Let's call it a morning

Ten years ago today, I launched this blog. Today I'm closing it. Well, not closing it so much as letting it be. The 522 reviews (and op-eggs) it contains, written by 106 contributors, will still be available to read, but this will be the last new post.

By way of goodbye, here's a 'best of' list of sorts. Not of the best places to eat breakfast, but a very small sample of personal favourites from the countless surprising, funny and strangely touching pieces that have showed up over the years.

Although I hope it has sometimes proved useful, this site has only ever been roughly fifty percent about breakfast. The rest has been about seeing what we could get away with. This annoyed some casual readers. 'Your spry and flippant musings are irritating, and irrelevant,' one complained. Spry, flippant, irritating – fine, maybe – but irrelevant? Impossible. The point has been that nothing is irrelevant when it comes to breakfast.

So here's the list. It was difficult to compile, and I compiled it too quickly. And if this website still attracted comments other than from users with names like 'Car Service Gatwick', I'd ask: 'what were your favourites?':

Cereal Killer Cafe, Shoreditch by Haulin' Oats
Killer.

Cora's, Montreal by Poppy Tartt
Cohen.

Daiwa Sushi, Tsukiji Fish Market, Tokyo by Hashley Brown
Briny.

The Dervish, Stoke Newington by H.P. Seuss
Militia.

First Great Western Railways, Swansea to London by Moose Lee
Benedict.

Frank's Cafe, Southwark by Evelyn Waughffle
Conga.

Maison Bertaux, Soho by Gracie Spoon
Kenickie.

Paper Moon Diner, Baltimore by Joyce Carol Oats
Sandwich.

Republican Party Pancake Breakfast, Brunswick, Ohio by T.N. Toost
Romney.

Yummy's Cafe, Spitalfields by Blake Pudding
Gonzo.

Workers Cafe, Archway by Fi Tatta
Heartbreak.

You know what – just look at the full list. They're all great. Click one at random. Do it. Now.

Malcolm Eggs

[Eggsit, pursued by a bear]

Aung Myint Thu Teashop, Kayah State, Myanmar

Aung Myint Thu Teashop

Main road, near Taung Kwe Pagoda

Loikaw, Kayah state

Myanmar

by Daw Aung San Mue Sli 

Standard hotel breakfast fare in Myanmar is a disgrace: cardboard white bread, plastic margarine from Singapore, once-fried now-cold eggs, and a fried rice and a fried noodle option if you’re lucky. Watermelon slices, whether or not they are in season, despite the fact that down the road is a market overflowing with the sweetest, tangiest, freshest pineapples, mangoes, papayas, etc. Weak Lipton tea, usually in a pot used interchangeably for serving weak and bitter coffee, and tasting like a sad mix of the two. Milk powder.

 

This dismal state of affairs provides the best excuse for an early morning hunt for a teashop.

 

I left the hotel in Loikaw, skipped the Shan noodle option opposite the hotel, and wandered down the hill toward the pagoda. (Kayah state is mostly Christian and animist, but true to form the Burmese have plonked a bunch of stupas on the limestock rock that sticks out over Loikaw, as they do with most sites of natural beauty in Myanmar.)

 

A little teashop nestled in a small row of small shops caught my eye. I approached. They stared. Ah – you have itchagwe (a fried dough stick – when fresh from the fryer, better than any doughnut). They smiled. But it was cold. Do you have any hot itchagwe? No. An awkward pause. But would you like Nepali roti? And how would you like your tea?

 

They ushered me inside. I sat down at one of the four tables, facing the small TV. It was showing Death at a Funeral (not recommended), with the cleavages smudged.

 

The tea was brought first. The teamaster presented it and, grinning, pointed out that it was made with fresh milk, and he had given me extra ‘mi laing’. It was true. There was extra boiled milk skin in there, and a few shiny fat globules too. Heavenly.

 

His wife made the roti. It came with a tiny bowl of Nepali curry and a tiny bowl of tomatoey spice. Chillies had been chopped and pounded into the roti mix, and perhaps there was some potato in there too.

 

They told me that an Indian who worked for Telenor had come here every breakfast during his stay in Loikaw and eaten three rotis. I managed two. They were of Nepali gurkha origin; she moved down from Kalaw in Shan state (which has a larger Gurkha population) to marry him twenty years ago. They had opened the teashop in March or April; before that they lived in a village outside Loikaw and farmed. The name of the teashop ‘means the successful one’.

Pasticcio, South Hampstead

Pasticcio
16 Northways
South Hampstead
NW3 5EN
020 7586 0333

by John le Café

I have elaborated previously on my trials, tribulations and near tragedies when it comes to finding a good breakfast spot in and around West Hampstead. Well, fear not regular readers, just before I moved house and started my search anew I finally found somewhere in the vicinity of Finchley Road. It was only a ten-minute walk away and as all serious weekend breakfast eaters will know, any further than this is simply unacceptable.

Not too café and not too caff; seemingly an Italian café but serving a full English: like Goldilocks before me, I had finally found one which was just right. A few people were eating pasta and one even seemed to be having tiramisu but most of my fellow patrons on this early Saturday lunchtime were, like me, indulging in a fry-up.

The staff were friendly and the menu was long, featuring both pasta and fried breakfast variations. I briefly considered copying the man in the corner with the seafood pasta, and though this passed quickly I made a mental note to one day try something new, even if just a bolognese. I doubt this will ever happen but it is nice to daydream.

The fry-up I opted for was £4.50 with tea, or more for coffee, and came with bacon, beans and short, fat and succulent sausages. They were the Danny DeVito of the sausage world, if, in fact, he is succulent, which I rather suspect he is. All the other usual suspects were there: too many mushrooms, a superfluous tomato and a lack of toast (only one slice cut in triangles). Subsequent visits, which I happily squeezed in before leaving the area, have shown that replacing the tomato with extra toast is one of the best decisions of any weekend.

The coffee was excellent. I even pushed the boat out and ordered an orange juice, freshly squeezed by a huge machine which looked like it could pulverise more than just citrus fruit. One sip of the sweet but also slightly sour liquid and I was transported back to my childhood, to family holidays in Italy, to swimming in the Mediterranean, to frolicking in the hills and tasting real oranges for the first time. It’s strange, as we never went to Italy or the Med. We sometimes went to the beach in Hastings but even now I can picture my idyllic childhood spent gallivanting around Italy in a VW camper van stopping in every orange grove to buy from old Italian farmers with a twinkle remaining in their eyes from their mischievous youth. The orange juice really was rather good.

I thought my only complaint was going to be that Magic FM was on. The inane babble of Rick Astley and sugary pop had accompanied my breakfast but as I started to mop up the last of the beans with my toast, ‘Tracks of My Tears’  by the fabulous Smokey Robinson came on and my mind was made up. Not too cafe, not too caff. Just right. This one was a keeper, well until I moved more than ten minutes away.