unlikely to prepare myself a white bap stuffed with bacon and dripping with grease and brown sauce. Therefore, when, on occasion, I have found myself eating a greasy-spoon breakfast, I have treated it as a different beast and thoroughly enjoyed it for what it is.

Here, in a city offering a chance for real community, though, I have found myself, for the first time, seeing people actively going out of their way to eat breakfast away from home despite having easy access to their kitchens, ample time and good ingredients. Somewhat naively, I  initially took this to mean that breakfasts ‘out’ in the capital were a cut above the rest.

I will beat around no bushes here; I am a scholar of homemade breakfasts. I am an expert in eggs, an artist in accompaniments and a maestro of the multitasking required to produce a fine breakfast. I was not born with these expertise; I worked on them weekly, with dedication and love, for even from a young age I could see the value inherent in them. Given that these are, with just a little patience, skills quite within our mortal grasps, it seems ridiculous that we should go through life without honing them, and absurd that we should spend the veritable bags of money requested by twee cafes to consume a love-starved and unsatisfying breakfast.

I do understand spending money on dining; if nothing else it’s probably the best way of experiencing cuisine you may not at home. Breakfast out, however, is beyond my comprehension. Its creation is neither a complicated nor an expensive procedure; yet when we eat it out we often spend a sickening amount just to have it as we wish. I mean, damn it, I shouldn't have to pay extra for coffee (or again for a second cup, should I wish it) and certainly I shouldn't have to do so for the basic privilege of bacon, as a fellow contributor once had to at Stoke Newington's Blue Legume. For a comparative drop in the bucket, I can feed a table of friends a lazy weekend feast the likes of which cash will not buy in the outside world.

Finances aside, it is a joy to prepare one’s own breakfast. There is no rush, there is no inexplicable wait, there is no want for space, and most importantly of all, the food is good and plentiful, every time. There is also, damn it, as much coffee as we like.

"But!" I hear you clamouring, "the washing up! The time! The effort of it all!" - well, to quote Theodore Roosevelt: "Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…", and let's be honest with ourselves; investing a little time in achieving the perfect start to your weekend is surely a sacrifice of far more worth than casting a fistful of money at a small plate of lukewarm non-breakfast and a cup of coffee you have to savour.

I implore you to remember the home-cooked breakfast, each of which is your own work of art, never quite the same twice. Don’t risk your valuable time and money on the whims of stony-faced cafe staff and nameless breakfast chefs.

Take control of your breakfasts and you take control of your weekends; take control of your weekends and you take control of your life.

Erba Brusca, Milan

Erba Brusca
Alzaia Naviglio Pavese, 286, 20142
Milan
Italy
www.erbabrusca.it

by Maggie Arto

The phenomenon of brunch has arrived in Italy, though I guess, fairly recently. The late-middle-aged gent on the adjacent table, enjoying a chilled red with his wife, leans over to our plate of pancakes and enquires which item on the menu they are. “Pancakes di farino di riso con semi di papavero e bacon,” I say, with the thought that if the word “pancake” has not been widely adopted into the Anglo-Italian vocabulary, they must not be particularly prevalent. But good pancakes they are: rice flour with poppy seeds; light, wide rounds; slightly sweetened, with thin, almost caramelised bacon atop.

Erba Brusca is situated alongside one of Milan's canals, on the outskirts of town. The city was once weaved with these mercantile waterways, which Leonardo da Vinci worked on in the 15th century, but most were covered over by the 1930s, leaving only certain strips open to the air. Wandering along the banks towards our reservation, we’d spotted a pair of dancing cyan dragonflies, and so were already feeling peachy as we sat down on the early summer’s terrace and our mimosas arrived. The owners have spent time in New York – as you might imagine what with the pancakes and the typical drink types – but in New York they don't always make mimosas with freshly squeezed blood orange; nor do they consider a hamburger, or roast beef, an item for brunch (or do they?). 

Indeed, the other “brunch” plates are more of a lunch affair, though executed with a freshness that is welcome for the first meal of the day. I have cured trout in pink slices, horseradish cream and fat redcurrants, with mustardy leaves picked from the garden. Here, we could be in Sweden. My companion chooses a panzanella of fried stale bread, cubed cucumber, basil and plentiful ripe tomatoes, dotted with buffalo milk mozzarella that tastes like the pastures of Lombardia itself. This mix of salty carb and proteins is befitting of brunch – and say what you like about Italians, but you can't fault their tomatoes. There is an egg dish - fried with salsiccie and asparagus - that called itself “Eggs Benedict”, but we don't order it. It looks more like a Spanish huevos revueltos; another breakfast item so lost in translation it ended up close to lunch. There are a couple of baked goods, including a plum cake made with ricotta (plum cake, in Anglo-Italian equals moist madeira-like cake, nothing to do with plums), which people are treating like dessert. Perhaps the only thing that truly distinguishes brunch from other meals in Italy, I think to myself, is its occurrence on a Sunday – that, or the absence of pizza and pasta from the menu.