The London Review of Breakfasts

The Delaunay, Covent Garden

2012-01-16T11:11:00.001Z

The Delaunay
55 Aldwych
Covent Garden
WC2B 4BB
020 7499 8558
www.thedelaunay.com

by Malcolm Eggs

Christmas Eve at Paddington Station. People are everywhere. Cases trundle, big hanging clocks flip between digits, hungover men and women trot along platforms, panicked by the strangely widespread notion that 8 minutes is not long enough to walk the distance of 4 carriages.

Me? I am in WH Smith, in a huge queue, waiting to buy a magazine. I wanted to grab it quickly but it is now on the verge of being untenable because, on this entirely predictable bottleneck of a day, they have decided to employ just one till operator. Understaffing! It is the bane of English life. How many times has it led to me waiting in huge, bored crowd at a bar? I want to buy a drink and their reason for existing is to sell it to me but they can't, because of a misguided austerity measure. Or being told in a hipster restaurant, "I'm sorry, but there's a huge wait and everything will be substandard because we have so many customers today". My dear restaurant, I always reply (inside my mind), do you believe in what you do? If so, you should expect to be popular.

I think wistfully back to my birthday, of eating breakfast at The Wolseley's new sister restaurant The Delaunay. It is the epitome of not having an understaffing problem. When I arrived at 11.31am I was consulted by no less than three staff on the implications of missing the breakfast menu (several egg-based dishes, they established, were still available to me courtesy of the a la carte menu). After being led through to a spacious and classy room (dark wood-panelled walls, monochrome marble floor tiles) I sat, spellbound, and watched the restaurant's remarkable - almost naval - systems at work. What were the ranks and roles? There were at least seventeen staff compared, at this time of day, with thirteen diners. Some wore black suits, several wore waistcoats and others were all in white. A few had aprons. The majority wore light grey ties, while two or three sported darker ones that seemed to give them huge amounts of authority. I saw a dark-tie quibbling with a light-tie about using the wrong sort of tablecloth.

Five of them attended to me during my breakfast, which was eggs Arlington (£8.50) - i.e. what most places call eggs Royale, or Benedict with smoked salmon in place of ham. My over-riding impression was of its neatness. Several sheets of smoked salmon were shaped - by a team of salmon shapers, no doubt - into a thick orange wheel whose edge at no point breached the muffin perimeter. A tidy circle of yellow Hollandaise shone out from its centre. The effect was of a kind of triple brunch eclipse. The whole thing towered to around 6 inches high. It tasted very good. The egg was perfectly poached. The salmon tasted reasonably well - if a touch cost-effectively - sourced. If the muffin was homemade, I salute them for replicating the delicious qualities of a mass-produced muffin so accurately.

On my right, two ladies with necklaces on the outside of their rollneck jumpers discussed whether or not to have the schnitzel. Almost everywhere else, waiters huddled in pairs or threes. They would confer and glance around; then one would suddenly break free and deliver a message to someone 18 feet away, who would respond by hotfooting it to a knife that needed wiping. Mini-processions marched to tables carrying trays of coffee, teapots, wine, cocktails...

"Next please." I am roused from my daydream by the woman at the till. She calls me forward and I pay for my magazine. During the time it takes Christmas, New Year and early January to occur, I will stand in several more queues caused by willful understaffing. Often I will think back to The Delaunay and wonder if it could be the model for a different, happier version of England. I conclude that this would definitely be true for the 'customers', and probably for the 'dark-ties' as well.

The University Women’s Club, Mayfair

2011-11-26T15:52:00.002Z

The University Women’s Club
2 Audley Square
Mayfair
W1K 1DB
020 7499 2268
www.universitywomensclub.com

by Seggolène Royal

In the United States, from whence I hail, the word “university” is synonymous not with learning or advancement, but with breakfast. Eighteen year-olds across America leave the bosoms of their families to go to “college,” living in dormitories and having to look after themselves for the first time with no parents to supervise. Those dorms feature dining halls where the students have paid to take part in meal plans which allow them unlimited amounts of food per meal. Half buffet-style, half food court, in my day you could get any variety of foods at a moment’s notice, from pizza to burgers to boeuf bourguignon, although today the better schools probably have sushi bars and gluten-free options.

Breakfast is the meal of champions, however, and that is where we all packed on the infamous Freshman Fifteen. An amuse bouche of yogurt, an appetizer of Lucky Charms, French toast with scrambled eggs and bacon for the main, a side order of waffles, and for dessert a granola bar on the way to class. I look back to those breakfast days of 1996-7 and feel at once revolted and nostalgic.

Given this implacable association between breakfast and university, it seems appropriate to discuss the breakfast on offer at the University Women’s Club in Mayfair. It was founded in 1886 by Gertrude E.M. Jackson, a graduate of Girton College, Cambridge, who got together some of her best friends from school and decided to start a women’s club to rival the men’s clubs from which they were barred. After moving around to several different addresses, in 1921 the ladies of the UWC adopted the present building, which has the distinction of having been used as a model for the house in Dorothy L. Sayers’s 1936 detective tale The Haunted Policemen.

I was able to visit the UWC earlier this month thanks to my alma mater, Barnard College, which has worked out a special arrangement: when visiting London, we can go and stay there for a discounted rate. The rooms are spartan but comfortable, the dining room cheerful and elegant. I did not run across any haunted policemen. Left to my own devices in a cushy upstairs hallway, I took a few minutes to commune with the Victorian founders, whose photographs hang on the richly striped walls. Those august women stare out in sepia, unsmiling, unaccustomed to arranging their features for a camera. What were their breakfasts like, I wondered?

Indeed, what are breakfasts like in English university dining halls? I have some vague supposition that they are overseen by stern-faced dons in gowns, Lucky Jim meets “Oliver!”. I was not to find out. When I went, the University Women’s Club was uniquely peopled by the American alumnae of Seven Sisters schools, who seemed to be there on some kind of reunion. They compared notes on former schoolchums:

“Do you remember Dorothy? Dorothy Feinberg, is her maiden name?”
“Dorothy Baumberg?”
“No, Feinberg. Nancy was in Cushing, we were in Cushing together.”
“Oh, well, I was in Strong, that’s why I didn’t know her.”

Cushing? Strong? A Google search reveals these to be the names of residence halls at Vassar College. These women would have graduated back when, like Barnard, Vassar was an all-girls school. I was the youngest person there, except for somebody’s granddaughter, who wore a black velvet bow right on top of her head, a calf-length black dress, and black lace-up boots. She looked exactly the way the Victorian founders’ granddaughters must have looked.

I read the paper and smiled at my fellow diners as they discussed their respective hometowns: Boston, New York, DC. The waitress indicated a buffet where I could serve myself. The breakfast was not as copious as it would have been at an actual university, but it was sufficient. For £6.50, there were croissants, various cereals, including muesli, Rachel’s yogurt (reason enough to make a person move to England), a bowl of fruit, toast, coffee, several kinds of juice, and tea. Unfortunately, given that I have developed a gluten allergy since my university days, I had to skip the toast and the heavenly-looking jams in favor of muesli in yogurt with honey. (Yes, there is gluten in muesli, but not as much as in toast, or so I tell myself.) The muesli was quite good, except that it was filled with enormous chunks of dried yellow fruit the size of small dominoes. If you like that mystery yellow fruit, this must be a huge bonus. I however prefer a more even ratio of dried fruits to grains. I isolated the offending fruit in a corner of the bowl: no harm done. The coffee was perfectly nutty and the milk warmed. When I left, I took a banana for the walk to class.

Breakfast from America: Christie’s Cabaret, Cleveland, Ohio

2011-11-09T12:24:00.004Z

Christie’s Cabaret
1180 Main Avenue
Cleveland
Ohio
OH 44113-2325
USA
+1 (216) 574-6222
[NSFW!]www.christiescabaret.com

by T. N. Toost

Gina sat down with us and immediately started talking about her life – how she taught mentally disabled kids, how she had a very smart 11-year-old son, how she picked up a couple of shifts here on the weekends to make ends meet. She made more here, she said, than teaching. I thought she was bluffing about her Masters degree until she started talking about taking her son to Occupy Wall Street because it was a unique opportunity to show him what could be historically important protests – “sort of like the real Tea Party, Hoovervilles, or any of the Marches on Washington over the last fifty years.” To her, all of these protests were about normal people with normal lives who did something extraordinary (“in the real sense of the word”), then went back to their lives, thus truly participating as Americans in the Washington/Cincinnatus mold. OWS was something that she wanted him to experience, and as she talked her leg pressed against mine and I commented on it.

“It’s not rocket science,” she said, leaning in and grinning seductively in the half-light.

Then we talked about the restaurant, and America. Like she said, it wasn’t rocket science. Everything was thoroughly considered and organized for specific reasons, each of which understood and manipulated human nature in order to get generally predictable results. One group, generally the minority, took advantage of and exploited the masses, but the masses only subconsciously felt their exploitation. Indeed, most of the time they thought that they were privileged just to be there. I was surprised; as a woman, then, did she ever feel exploited? Never! Nobody, she explained, could ever be exploited against his or her will. It was people like me who were the dupes, she and her peers were the ones in charge, and we, as dupes, didn’t even realize it. She was part of the ruling class, taking peoples’ money at will, struggling, getting rejected, and, when someone owed her money, an entire phalanx of hulking brutes existed solely to materialize out of the shadows and bully debtors into coughing up cash.

I felt my eyes opening.

I was about to ask her about the Greek debt crisis and whether she thought Perry or Cain had a chance against Romney when our Christie's Omelets came. Beau was talking to an Asian girl, an accountant, and she and Gina got up to powder their noses while we ate. The omelets glistened with grease, looking like monstrous wet burritos. At first bite they were amazing. The thick-cut bacon came in curled-up squares, spilling out of the sides; the vegetables were pliant; it exploded with cheese and the eggs – of course we had to get eggs – were wrapped tightly around the filling, keeping everything hot and moist. The second bite, though, was a little less impressive, the third less still, and after the fourth bite I was starting to wonder if I could eat any more. Five minutes later I pushed the plate away, leaving a good quarter of the omelet on the plate along with a thick layer of orange grease.

Then there were breasts in my face, Gina’s breasts, and they pushed against my forehead, my nose, my chest, my stomach, my legs, leaving a trail of perfume which washing could never expunge. It only lasted a moment, though, and I left unsatisfied. They promised much, but in reality we were the ones being impoverished by a minority just for the privilege of chasing a dream. Feeling slightly nauseous, we paid and walked out; the entire way home, my bowels rumbled, dissatisfied with the omelet and with something less tangible.

Patisserie Valerie, Marylebone

2011-11-03T15:00:00.004Z

Patisserie Valerie
105 Marylebone High St
Marylebone
W1U 4RS
020 7935 6240
www.patisserie-valerie.co.uk

by Mack Muffin

Patisserie Valerie was formed in Soho’s Frith Street in 1926, by the pâtissière Madam Valerie – a formidable woman, by all accounts, on what the history books now describe as ‘a mission to introduce fine continental patisserie to the English’. How delightful. How impudent. How French.

Since moving to Old Compton Street in a va te faire foutre to the Luftwaffe, twenty or more franchises have sprung up in the capital alone – with only the one on Marylebone High Street, to my mind, maintaining the left-leaning, quasi-intellectual ambience of the original.

It was for this and other similarly pretentious reasoning that led me to spend every afternoon there while writing my first novel, a laptop being the only clue to my contemporariness. I was otherwise the picture of pre-War Rive Gauche chic; a twenty-first-century Hemingway, but with a northern accent.

Two hours was, happily enough for this workshy writer, the optimal time to type a bit and consume un café American, but what enticed me first to Patisserie Valerie – pre-novel, pre-pretention – was the breakfast.

Nevermind the anachronistic eastern European staff in 20s garb, or the fact that sitting outside renders any cooked meal too cold to eat halfway through – something about the breeze in Marylebone, perhaps change in the air – the scrambled eggs are divine. Buttery, creamy, sloppy; no word in the Earth language, ē sounding or otherwise, can do justice to the perfect marriage of taste and texture in those eggs.

Nevermind having to add the butter sur la table to triangulated toast – really, who does that? – or the redundant sprig garnish, or indeed the impossibly enormous plates that make for an amusing game of pass the parcel, shunting anything not immediately of use (sugar, par exemple) to adjacent diners. The eggs are divine.

I should say were, as my most recent trips to the chain – not to Marylebone, I might add – have dealt what can only be described as a crushing blow, far worse than anything those pesky Nazis could muster, to Madam Valerie’s ‘mission’. One can only hope that in Marylebone, at least, Madam’s legacy, and my atavistic artistique pretention, lives on.

Special dispatch: Gusto, Cape Town, South Africa

2011-10-30T13:56:00.007Z

Gusto
117 Hatfield Street
Gardens
Cape Town
South Africa
+27 (0)21 461 7868

by Flora Ashley

This morning Cape Town was brought to a grinding halt by an hour-long power cut. Never the most productive of workers, Capetonians – who have a deserved reputation for dropping everything and heading to the beach at the merest opportunity – looked out of the window, saw that the weather was gloriously sunny, and decided to call it a day.

The tourists looked happy. Not because the city was on an impromptu holiday, but because – at last! – this was Africa. Here was the ‘real’ Africa – or, if they’re American, Ah-frica – of unexpected and unexplained blackouts. If only a cow or two – or even just a goat and some chickens – would wander through the CBD then the experience would be complete.

However much they seem to like Cape Town, one always has the impression that tourists are a little disappointed by how... familiar the city feels with its rows of Victorian terraces, hipsters and artisanal coffee shops. Suddenly their flack jackets (what do they keep in all those little pockets? Malaria tablets? Emergency quinine rations?) and head-to-toe khaki outfits seem strangely out of place.

My friend E and I saw two particularly mournful Germans while eating breakfast at Gusto on Saturday. We were sitting in the pretty courtyard of a Georgian building, and half of the blackboard-walled cafe was taken over by earnest white, middle-class women with their yoga mats, and I wanted to shake the tourists by the shoulders and shout, ‘Cheer up! This is an essentially Capetonian experience! An anthropologist could not ask for a better case study!’

Gusto is in a part of town which has been heavily gentrified – even five years ago I wouldn’t have walked around the area – and serves ‘whole’ food. It does lunch and breakfast, and on weekends sells organic veg. Having pulled back from a slide into urban decay, the city is now littered with similar cafes specialising in seasonal cookery; Cape Town is yoga- and smoothie-mad; and there are more food bloggers than is sensible.

Our breakfast could easily have been served in Melbourne or San Francisco. On the other hand it reeked of Cape Town: from our cappuccinos made from Origin beans (truly the only coffee for the cool Capetonian), to the aggressively frothy apple and orange smoothie, to the food. This was not the kind of place that does bacon and eggs with beans and bubble.

E had poached eggs with roasted tomatoes and goats’ cheese: the eggs perfectly runny, the tomatoes charred and just this side of squidgy. (I say nothing about the cheese. I think it’s vile and an abomination.) I have a tremendous weakness for French toast, and it came with flaked almonds, cinnamon, and crème fraîche. It was almost perfect, but I don’t understand the vogue for making French toast with sourdough or ciabatta: it goes tough and tastes too much of bread instead of eggy deliciousness.

We ate, in short, with gusto. (Sorry.) And even the Germans – who had sighed and wondered why they’d travelled so far just to have croissants and coffee for breakfast – perked up and decided to walk down the road to Parliament, no doubt in the hope of spotting a coup d’état.

The Breakfast Club, Shoreditch

2011-10-19T12:00:00.003+01:00

The Breakfast Club
2 - 4 Rufus St
Shoreditch
N1 6PE
020 7729 5252
www.thebreakfastclubcafes.com

by T.N. Toost

Say you occasionally work with a man who is dating a divorcee with a daughter he charitably describes as a “free spirit.” Say you’re going to London, and the daughter lives there; she is American, but lived in Toronto for a few years and therefore says she’s Canadian because it sounds more sophisticated. She modeled when younger and studied French literature at uni and moved to London because the American city she lived in wasn’t exciting enough for her. Say you yourself have a healthy distrust of people who move because they feel too good for their current surroundings and have a thirst for adventure, because these people are the kinds of people who can’t make their own lives interesting and depend on others to do it for them – that these are the kinds of people who, thoroughly bored, are thoroughly boring. What kind of place would they suggest for breakfast? Further, why would you ever go there?

I found myself asking the latter question on a Thursday morning at the Hoxton Breakfast Club. The eighties décor gives one the unmistakable sense that an incredible amount of thought went into every detail, and serves as a wonderful reminder that good design doesn’t betray effort. There were unflattering high-rise jeans and shirts tied around small waists. Fairly good double espressos were trumpeted out by our waitress, and then a man with an amazing neon watch brought out the plates.

We’d agreed to split the All American and the Full Monty. My partner’s pancakes were nowhere near being American; small, dry, hard and cold, they barely benefited from some of the syrup that tried to pass as maple. The eggs were large and had bright orange yolks, which spoke well for them, but their watery tastelessness reminded me why I don’t often order poached eggs. The vegetarian sausage was a lump of mashed vegetables, formed into a patty and left on its own for someone to discover and not enjoy. My Full Monty was better – beautiful eggs, fried, with standard bacon, standard sausage, standard black pudding, standard etc. I liked the Espresso and the bacon, but only because the English versions are so immensely superior to what we usually get.

In the end, the answers to my questions should have been clear from the beginning: a girl who leaves the States for London seeking excitement would, of course, urge upon us a restaurant with a 1980s American theme serving an "American" breakfast, and this breakfast would, overall, be far inferior to what we would have gotten back home, and why we would have ever followed her advice in the first place would be something I would not know.

The Diner, Camden Town

2011-10-05T10:04:00.003+01:00

The Diner
2 Jamestown Rd
Camden Town
NW1 7BY
020 7485 5223
www.goodlifediner.com

by Fi Tatta

T hjs ujsibar fvj fwiw j thab nab ns wfru

It seemed to me that, dining with Malcolm Eggs, one ought really to let him pick the breakfast venue. His expertise is well-known, one worries that to do otherwise might seem an unwarranted slight.

Although we could not be said to know one another well, we had discovered certain peculiar symmetries; we are both, for example, speakers of the mostly-forgotten, unpronounceable language of Coh. Dreaming, as speakers of that language often do, in that tongue, we had perhaps already encountered one another in dreams. Perhaps not.

“Andiamo,” he declared, as he strode towards The Diner in Camden Town. Never one to refuse a challenge I retorted: “vado” and followed behind. Camden before noon is quiescent; we were the noisiest people on the street by far. And Malcolm’s trademark sword-stick cut quite the dash, tap-tapping on the pavement as we scurried towards that purveyor of fine American-style produce.

“Keep up!” he shouted back at me – he had already sat down at the red banquette seating and was perusing the menu. Evidently Malcolm had forgotten the war-wound which sometimes hampers me… or he had chosen to forget it.

Sublimely, the place was almost empty but not quite – affording us enough privacy to discuss the rather serious business which had brought us together. We ordered – the food arrived quickly, though not with unseemly haste, nothing was forgotten and the water – gods be praised – came with ice in and without being requested.

I thoroughly enjoyed the dish that was set before me; the elements which ought to be crisp were perfectly so, while those parts which should be sweet, damp, moist, were exquisite sui generis. The service, also, was charming – the waiter so friendly that I rather suspected Malcolm of flirting until he reminded me that his tastes lie in quite another direction.

He had ordered the “Hungry Man Breakfast” of eggs, sausages, beans, mushrooms and hash-browns. Breakfast connoisseur that he is, he had of course picked the place with care and the food was excellently done. Although I rather suspected that the sweetener supplied with my meal had not come from the sugar mines of Uruguay as Malcolm had promised me. Conceivably, he had been in jest.

Our discussion turned to certain private matters concerning the land of Coh which can scarcely be of relevance to the readers here; I thought little of The Diner until I came to write this short account of our expedition.

“No, no,” said Malcolm when he saw it, “it’s scarcely a review if you haven’t mentioned what you ate,” although he backed down when I explained, of course, that I had.

A note from Brazil: Casa Caminho do Corcovado, Rio de Janeiro

2011-10-01T12:00:00.002+01:00

Casa Caminho do Corcovado
Rua Filinto de Almeida 283
Cosme Velho
Rio de Janeiro
22241-170
Brazil
+55 21 2265-2124

by Nelson Griddle

Look at Brazil on the map and you’ll notice there’s a lot of it.

Come down to breakfast at the average Brazilian pousada (that’s 'bed and breakfast' to those without a smattering of Portuguese) and you’ll be compelled to the same conclusion.

At Casa Caminho do Corcovado in the hills of Rio, the banquet that is Brazilian breakfast unfurls each morning with predictable splendour. The meal begins with tropical fruit juices, then plates of chopped pawpaw, mango and pineapple, far fresher and juicier than anything you can get in the UK. Then scrambled eggs (perhaps a trifle too salty, and that is my only complaint), lovely soft white rolls, a variety of bread, butter, three different jams, coconut cake, ham and cheese.

Oh, and then there’s a fruitbowl just in case you’re still peckish. And did I mention the box of Frosties?

The Brazilians do not skimp on breakfast. The most important meal of the day is just as vibrant and plentiful as everything else in this big-ass (and I mean this in every sense) country.

At Casa Corcovada it’s mighty tasty too. The coffee surges forth from one of those thermos jugs where you have to press down on a top button to get the liquid to pour, the ones I always associate with coffee breaks at mind-numblingly tedious corporate training sessions. But the coffee that comes out of the thermos at Casa Caminho do Corcovado turns out to be excellent – fresh and hot and smooth. A worthy cure for too many Caipirinias the night before. But that is another story.

Mouse & de Lotz Cafe, Dalston

2011-08-27T09:46:00.000+01:00

Mouse & de Lotz Cafe
103 Shacklewell Lane
E8 2EB
0203 489 8082
www.mousedelotz.com

by Jane Rasher

As a former resident of Shacklewell Lane, I'd been feeling a tad ambivalent about Mouse & de Lotz. You know, out of that jaded sensibility that takes hold once you've lived in an inner-city neighbourhood long enough to pre-date its most recent innovators: 'But I was here first!' your inner pioneer wails. 'In the mornings of old, I used to be greeted by yellow bulletin boards crying murder, not a quaintly chalked menu offering sun dried tomato sandwiches, Square Mile coffee and zucchini cake.' Well, yes, but you didn't set up a light and airy deli-caff in a disused shop, did you? Well, no.

And with that realisation, I walked the 15 minutes from my ever so slightly grittier new neighbourhood, back down memory lane to breakfast with a former flatmate. Feeling like locals, we compared recollections of the 'bad old days' of 2007 and pondered the march of the artisan eatery and the impact on the area's traditional Turkish stronghold. Variety, we decided, was the spice of Dalston and who were we to stand, po-faced, in the way of multicultural entrepreneurship such as that of Nadia Mousawi and Victoria de Lotz? Well we'd be fools not to appreciate the good taste and humour that can couple mismatched charity shop-salvage tea cups with vintage postcards bearing such punchy annotations as 'Jesus was a cross dresser.'

I made a similarly un-PC faux pas when mispronouncing my order of Bircher muesli as if it related to Islamic dress. Not so clever now are we? But the waiter took it with good grace and tactfully explained the soaking process that distinguished the uncooked oat concoction from your Alpens and your Jordans. I was presented with a snazzy almond, passion fruit & natural yoghurt variation on Dr. Bircher-Benner's 1890s recipe; part sharp bite from the gem-like pulp, seed & flake topping, part milky, gloopy goodness beneath. My muesli was served up in a recycled Bonne Maman jam jar, which I think would improve most things, from flowers to frogspawn (which, if we're going for the gross-out vote, my brekkie did slightly resemble). Together with its deservedly reputed restorative effects, however, it was the perfect comfort food accompaniment to a lengthy monologue on the twin peaks and troughs of career and romance. By the time Esther could bear to listen no longer, this marvellous mush can only have improved. Would that more of life's pleasures were as amenable to distraction, and for £3.50 at that.

Workers Cafe, Archway

2011-08-05T15:58:00.003+01:00

Workers Cafe
740 Holloway Rd
Archway
N19 3JF
020 7281 5333

by Fi Tatta

A guy had broken my heart. Broken it like he'd intended to all along, like he'd been playing a long game since the day we met, broken it like he meant it.

He'd done the job thoroughly. My heart was shattered like the crazed glass of his dropped iPhone.

It's at times like these that one really needs breakfast. In my case, a dirty breakfast - the kind of breakfast that would meet my mood. Sparkling glassware and linen tablecloths and thick fingers of homemade bread would only have presented an appalling contrast with my inner despair. I needed a greasy spoon.

I entered the Workers Cafe in Archway (no apostrophe, no need to bother with such trivialities) in a haze of tears. And I ordered the breakfast, expecting lumpen eggs, grey sausages, a limp disaster of bacon. But, I was mistaken. Don't get me wrong. This isn't good food. It's bad food. But it's bad food done well.

There were piles of crunchy hash browns. Simple sausages with crisply browned skins. Fluffy scrambled eggs. A puddle of perfectly normal baked beans. There was even a little disc of bubble and squeak. It was the Platonic ideal of an ordinary fry-up, and yet how far we usually
fall from ordinariness. I would eat it again. In fact I have done. It had the simplistic comfort I needed, the sense that a breakfast just like this has been eaten many millions of times, will be eaten millions of times in the future.

It is a curious thing, the end of a relationship. You end up carrying around the shared secrets, the hidden invented mutual language even though the thing to which those secrets appertained is gone and the only other native speaker of that language is vanished. I imagine that ex-KGB agents still sometimes find codewords and ciphers playing on their tongue as I remember that exact way he would tap my shoulder three times very softly which meant, in our symbolic language "I love you".

And then, eventually, will we pull out the same tired words, the same once-adorable gestures, for a new partner, who will not know their origin? We hope that love will bring something new out in us each time, but perhaps that is only an illusion. We are who we are.

Breakfast, curiously, is a kind of solace for such thoughts. Perhaps there was once an ur-sausage, a first slice of toast. Probably there was some moment when we first tasted a fried egg. It is lost to us now. But the need for breakfast does not go away because the first breakfast is gone. More important than recapturing the perfect breakfast is accepting one's longing for breakfast, and being willing to take what delight is available in the breakfast before you.

I did not expect to be reminded of delight by the Workers Cafe. But I was.

Elmo's Diner, North Carolina, USA

2011-07-20T11:11:00.000+01:00

Elmo's Diner
9th St. Shopping District.
776 9th Street
Durham, NC 27705
USA
(919) 416-3823

by Joyce Carol Oats

Growing up north of the Mason-Dixon line, you hear rumours about what goes on beneath it. Sometimes you develop prejudices. For example, when I arrived in Durham, North Carolina, a former tobacco town, I had a very strong prejudice in favour of southern cuisine. How could I not? Buttermilk fried chicken. Red velvet cupcake. Southern Living magazine.

Some southern specialties have migrated north. Some have not. For my first Durham breakfast, I wanted one thing: biscuits and sausage gravy.

‘Biscuits and gravy?’ said Companion Primatologist, a vegetarian. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I am sure,’ I said. ‘Don’t you know that I am a culinary adventurer?'

‘Sure,’ said CP. ‘Right. I’ll have the blueberry pancakes.’

In retrospect, my reaction to the biscuits and gravy is somewhat surprising because, really, what did I actually expect? Scones with some kind of sausagey brown sauce? Right. What was set in front of me instead (with a side of grits, natch) was a plate covered in a white substance with small brown chunks in it. Newsflash: sausage gravy is sort of a thick, viscous roux with small chunks of sausage floating in it.

‘This looks disgusting,’ I said to CP.

‘These pancakes are delicious,’ CP said.

I prodded one of the white sauce-clad lumps with a fork. It did a slight wobble. So did my bottom lip.

How best to describe the flavour of a sausage-gravy covered-biscuit without comparing it to infant sick? I’m not sure.

Here, instead, are some other key facts: the grits were good (buttery, gritty). CP’s pancakes were fluffy and sweet. The atmosphere was lovely - lots of nice jolly Americans starting their days with big, hearty plates. The coffee was refilled frequently, in those nice thick indestructible white American diner mugs (you can buy your own, and thank goodness for that). I still love buttermilk fried chicken and red velvet cake and Southern Living.

It was also the first time I have ever gone out for breakfast and not finished my food.

Frank's Cafe and Campari Bar, Peckham

2011-07-03T23:16:00.017+01:00

Frank's Cafe and Campari Bar
10th Floor
Peckham Multi-Storey Carpark
95a Rye Lane
Peckham
SE15 4ST
0758 288 4574
www.frankscafe.org.uk
Open summer only (check website for dates)
Brunch served on Sundays and some Saturdays from about midday.

by Malcolm Eggs

It started with a broken lift and a walk up a staircase. It stank. It was an experience to make you wonder if this cult of the derelict and disused is really that much of a good thing. Is it to trick us all into accepting some inevitable descent into wet-floored impoverishment? But anyway, learn from our mistake - walk the route you'd drive if you were driving.

On the sixth storey we emerged into a system of ramps, empty parking slots and the outskirts of a group sculpture show. On the ninth storey a friendly girl in a wooden booth handed us a list of exhibits: we made our way up onto the roof past some polished steel bollards and two large inflatable rats. It was a sunny day. We ordered coffee.

A mystery: a barbecue covered entirely in fat sausages. They were making seductive, excruciating cracking sounds but the brunch board opened with "green salad" and ended with "Victoria sponge". Not a sausage to be seen. "Are they for the staff?" my companion wondered. But that would be an unusual cruelty - ten sausage apiece for the staff but none for those who had just braved the stairwell. When a waitress climbed up onto the counter and rubbed out half of the menu it seemed solved, but the 'Toulouse sausage £1.8' she added had its own strangeness. Just a sausage? Nothing else on the rejigged list - mushrooms on toast, chicken caesar salad - seemed so stark, so singular...

The service at Frank's is very relaxed. Waiting at the bar to order, I had leisure to switch around five times between endearment (it's a Sunday! I feel young.) and frustration (there are hardly any customers! Two of you seem to be working on one drink!). Our order was a charred aubergine dish with spring onion, feta and mint (£6.70), tomatoes on toast with aioli (£5), and sausage.

The aubergine arrived first, followed around ten minutes later ("it comes when it comes!") by the tomato-ast. It hurts a bit to think about it: it tasted so absolutely good. Warm tomatoes, laced with thyme, soaking balmy reds and oranges into bitter-sharp sourdough, were sweeter and lovelier than a kitten in a Kinder Egg. And at the risk of sounding like an idiot, the aubergine dish tasted a bit like an expensive sketch of Constantinople involving two or three wisps of smoke rising from behind various domed roofs. The mysterious sausage was nowhere to be seen. "The food comes when it comes!" they insisted, before realising the kitchen had no knowledge of our sausage deficit. Finally, a plate with two occupants turned up: the bangers were fatter than they were long, meaty and plump, crisp of skin and dense of centre. Just great sausages.

The view from Frank's hosts just about every iconic landmark known to London. I've heard you can see as far as Wembley Stadium but I always forget to check. This beauty is almost totally inverted in the form of the heinous horrors that dwell inside the festival-style toilets. Like a talented artist with a drink problem, Frank's delights and frustrates and is very easy to talk about.

Post-script: Weirdly enough, on the night of posting this review I happened to meet Frank himself, who completely agreed abut the toilets and was in the process of replacing them. The lift had been fixed, too.

A Little of What You Fancy, Dalston

2011-06-30T10:59:00.003+01:00

A Little of What You Fancy
464 Kingsland Road
Dalston
E8 4AE
020 7275 0060
www.alittleofwhatyoufancy.info

by Jane Rasher

...does you good, they say. It’s debatable, however, whether 'little' applies to the portions my friend Scott and I received at this, Kingsland Road’s first proper bistro.

Taking our cue from the bizarre, indecisive weather, we took half an hour to place our orders. But how could we not, when all about us was such intrigue? Given the unmarked door, it’s a challenge in itself just arriving. As you emerge, tacit congratulations are passed in glances from the other clued-up diners who've followed the trail of word of mouth and newsprint to this bonnie, bright interior.

A query of the origins of the Arnold Bennett omelette received a response of ‘something to do with Gordon Bennett, maybe?’ from the kitchen. I owed it to my English Lit. BA to half-knowingly order this offering, especially when I learned it was to be a smoked haddock and parmesan riot. I doubted the Edwardian author would have approved of such posturing, but Wikipedia assures me he was regarded as a bit of a social climber; this was his breakfast of choice whenever he overnighted at the Savoy. I tucked in untroubled. It was a gooey, nourishing creation beautifully offset by the bite of watercress and the zest of my freshly squeezed OJ.

Scott made short work of his homemade baked beans, eggs and bacon, and we were left in peace to natter and digest before moving on to Greek yoghurt and fruit compote. Fragments of damson-coloured plum and cherry preserves were a delight to dig out from a breakfast that thought it was a dessert. So much so, we felt we'd had a slap up meal.

Fancy is right - our food rang in at 15 quid each - but against the scrubbed salvage furniture, naked light bulbs and bare concrete floor, this also felt like an unfussy, wholesome treat. I didn't need Wikipedia to tell me that Arnold would have had seconds.

Nice Croissant, Wanstead

2011-05-16T13:55:00.004+01:00

Nice Croissant
119A High Street
Wanstead E11 2RL
020 8530 1129
www.nicecroissant.co.uk

by Egon Toast

The reveille is sounded for authentic British cuisine: that bespectacled chap Blumenthal is, as ever, at the forefront, his latest offering a meticulously researched trip across the UK’s historical palate. I can’t wait for the man to bring out a range of goodies aimed at the working man – ‘HB Sauce’, perhaps, a taste of the real, historic London, underscored with notes of tanners’ yards and stevedore sweat.

Out on the city’s periphery, blasted by economic imperatives, instances of venison scotch eggs or poached ling are thin on the ground – instead, the closest we get to heritage nosh is the dear old Full English, and the pie and mash shop. Wanstead High Street has one such example of the latter, an immaculate shrine to a food long past its sell-by date. But just down the road lies something even more delicious – a still-extant example of those first whispers of culinary exoticism from which we now flee.

‘Nice Croissant’ is big on wordplay, and le petit dej. Your favourite breakfast components – pork, cheese, egg – feature heavily, but instead of sitting on a pile of chips or a sea of beans, they’re shoved into a buttery crescent. They’ve picked up the boule and they’ve run with it.

So, I ordered a croque monsieur. Testing their range.

The bread was of the ilk that lives sweating in placcy bags on supermarket shelves, so had dessicated unpleasantly after its grilling. The bechamel carried few hints of excitement, but was sufficiently gooey, if unevenly spread. The ham: pellucid. Barely there. The cheese warmed proceedings up. It always does.

So – not a total dîner de chien, just slightly disappointing. But to improve matters, my latte arrived in one of those curvaceous mini-vases that seem to have fallen from favour, all moues and frothiness, giving the glad eye to my dining partner’s yeomanly mug of tea.

Beside us, some grandparents were treating the young ‘uns to a milkshake. Grandpère, middle finger eagerly following croissant detritus around his plate, listened patiently to tales from home and school. He looked askance at my latte, as every right-thinking elderly gentleman should: “Don’t take it too far, mate – this is Britain, not the bleedin' continent”.

Very on-trend.

US Dispatch: The Farm of Beverly Hills, California

2011-04-25T10:00:00.000+01:00

The Farm of Beverly Hills
439 North Beverly Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
+1 (310) 273-5578
California
USA
www.thefarmofbeverlyhills.com

by Emma Ricano

So I’m standing on stage (crate of Heineken) at the top of a North London pub (maroon carpet, vinegar smells) delivering pithy one-liners and the next thing I know, a stocky man in a black suit who looks like a budget version of Tommy Lee Jones is pumping my hand, “I’m gonna make you a star,” he says and thrusts a card into my sweating palm. Turns out he’s a top Hollywood talent agent who can introduce me to Mr and Mrs Money.

A few weeks later I’m on a plane to LA. I call Budget Tommy when I touch down. His assistant says he’s in a meeting and he’ll get right back to me.

Two days later he’s still in a meeting so I hightail it to Beverly Hills and cheer myself up with breakfast at The Farm. The joint’s got a sunshine coloured awning and is bathed in rays and happiness. Wish I could say the same for the waitress who is Surly As All Hell. She slams down my banana stuffed brioche pancakes with a side of whipped butter. She makes me so nervous that my palms sweat like a fat kid's and I drop the side of maple syrup clean onto one half of my pancake. I ask for more syrup and soak the other half. Ten minutes later I am high as Howard Marks.

On my next visit I feel guilty as a Catholic priest for indulging and pinch an inch on my syrupy hips. No casting director was going to hire me with a muffin top like that so I opt for an austere oatmeal. It is watery and grey and I decide then and there I could make better myself, so I do - I ask Surly As All Hell for raisins, muscovado sugar and milk and knock myself out with a new creation. I feel better – life gives you lemons, you make a better oatmeal. I follow up with a dish of seasonal fruits; pineapple, cantaloupe and strawberries. Everything is seasonal in California, including my agent. Still no call from the bitch (male).

I return once more the next day because there’s nothing else to do in LA apart from stare at other people’s abs and wait for the phone to ring. This time I expect Surly As All Hell to recognise me but she gives me another death stare and tosses a menu in my direction. I decide to behave how I want people to see me so I order like a successful American film star. I say get me the vegetable omelette – hold the goat’s cheese, replace the asparagus with spinach, add more oven roasted tomatoes. It tastes good but not great - I wonder whether it would have been a knock-out had I not meddled with it. I order whole wheat toast and drown my sorrows in grape jelly while pummelling my pillowy hips.

What kind of meeting lasts seven days? I order a chocolate muffin and hurl it at the agent’s window. Then I wonder whether he’s been in some kind of accident and vow to call him the next day.

Daley Bread, Fitzrovia

2011-04-04T22:56:00.005+01:00

Daley Bread
20 Gosfield St
Fitzrovia
W1W 6HF
07980 751049

by Ronnie Oak

There’s no menu in Daley Bread. I look at a glass deli counter and I can’t even think of the word menu. I ask the woman what to do. Almost literally: “What do I do?”.

The counter is full of all sorts of stuff and after negotiations conclude we agree I’ll have a sausage and bacon sandwich. There’s an unholy amount of bread offered so I pick the last one on the list, which is ciabatta.

The man behind the counter hears my Irish accent and we talk about rugby. I’m glad I like the sport so I am able to dress phrases like “they just wanted it more” and “the best team won” in a suit of genuine conviction.

This conversational Garryowen hangs in the air for a while as I wait. Yes I want ketchup and I suppose I want it toasted. Mainly I just want it.

It arrives quickly. It’s huge. The sausage is better than most cafe sausages, which shouldn’t really damn it with faint praise if you think about it. The bacon is a bit disappointing, possibly overwhelmed by the amount of sausage. Perhaps I know how it feels. Not a bad complaint though. Some people in the world haven’t got two sausages to rub together God love them.

I get a bottle of water and pay. Jesus, the price of the whole thing is £3.50. I wonder if they charged me for the water as I expected to pay a fiver for just the immense sandwich. It’s great value. I’m pleased.

I like fancy things, and there’s nothing wrong with doing something perversely different than what it says on your tin, but sometimes even an intelligent person must praise utilitarianism.

This isn’t fancy. But it’s the first breakfast I’ve had in Fitzrovia with which I feel almost completely satisfied. I would go back.

Brighton Dispatch: Si Signore, Sydney St

2011-03-30T11:00:00.001+01:00

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

2011-03-23T14:37:00.005Z

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

2011-03-16T10:47:00.002Z

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.

Cafe Olive, Islington

2011-02-28T12:45:00.004Z

Cafe Olive
42a Penton Street
Islington
N1 9QA
020 7713 6888

by Joyce Carol Oats

A Sunday morning. A romantic escape. A quiet street. A single cafe. In the pleasant haze of recent sleep, you enter, seeking breakfast. It’s a family-run joint: charming. A handful of tables; a kitchen tucked behind a counter; three generations elbowing each other in the small cooking space. What’s for breakfast is not entirely clear: there are hints of grilled halloumi and boiled eggs on the board out front but not indoors. Listings for sandwiches that sound lovely but not right for breakfast. Coffee? Coffee? There’s a coffee machine, but you can't seem to see where the prices are listed.

I just want a bacon sandwich, says your companion. Do you think they could just make a bacon sandwich?

I can make you smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, the waitress announces as you sit down. Do you want that?

It’s not really a question. There’s a packet of smoked salmon sitting in a chiller case, next to a large cake that a liberal hand has daubed with whipped cream baubles. The smoked salmon has been expecting you.

OK! says your companion, in haste.

Sure, sure, you say. You want it to be easy. You order a black coffee. The waitress brings you a latte. That’s fine, too.

You can’t see past the chiller case, but the procedure is vivid in sound and smell: of eggs beating, of toast burning. The waitress emerges to open a window to air out the cafe and then returns to jostle with her colleague. A sharp word, here and there, in a language you don’t speak.

The servings are substantial: two slices of very toasted toast under hefty eggs that serve as a luxurious bed for thick slices of salmon. You look at your companion and he looks at you and you shrug and dig in. It requires strength. It is a breakfast to precede a day of heavy lifting. After half, you are exhausted, but you are not going to waste food, not here. It would be rude. So you both carry on. You chew with courage. You leave nary a crust.

Was it good? says the waitress when she comes to pick up your plates.

Yes, you say, even though you feel a bit sick, because under the circumstances you can be nothing but grateful. Yes!

She smiles. You smile. He smiles.

Your companion pays - it's cheap, of course - and you leave.

Well, you say. That was interesting!

I really didn’t want to eat that, he says. I really just wanted a bacon sandwich. But it was good. Sort of!

Yes! you say. Sort of! There’s nothing like breakfasting at a small cafe when you’re on holiday somewhere unfamiliar, and just eating whatever it is that they happen to be cooking that day. It’s just so authentic! Such an experience!

True, he says. But we’re not on holiday. We’re a five-minute walk from your flat.

True, you say. That is also true.

Special Dispatch: Nhow Hotel, Berlin

2011-01-27T15:37:00.002Z

Nhow Hotel
Stralauer Allee 3
10245 Berlin, Germany
030 2902990
www.nhow-hotels.com/berlin/en

by Sebastian Forks

"People project meaning onto objects. If an object allows you to interact with it, then it becomes part of your being." Karim Rashid

Check in to the world of music. Nhow elevate your stay. Since our arrival late yesterday afternoon, I have taken the strap line for Nhow Berlin - Germany’s brand new design hotel, Europe’s first music concept hotel - at face value. I check in. I listen. I elevate my stay.

Last night I cheated. I got high with my group - partly on the hotel lobby’s techno music, and mostly on Daiquiri, which is a shorter, more chastening version of Mojito. There’s no excuse. It’s made of limes, ice, sugar and mainly white rum, and the rum is easy to taste. Taken before, during or after dinner, it seems to go with everything, is best consumed on pink stools, and gently draws its victim into a place made entirely of words, most of them regrettable.

Now it’s the morning. It is 8 o’clock. I have just woken up. The effects of the Daiquiri are still with me. I can’t wait for breakfast. I am on the hotel’s 1st floor, overlooking a river filled with chunks of ice. My room is enormous. It is designed by Karim Rashid, who works out of New York. I stand in the middle of the room. The floor is made of a special acrylic material, the furniture a mix of futuristic moulds. I especially like the sofa, which looks like the bottom of someone’s mouth. I like to lie on it. A giant flat television sits encased in the room’s dividing wall. Undulating lines of pink cross the floor, and go up the curtains. The bathroom is encased in glass. I feel like I am being dressed by someone who knows a lot about certain types of clothes. It is nice to be made to feel this way.

I sit down on my bed to read up on Karim’s design. It is, says the hotel’s brochure, ‘music for the eyes...a sojourn into a new dimension...’ I’m not sure what this means. Then it says, ‘words...cannot do justice to something that needs to be experienced first-hand – because great design begins at the point where language has reached its limit.’ I put down the brochure. I have reached the limits of hunger. And time is speeding up. I mustn’t be late - I am due to tour the hotel at 9 sharp. I reconnect with my brain’s residual pools of Daiquiri and take a quick shower. I hum and whistle as I dress.

In the lift, I am still humming. I am imagining breakfast. I wonder what music will be played as I eat. I would like some more of the techno. Then I look up and see a colour saturated photograph of Karim. He is in a giant light box. He is on the whole of the ceiling. He stares down at me. He is wearing a white t-shirt, a pair of glasses, and he hasn’t shaved for a couple of days. A woman – a beautiful woman – with half-closed eyes looks up at him. Her mouth is open. She looks like she is going to take a bite out of his cheek. Karim’s mouth is also slightly open. He is looking directly at me. Why is Karim looking at me like that? He is making me feel light headed. I am losing the ability to think. Stop it, Karim.

I enter the breakfast room by way of the lobby, scene of last night’s scene. One final kick from the Daiquiri and I find myself at the foot of a pink plastic lectern. I think I hear music playing. A waiter greets me with a smile. ‘Room number, sir?’ Room number? What is he talking about? I look behind him, into the room. Two huge pink plastic semi-circular breakfast units split the room. Super-white plates lie in piles beneath shelves full of neat little packages of food. Cutlery glints in the winter sun. On either side, white tables – as white as Karim’s t-shirt – line up in perfect inorganic rows. Light pours in from the river.

This morning breakfast is a range of cereals, international right through to locally sourced oats; it is all kinds of bread, and muffins; it is all kinds of eggs - old school, new school, your way; it is smoked salmon in lemon and dill, sausage, cold meats, paper-thin side-plates of prosciutto crudo; it is coffee, tea, juice. I go for the coffee, and a bowl of muesli. I sit down with my group. I see that they’ve had the lot, and toast and butter and small pots of jam compote. I eat my muesli. It is chewy and sweet, and filled with nuts and seeds. I think there’s some coconut in it too. I drink the coffee. It is bitter, and tastes very good indeed. I wonder what it is.

My group leaves. I stare out at the river, which is beginning to look pink. I feel like Karim is right here, next to me, enjoying a quick mint tea, eggs Benedict, French toast and maple syrup. I can’t speak. I am beyond humming. I am completely elevating.

Gail's, Clerkenwell

2011-01-17T09:45:00.002Z

Gail's
33-35 Exmouth Market
Clerkenwell
EC1R 4QL
0207 713 6550
www.gailsbread.co.uk

by Blake Pudding

After more than a year without full time work, I finally have a new job. This is not cause for delight. The under employed life suited me and I had never been happier. Sadly Mrs. Pudding’s costly renovation plans for our London home have forced me back into the rat race. There are consolations, however, in my new employment: I have my own office with a sliding door, minions on call, and best of all, a company credit card.

I decided to celebrate with a slap-up breakfast. I invited along the literary editor of the Observer, Will Skidelsky, who is a keen gourmand (I’m not using this as euphemism for a fat). We met at the latest branch of swanky bakery Gail’s, on Exmouth Market.

First a little gripe about Americanisms on the menu. No one likes Americans and America more than me but we are in England so there is not need to call a muffin an English muffin. In a similar vein why can’t they use our delightful descriptive term eggy bread rather than French toast? Gripe over; for breakfast the proof is in the pudding and no breakfast could be more pudding-like than Mr Skidelsky’s: eggy bread with zabaglione and roasted quince. The bread was crisp and lightly caramelised and the zabaglione functioned, according to William, like a sweet Hollandaise. Delicious but much too sweet for my morning palate.

I ordered baked eggs on a muffin, bacon, and roast tomatoes with cottage cheese. Cottage cheese! Normally I would have asked them to leave it off but I reasoned that taking into account Gail’s reputation and the high price of my breakfast, £8.50, this would be the best cottage cheese in the world. Maybe it was but it tasted just like cottage cheese i.e. horrible but with chives. Sadly it wasn’t the worst component of my meal. That honour went to the muffin which was stale, stodgy and had not been toasted. My baked eggs looked a lot like fried eggs and were overcooked despite specifying them runny. The bacon was tasty but brittle and ungenerously proportioned.

Did I mention that it cost £8.50? What a cynical take on the English breakfast this was. If my new employers hadn’t been picking up the tab, I would have been furious.

Special Dispatch: Kahana Sands, Kahana, Maui

2011-01-06T17:12:00.044Z

Kahana Sands Restaurant
Sands of Kahana
4299 Lower Honoapiilani Hwy
Kahana, HI, 96761

by Malcolm Eggs

"Speed limit enforced by laser." (Traffic sign, near Kahana)

Sands of Kahana: a four-star hotel full of fake plants, glittering sea views and people reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I'm sat in the poolside diner, waiting to order breakfast.

Our waiter is in long baggy shorts. He makes a decent attempt at toothy American cheer but there's something else, a fragility behind the eyes. It's like he's one dark thought away from smashing the shit out of a fish tank with the putting wedge he keeps behind the counter in case of visitors from the past.

I'm here to sample loco moco, a Hawaiian traditional breakfast of rice topped with a burger, two fried eggs and onion gravy. It sounds plain terrifying and the name means 'crazy snot', but it's traditional so there absolutely has to be something good about it. Our waiter is delighted.

When he delivers my plate, he says, "don't be intimidated by the way it looks". Which is a fair comment: this gleaming white and brown heap is not Miss Hawaii material. I dig in. The burger is dry, thin and chewy. The gravy is the clingy kind we used to fear more than even nuclear winter back in the school dinner halls of 80s Birmingham. Competent rice and eggs are slaughtered in the crossfire.

I'm ashamed to say I make myself eat enough to avoid awkwardness, and then sit scowling at a distant palm tree. Our waiter picks it up without a word and walks off. Such a beautiful place; such an unbeautiful breakfast. London seems so far away.

Breakfasts and beds: The Shakespeare Bed and Breakfast, Lancaster

2010-12-09T15:41:00.002Z

The Shakespeare Bed and Breakfast
96 St. Leonards Gate
Lancaster LA1 1NN
England
01524 841 041

by Henrietta Crumpet

Not long ago I took time out from my very busy and important life teaching homeless people to train cats to stand on their shoulders and experienced a Wedding Weekend consisting of two expressions of conjugal bliss at opposite ends of the country. Now before you ask, dear reader, if either of these were mine, I ask you to consider your positions on bigamy and Mormonism and let me know if you wouldn’t mind sharing your nether regions with a partner who shares their nether regions.

I am, of course, still unmarried.

These celebrations, being as they were in Lancaster and Dorset - the north preceding the south by twenty four hours - required myself and my erstwhile companion to travel at an un-holy hour of the morning after the one in order to get to the other. Not being familiar with all Lancaster has to offer I popped along to the Internet and had a little browse. Choosing a small, unassuming place with some marvellous reviews, I rang to book a night there. Sally, who was to be our attentive host, rang me back with a rather worried tone to her voice ‘You left a message saying you were booking because you had read all of our nice reviews, well, Fred and I don’t want you to expect too much or think that it will be as nice as they say.’ With this endorsement ringing in our ears we promptly booked, and set off.

I offer you this preamble in order to impress upon you two things: the antisocial hour of our departure at 6am in order to get to Dorset for the second ceremonial coupling of the weekend, and the demeanour of our hostess. I had already explained that despite a penchant for breakfast and a particular fondness for the B & B buffet option, I was expecting to have to forgo this pleasure in order to stumble groggily onto a train on time. Our hostess was horrified. ‘We’ll leave you a bit of Continental out,’ She said, ‘Is 5.45 alright?’ ‘Lovely,’ I said, ‘perfectly wondrous.’ Five minutes later she was back. ‘So how would you like your eggs? Scrambled, fried or boiled?’ There was a slight pause. ‘We can’t send you off without a cooked breakfast now can we?’

And so, very tired and a little worse for wear the next day we rolled ourselves into the living room for a full cooked breakfast. Sally and Fred were up, already unfeasibly cheerful, and had laid out for us everything they could possibly think of that could be called Breakfast. There were cereals in mini boxes, bowls of fruit, cheese and ham, small, pleasingly squidgy packets of butter and tiny jars of jam. Tea and coffee were proffered alongside glasses of orange juice and just as I was about to start panicking that this was too much too early and I was therefore probably still asleep and about to miss my train, turn up late to the second wedding, crash into the bride on my way in causing her to fall and chip a tooth and thus ruin the whole day, the cooked breakfast arrived.

I cannot in all honesty proclaim this as the best breakfast I have ever had. The beans were slightly too runny for my liking and the tomato sliced to such a thickness that the lovely goo on the outside does not permeate its raw interior, but the bacon was meaty and flavoursome and the eggs cooked to perfection – yolk that cascades over the shiny surface of your knife but has started to cook just a few millimetres from the white, leaving you in no doubt that the milky exterior will be fit for consumption. It was a breakfast of kings at a time when the royal head is definitely ordinarily still nuzzling into its well-fluffed pillow. If you ever find yourself in Lancaster, I can think of no better place for breakfast after bed, but don’t tell Sally and Fred I sent you, it will only make them worry.

Workers Cafe, Islington

2010-12-01T14:18:00.001Z

Workers Cafe
172 Upper Street
Islington
N1 1RG
020 7226 3973

by Henrietta Crumpet

Ah, The Workers Cafe, bastion of socialist Islington, beacon of light for the Marx-reading, poll tax rioting, Labour voting reds from the time when builders were builders, new developments with loft living were factories, and all local primary schools were run by women who read Germaine Greer whilst chain smoking outside the school gates. Those were the days.

I have been a local at The Workers since that fateful day in 1987 when, on a lightly hazy summer morning, Thatcher was re-elected for the third time and I arrived at school to find mothers silently weeping in the playground. I was a local when my father ruined my own mother’s favourite red lipstick by writing ‘WE WON!’ in giant, jubilant capitals on the bathroom mirror on May Day ten years later. And I’m still a local now, when Edward’s Machinery has long gone, Bella’s and Smokes have disappeared from the high street, and the cafe’s interior is no longer concealed in a haze of cigarette smoke.

My breakfast habits have broadened a little since I was six and would only order fried tomatoes on two white toasts (the tomatoes to be served separately) accompanied by a Snapple iced tea. I even eat mushrooms now. The Worker’s horizons have broadened too. Gone are the faded yellow Formica tables with round red seats affixed, the bad instant coffee and the lakes of grease gently pooling around your chosen morning fare. Worried about the impending doom the smoking ban could have wreaked on their loyal clientele, they’ve installed a coffee machine, seats that move, and at-seat ordering, making it the best place to grab a quick cup of reasonably priced coffee on Upper St. It’s still run by the same extended family, a variation on the socialist worker’s collective that the name suggests, and is delightfully devoid of pretension (and music).

And so to breakfast. For a small number of English Pounds (£4.95) there are breakfast selections including a traditional English, a Vegetarian and a Turkish, all with toast and tea or coffee. For that price I’m not expecting hand-selected sausages from Borough Market or Portobello mushrooms, and I don’t get them. What I do get is a really good greasy spoon breakfast at any time of the day or night. This is breakfast with sliced white or brown bread covered with lashings of margarine, pork sausages with a high bread content and unsmoked bacon. But it does exactly what you want it to. No more, no less. The thinly sliced mushrooms are nicely sizzled without being over-greasy, the tomatoes are browned and caramelised, the hash browns crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside and the eggs – served any way you want them – are cooked through: no sloppy white but a soldier-ready yolk. So put on your Vote Labour badge; grab a paper from the newsagent’s next door; smile at the local characters, the builders on their tea breaks, the council workers, and most importantly, the charming family busily shouting at each other in the open kitchen; and bed down. I can think of no better place for a no nonsense fry-up. And they still have a fridge full of Snapple iced tea.

Special Dispatch: Urban Angel, Edinburgh

2010-11-10T13:24:00.003Z

Urban Angel
121 Hanover St

New Town

Edinburgh
EH2 1DJ
0131 225 6215
www.urban-angel.co.uk

by Emma Ricano

Since hearing that dear, damnable Yvette had hit the big time starring in an NBC cop drama, I’d been raising my game like a poker player jacked up on 94 espressos. I wanted my own pool of light, the colour of a thousand limes, which was how I found myself at this year’s Edinburgh Festival trying my hand at stand-up comedy.

But I soon discovered that pithy one-liners about Dungeons & Dragons weren’t going to cut it with The Common People. I needed new material if I was going to be a self-proclaimed Prophet of Laughter, so I did what I always do when I need an inspiration injection. I breakfasted.

I chose Urban Angel in New Town which I’d visited once before when Edinburgh’s rain damn nearly drowned me. I recalled its sourdough – large and tasty portions with not nearly enough unsalted butter and preserve to cover a single slice; cappuccino that tasted like Nescafe but with a healthy foam hairpiece made from the creamiest of organic milk. In short, it had potential - exactly like me and my future as a stand-up comedian.

I sought out this warm and innocuous looking deli plus restaurant, again. It was much busier than I recalled but had the same range of choices I knew would keep me busy.

On the first of several inspiration missions, I spied some game looking twins dressed in kimonos and platforms who looked like they might have a story or two. I pulled up a chair and we breakfasted on Eggs Florentine. They talked animatedly about their careers in fashion and analysed my own choice of tartan slacks, as I bit down onto a springy mattress of muffin, spinach and oozing poached egg. Alas, I soon noticed the hollandaise was as vinagery as a party in a Sarson's factory and it unbalanced the whole. I swiftly ordered an antidote in the form of a chocolate double whammy - a quite outstanding chocolate muffin which was more choc chip than sponge, twinned with a hot chocolate with chocolate on top. I ate with slapping chops and gusto as the twins declared me a Fashion No-Fly Zone.

The next day I joined a lady in sensible shoes tucking into a pedestrian looking bowl of porridge. But by jiminy what those oats lacked in looks they certainly made up for in taste – I was transported to the clover, salty air, heather and fresh breezes of my otherwise turbulent family holidays in the Scottish highlands. But the portion was small and I was left both physiologically and conversationally starved as the woman in sensible shoes chose not to answer any of my questions.

By the weekend I was feeling desperate and honed in on a man with a face as sad as a clown. He said he wanted to be alone but I insisted. We both ordered the pancakes with bacon and maple syrup. I took some of his bacon. He spooned some of the syrup off my plate. I slapped his wrists. I took his napkin. He took my fork. Then we enjoyed our heavenly meal with its pancakes like pillows and all the excitement and drama that the combination of maple syrup and good quality bacon bring to a person’s life. By the end of breakfast he was bitch-slapping the table in glee as I recounted my days as a young buck in marketing. Who knew a story about a Sandra from accounts and a piece of Brie could be so entertaining? I’d say Live At The Apollo is just around the corner for a girl like me.

Guy Fawkes Inn, York

2010-11-05T08:57:00.002Z

Guy Fawkes Inn
25 High Petergate
York YO1 7HP
www.gfyork.com
01904 623 716

by OJ Simpson

Why must we remember the 5th of November
For gunpowder treason and plot?
It’s much more pleasing to order two teas and
Sit down to eat something hot.

Guy Fawkes in York
Was where we went,
To see where Guy was born, and then,
To break our fast and ease the woe,
With slices of hot toasted dough.

By God's providence this she match'd,
With egg and haddock freshly catch’d.

Holloa Boys, Holloa boys, I chose fried things,
Holloa Boys, Holloa Boys, fit for a King!

Hip Hip Hoorah!
Hip Hip Hoorah!

Tomatoes, mushroom, two eggs poached,
Black pudding, beans and bacon,
A pot of tea to rinse it down,
Until you’re filled to bursting.

Much tastier this way by far,
To celebrate a blazing star.

Don’t burn his body, toast your bread.
Then we'll say: ol' hunger’s dead.

Roast, Borough

2010-10-26T11:05:00.002+01:00

Roast
The Floral Hall
Stoney Street
Borough
SE1 1TL
0845 034 7300
www.roast-restaurant.com

by T.N. Toost

Malcolm recognized me from my pictures online, shouting “Mr. Toost!” when I passed the London Bridge newsstand. We embraced and walked through Borough Market to Roast. Its cathedral-like dining room was populated with businesspeople and dealmakers and one other guy who looked out of place, like us.

“I’m glad someone else is wearing a t-shirt,” I whispered, and Malcolm grinned.

It was somewhat awkward to peruse the menu and try to keep a conversation going at the same time, but we managed, making small talk about the options. Ten-year-old tea what? That sounds Chinese and I thought this is a purely English establishment. It either makes no sense orrrr there’s 10-year-old tea on the menu and it’s not a purely English establishment... There was no point, really, as there was no question as to what we would be ordering.

“Full English, please.” £15.00. He wasn’t a cheap date.

“And one for myself as well, thanks.” Neither was I.

It’s a distinct feature of this generation that people can correspond for years without ever meeting face-to-face and, when it finally happens, real conversation can be awkward. There were at least two points at which I wished we’d had computers; emailing would have felt more normal. Proper conversation over proper coffee is a precious commodity, though, and soon everything started to feel more normal.

Besides, we didn’t have much time for awkwardness; the food came out before we’d had time to take three sips of coffee.

“Fantastic,” I said as I saw the waitress approaching.

“Shit,” Malcolm said after she’d left.

What he had immediately realized was that serving speed is not a virtue here as it is in the States, where we want things fast and damn the consequences. Speed means that the food was reheated rather than cooked to order. If you shell out £15 for a full English, you should be served just-picked tomatoes and mushrooms, homemade sausage, beans hand-selected and matched for aesthetic consistency, bacon cut from a live pig and eggs still smelling like a hen’s hooha.

Which is not what we got. The eggs were warm, bordering on hot. The bacon yielded flaccidly to my teeth. In a £15 breakfast, the mushroom should make you hallucinate; we got a non-descript portobello. The sausage had a crisp outer shell but the inside cloyed to our gums and cheeks. The blood sausage was admittedly delicious, but knowing that Roast is widely considered to serve the best breakfast in London, this was a consolation as lukewarm as the food.

We left; I think Malcolm felt a bit embarrassed at having taken me there. He had said that he needed a special occasion to go to Roast, and that my visit was it. I hope he doesn't invite me there next time, as that would be an elaborate insult of the kind that email can never convey.

The Counter Cafe, Hackney Wick

2010-10-06T10:50:00.004+01:00

The Counter Cafe
4a Roach Rd
Hackney Wick
E3 2PA
07952 696 388
www.thecountercafe.co.uk

by Malcolm Eggs

I had never really spent any time in Hackney Wick, at least not deliberately. Based on its reputation I was imagining an outland of free expression, a place where creativity could run untethered and naked. Monkeys playing accordions on the streets, men in berets judging my scale with gnawed thumbs. But deep down I knew I’d find a handful of timber depots plus the occasional person in a sleeveless flannel top.

When we finally glimpsed our target, alarm bells rang – those internal alerts we each install when we realise hipsters don’t run or frequent good food businesses.

For here they were both sides of the counter: girls with short bleached hair and billowing ethnic-print trousers; men with long hair, longer beards, NHS glasses, orange gingham shirts. A waiter’s cartoon-bear T-shirt, tucked into his tiny polyester shorts. Another’s braces hand-made from an unravelled length of blue packaging rope. Shouty folk music on the speakers and psychedelic art on the walls. Guardian newspapers everywhere. Hardly were those sights met when I closed my eyes and was troubled by a vast image: a stoned chef and a passive aggressive owner, pissing away a trust fund. In the background flashed mood-words such as ‘screenplay’, ‘site-specific theatre’ and ‘guerrilla gardening’. I braced myself for a bad breakfast.

Then my Big Breakfast (£8) arrived and it was really, really good. As good as the breakfast in Bistrotheque or Caravan, perhaps better for the genuine shock. The yolk of my fried egg? As golden as the voice of St Gregory of Nazianzus, mingling harmoniously with the baritone carbs - the jolly potato cake and ebullient buttered Vogel toast. Bacon and sausages were fit for a duke, and the beans, oh my, they were a rarity - homemade yet worth the effort: butter beans in a salacious sauce of tomato, rosemary, garlic and lemon. A large, succulent mushroom, a ramekin of tangy inhouse relish and good coffee completed the picture.

As if by magic a canal bridge made itself visible, enabling us to leave without retracing our steps. The Olympic Stadium loomed over us as if it wanted to say – there, now you know the truth about 2012. It’s whatever’s important to you. Follow your dream, my dear Malcolm. Yeah whatevs, I replied.

Joe Allen, Covent Garden

2010-09-16T15:42:00.005+01:00

Joe Allen
13 Exeter Street
Covent Garden
WC2E 7DT
www.joeallen.co.uk
020 7836 0651

by Rhys Chris Peese

INT. JOE ALLEN - MORNING
Dark wood-panelled walls are covered with posters of long-forgotten musicals. On one side of the room is a well-stocked bar. It looks like it’s around 3am: it always looks like that in here, away from the natural light.

JAMES, a screenwriter, is typing on a Macbook. A waiter comes to refill his coffee. He grunts acknowledgement. He is the only customer: others have come and gone. Pull out to take in the door to the street. As it opens we realise that it’s actually 10am: daylight silhouettes RHYS, who walks in and joins JAMES. He speaks in a British accent.

RHYS
Sorry I’m late. Traffic in Kennington.

JAMES
No problem.

We take in the posters – all of which are for London productions. This confirms that we’re not in New York at all. The WAITER comes over: immaculately dressed, he looks like a younger Russell Crowe.

WAITER
Are you ready to order?

RHYS
I’ll have the full English please, with
scrambled eggs. And coffee.

JAMES
I’ll have the same.

The WAITER goes. RHYS stares at the table. JAMES leafs through Variety. Silence.

RHYS
I am massively hungover.

JAMES nods. Fade out.

Fade up. The WAITER returns with two plates and puts them in front of JAMES and RHYS. They each have two pale sausages, some bacon, scrambled eggs, black pudding, properly grilled tomato, mushrooms, baked beans and half an English muffin. JAMES and RHYS set to eating.

JAMES
This is the best black pudding I’ve ever
tasted.

RHYS
The mushrooms are a bit watery.

JAMES
I don’t like mushrooms anyway. Do you
want mine?

RHYS
Yeah. OK.

The WAITER returns and refills their coffee. He leaves.

RHYS
Next time I might try the broiled
grapefruit.

Fade. End.

La Casita, Streatham

2010-09-08T14:33:00.003+01:00

La Casita
122 Streatham High Road
Streatham
SW16 1BW
020 8664 6033
Breakfast served from 9am - 3pm (at time of writing)

by Cherie Funghi

Waking up late with gin breath requires immediate action: breakfast. And I’m certainly not talking about any of your muesli or fruit stuffs. Wretched and dehydrated, we dragged our broken bodies to La Casita.

A sign boasting fresh ground coffee excited my caffeine-thirsty eyes, but my mug arrived with the sad, undissolved remnants of instant granules. I swallowed my disappointment, too tired to argue, before our confused looking waiter informed us that there were no continental breakfasts, no city breakfasts and no tomatoes. At all.

A city breakfast, in case it isn’t obvious, is scrambled eggs with smoked salmon on a bagel. That is what people in cities have for breakfast. But not this morning. No. We had the choice of a Vegetarian, a full English, or a La Casita breakfast - the same plus chips. I went for the full English, which turned out to be quite a serious plate-a-food. Two massive bangers, a generous helping of mushrooms, griddled smoked bacon, a hash brown, piles of buttered toast, beans and half a grilled tomato. Hello.

The sugar sachets came with 2 tsp-worth of sugar in them. I failed to notice and added two to my coffee. It made for a disgusting error of judgment, but I persevered. The scrambled eggs were dry and rubbery so I ate them first to get them out the way, washed down with the coffee-syrup. What a mistake! I’d left no room for the best bits. I managed to force down the pleasingly thick-cut smoked bacon and inoffensively average hash brown, but the delicious buttery, herby mushrooms and meaty pork sausages were a stomach-stretch too far and were left practically untouched. It was a regrettable personal failure and this unhappy turn of events is proof that the best shouldn’t always be saved until last.

Benjys Restaurant, Earl's Court

2010-08-26T12:00:00.001+01:00

Benjys Restaurant
157 Earls Court Road
Earl's Court
London
SW5 9RQ
020 7373 0245

by Terry Teagleton

A fried English breakfast has to my mind one of two essential purposes - to line the stomach in preparation for a day's drinking; or to bring the comforts of stodgy, chewy grease to a body which has spent a yesterday drinking. We are here today for the first of these reasons and this caff - the first we came across on leaving Earl's Court tube - performs its task more than adequately.

Benjys gives the impression of a proper no-nonsense London establishment. The laminated menu supplies just three main breakfast options, a terse list of extras confined only to the absolute essentials (no fancy-schmancy hash browns here and even, to my great disappointment, no black pudding) plus tea, coffee and orange juice. In view of the profligate ingurgitations ahead of me, I opt for the builder's breakfast with extra fried mushrooms. Steve foolishly just has chips - a decision which is ill advised not for the lack of substance (Steve is a better drinker than me and anyway has already eaten) but because of the penny-filching minimum food cost of £3.90 per person in the menu's smallprint which will now catch him out.

Our food arrives in short order. The sausages are close to perfection - neither soggy nor dry, their unidentifiable contents pleasantly coating the mouth in greasy goodness and sliding effortlessly down the gullet. The same sadly cannot be said about the bacon, which has been incinerated almost into nonexistence and then, bizarrely, hidden *in between* the egg (on top) and the beans (underneath) as though the chef was rightly ashamed of his endeavour. The egg itself is uninspiring - not badly cooked, but one presumes produced by a chicken with little interest in life; and the beans are as beans are as beans always are - the great ubiquitous invariant of the breakfast plate.

Most of the other components are proficiently delivered but require little comment - there are chips, mushrooms and toast. The one remaining piece of the assembly is however noteworthy; it is the tomato. Benjys have eschewed the standard fried vegetable for an uncooked plum tomato forked out of a tin. I love the effrontery, the sheer chutzpah, of places which do this - we all know how cheap it is to buy a value tin of plum tomatoes from Tesco and how little effort is invoked in the opening of said tin and fishing out of said tomatoes, and yet it is a solution which Just Works, often better than a fried tomato which is frankly difficult for even the best of breakfasteers to make exciting. As I bite into my raw plum tomato a jet of bright red juice is sent spurting out right onto Steve’s shirt, adding to my general sense of satisfaction with the world.

The place is certainly popular, with intrepid tourists out of Earl's Court hotels rubbing shoulders with standard greasy spoon denizens - drifting urban wastrels and labouring men - to almost fill the place. But despite this the lone waitress manages to take orders and deliver plates of food and free refills of tea and coffee promptly and with a breezy professionalism. As we slowly finish our final coffees and get ready to pay and leave, I reflect that in spite of its several quirks Benjys has succeeded - it has produced a solid, ample, unashamedly physical fry up; a fry up to engage oneself with, to take one's time over - in other words, the very breakfast I needed.

The brekkies: 10 of the best breakfasts available to humanity

2010-08-20T15:52:00.010+01:00

by Malcolm Eggs

Exactly five years have passed since a morning when – in no small part to stave off the need to get up, have a shower and do something useful – I logged onto a blogging website and wrote something rousing about how a semi-invented ‘we’ was incredibly passionate about breakfast. It was surprising that the ‘we’ became a self-fulfilling overblown claim: no less than 80 individuals have joined my mission to cut out the gristle of lazy and disdainful breakfast-serving with the simple fork of truth and the trusty knife of literary pretension.

Five years in seems like a fitting moment to do something new, and compile a list of some of the best breakfasts we’ve sampled along the way. For the sake of usefulness I’m only including places that (a) are still open and (b) I’m reasonably confident have maintained their standards. A big apology goes to Konstam, recently closed in what is a tragedy both personal and regional – they consistently served some of the finest breakfasts we’d encountered and we miss them very much.

Here is the list, in alphabetical order. As always, we apologise for the East London bias.

Bistrotheque, 23-27 Wadeson St, Bethnal Green E2
"It is, without doubt, the mark of a quality establishment, when you are offered the wine list at 11 in the morning."
(Full review here)

Caravan, 11-13 Exmouth Market, Clerkenwell EC1R
"The chorizo and eggs (£11 for two) were delivered chicken madras-style in a handled silver pot"
(F ull review here)

Hawksmoor, 157 Commercial St, Spitalfields E1
"The very definition of an event breakfast."
(Full review here)

Mess, 38 Amhurst Rd, Hackney E8
"Breakfast for two for just shy of a tenner - full marks for both, and happy tummies all round."
(Full review here)

Muratori, 162 Farringdon Rd, Clerkenwell EC1R
"I'd learnt no more about the postal strike, but for less than £4 had had a lovely breakfast."
(Full review here)

Regency Cafe, 17-19 Regency St, Pimlico SW1P
"Explosively flavourful tomatoes gently frosted with char, a perfectly-fried egg slithering on brown toast of the exact right thickness."
(Full review here)

The Uplands Cafe, 21 Upland Rd, East Dulwich SE22
"The kids in the cafe restored my faith in human kindness after the previous night’s unnecessary violence. And what more could you want from a breakfast outing than that?"
(Full review here)

The Walpole, 35 St Mary's Rd, Ealing W5
"A hearty, old-fashioned Full English."
(Full review here)

The Wapping Project, Wapping Wall, Wapping E1
"It was a good breakfast."
(Full review here)

York & Albany, 127-129 Parkway, Camden Town NW1
"A single artisanal Lincolnshire sausage, a slice of Old Spot bacon, a perfectly presented free-range poached egg…"
(Full review here)

The Table, Southwark

2010-08-12T15:12:00.000+01:00

The Table
83 Southwark Street
London
Southwark
SE1 0HX
020 7401 2760
www.thetablecafe.com

by Sadie Frosties

The menu at The Table states confidently that they serve ‘the best hollandaise on Southwark Street’. And I believe it, if not partly because I know nowhere else on Southwark Street that serves anything with hollandaise on or near it. I ordered the buttermilk pancakes with streaky bacon, organic maple syrup and caramelised banana, and settled down for my weekly blank stare at the Guardian Cryptic Crossword.

Crossword abandoned in record time, and immersed in an informative article about Dizzee Rascal, I'd barely noticed the time passing when the waiter appeared with my breakfast challenge. You may have noticed, as I had, the plural in my breakfast descriptor. But there were no 'pancakes' here. This was one, single, giant, humungoid, super pancake, easily twice the size of my face (maybe) and an accomplished centimetre in thickness. Also absent was the expected ceramic pot of maple syrup – in its place a free-pour of the continental bar variety, a syrupy ocean lapping at the shore of my pancake island. And it was delectable - the pancake fluffy, the syrup plentiful, the bananas soft and sticky. Actually everything was sticky. And delicious. Granted, it is likely that a shoe, or a copy of Grazia, would also be delicious slathered in enough maple syrup.

The bacon however, highlighted an error in my menu reading skills, which has occurred more than once in my breakfasting career, namely the subconscious reading of the word ‘streaky’ to mean ‘crispy’. Streaky it was, crispy it was not. A frightful shame considering the bacon was otherwise smoky and salty in all the correct proportions.

My advice to you? Visit The Table - the menu is great. My advice to The Table? Cook your bacon a little longer – I never finish the cryptic.

Special Dispatch: St Giles Café, Oxford

2010-07-22T11:20:00.003+01:00

St Giles Café
52 St. Giles
City Centre
Oxford
OX1 3LU
01865 552 110

by Brian Sauce

I descend upon the city of dreaming spires, scene of a gilded, mis-spent youth, to witness the marriage of an old friend with my wife in tow. My alma mater, which pretends to teach students for a few weeks out of the year, is actually a glorified conference centre and bed and breakfast, and it is to this august establishment that we repair once totally drunk in order to pass out.

There is, however, no question of having breakfast there. In fact, as I stumble along the park railings pointing out local attractions to my long suffering bride in the dead of night, I beg her to eschew our all-included college slops and to visit the St Giles Café with me the following day.

Entering the next morning, slightly the worse for wear but wreathed in smiles of nostalgia and anticipation, I am aghast to see that the place has had an ‘American Diner’ style makeover. However, this must have been a while ago because it is thankfully now as grubby as ever it was. Happy to report also, that the staff are the same, and consistently rude.

My wife is fixating on the beautiful setting of my idle youth, the medieval splendour, the lavish rooms, the Quidditch hoop… but I am gripped by breakfast. Political Correctness has gone mad to the extent that chips are not now served before noon. Or perhaps I never visited this early in days of yore. However a splendid platter of bacon, sausage, eggs, beans and toast arrives in minutes. Or rather, I am shouted at to come and get it.

Beans: firm. Eggs: perfectly runny. Toast: white sliced, pre-larded with salty butter. Sausage: superior supermarket variety. Bacon: the best bit, all crispy fat and wide, thick flavour. By God, Health and Safety have also been at the sachets, warning me not to eat too much salt, shut up. A liberal spray of ketchup is all I wanted anyway.

Are you going to finish that, dear? If there’s one thing better than a big breakfast it’s having one with my wife i.e. a bonus rasher at the end. Love her!

The St Giles Café has enjoyed many continuous years salving the hangovers of stupid children and corpulent construction workers and does one of the better five pound breakfasts you will eat – certainly the best in this provincial setting.

Special Dispatch: Not Manic Organic, Glastonbury Festival

2010-07-08T14:50:00.002+01:00

Not Manic Organic
Glastonbury Festival
Worthy Farm
Somerset

by Cher E. Jamm

This is an apology where a review should be. I'm filing it to my editor, Malcolm Eggs, and it will be up to him whether he runs it or not [I think the public needs to hear this - Ed]. All I can say is that with the the clarity that only comes with hindsight, I now realise that perhaps Manic Organic and I will never be united in breakfasting glory. For the third year running, I have tried, and failed, to review their vegan breakfast. This year, I made the mistake of promising myself a Manic breakfast on the last day, the Sunday. In the preceding days I would sample other delights, or cook my own breakfasts to save money. Manic Organic would be a treat, I had told myself. I passed the stall every day and beamed at it, giving it a little knowing nod. I even took a photo and sent it to the LRB's esteemed editor when he got in touch to see how I was getting on. It was all in hand, he had nothing to worry about: 2010 would be the year it happened. I had no reason to doubt that it would.

Now that I'm home, I've had the time to meditate on the facts. I even discussed it with my Breakfast Spiritual Advisor - she who puts a bowl of muesli and a jug of milk on her bedside table the night before in order to take her first course the minute she wakes. BSA suspects that perhaps Manic Organic and I have some kind of mutual karmic block. Bad blood. Unresolved issues from past lives. She says I need to make peace with the place before the universe will allow me to get there. She's suggested I go to their Cafe in Birmingham with an offering before Glastonbury 2011.

And so, to the facts, dear reader:

- I awoke on Sunday at 11am.

- I had a shower, got changed and shook off my hangover with a cup of tea and a slice of orange and walnut cake from Queen Deliah's veggie cafe two doors over from Manic. The cake was delicious and orangey - somewhere between cake and an undercooked brownie. The tea was a little watery for my liking.

- Afterwards, I decided to go and see a friend I had kept missing all weekend, about a 25 minute walk away. I was full from the cake and tea and thought I would leave it an hour or so and come back for my Manic feast with a clear head.

- At about 4pm, I was called by Mr Jamm in a state of panic. He sent me on a mission collecting much needed footage for a video that was being shot and edited on-site. I had to find famous people and interview them for it.

- My assignment meant that I had to spend the next hours sweet-talking musicians' weedy managers into letting me chat to them after they came off stage. All the while, I was very aware that Manic Organic is getting further and further away from me.

- By the time I finished said assignment, I dropped the camera off at the production office and ran (RAN!) to catch Stevie Wonder at the Pyramid stage.

- The rest, in all honesty, is a hazy mixture of rum, friends, joy and laughter. No Manic breakfast.

- Monday morning was spent packing up. I had breakfast made for me. I made the foolish assumption that Manic Organic would be packing up, too. We passed it as we drove away, a small queue of die-hard fans stood waiting for their last breakfast of the festival. I shed a tear, and pawed at the window as we passed. Sad times.

And that is what happened. I now know that I should have been brave and taken breakfast at Manic Organic, instead of tea and cake at Queen Delilah's. I now know that I need to make a pilgrimage to Birmingham to make peace. Then and only then will I get that review to you all next year. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I'm sorry I failed you.

Andrews Café, Clerkenwell

2010-07-01T22:13:00.000+01:00

Andrews Café
160 Gray's Inn Road
Clerkenwell
WC1X 8ED
020 7837 1630

by Gregg. E. Bread

As a lad I didn’t blink at the thought of a bowl of frosted shreddies or some such with hot milk for lunch. ‘Yes please Mother, that would be splendid, I love you’. Nor did I talk like that, but the truth of a half-hearted ungrateful shrug of ‘okay whatever mum I’m busy with all these micro machines yeah’ is so much tougher on my bubble-wrap memory of good-son utopia.

As a man such casual freedom has tensed into restraint; breakfast like a personal Von Trier ego trip.

Thou shalt not have the choice of both baked beans and tomatoes.

Thou shalt segregate baked beans from all egg on pain of making a face.

Thou shalt not eat chips with breakfast.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's egg (out loud).

Above all, breakfast can extend into lunch only when breakfast has not first been consumed or: you can’t eat breakfast twice.

Okay so there is brunch. I know. Brunch is like getting the glad eye from a cutie; a shared suggestive toying with what COULD BE. But what could (but may never) be is a weekend pursuit. I’m talking about weekdays and WHAT IS. You know, the stuff Mummy dearest wants to hear about when she phones.

Well, I recently got a new mum-pleasing career. My head finally removed from the warm belly of part-time study to the rigid posture of the second career that I thought I wanted. Thankfully colleague acceptance came early in the form of initiation rite; an invitation to eat Set Menu No.3 at the local brekkie merchants on Friday lunchtime. Grease is the new booze.

And so I took my seat amongst the off-colour Seurat décor and had little to do but wait, my choice made for me in the grand tradition of tradition. So came Set 3 - Fried Egg, Bacon, Sausage, Beans, Chips, Toast and Tea.

Frankly, the chips got my ticker edgy from the get go. Surely they only gain entry to festival of fry-up via the ‘belly-buster’ back door? A calming wave broke as these chips turned out to be more frites than doorstop. A classic cup of builders, thin and crisp bacon and the complete fried egg – aka ‘The Inbetweener’ (a yolk of runny yet sticky gloop) – suggested a happy welcome.

Then the smiles abated – time for the paddled ass of the rite of passage – as I took a keenly chomped mouthful of sausage and beans. Oh but how low these good friends had fallen. The sausage - internally caked in a faux-pink rouge – was sickeningly scented with knock-off pork musk. The beans appeared hot with their jackets on but once stripped they lay lifeless between my teeth - old, bitter haricots. I sought salvation in trusty toast. But what was this? Like some Englishman lain asleep in the midday sun, I marvelled at a crisp back and a white squidgy top. Praise be then for brown sauce – making iffy breakfast palatable since my Mother started cooking.

So there, I made it Mum, I can afford to spend £5.30 on lunch again. I’d still take the micro machines and shreddies over this any day.

Cafe Aion, Boulder, Colorado, USA

2010-06-22T11:31:00.000+01:00

Cafe Aion
1235 Pennsylvania Avenue
Boulder, CO 80302-7095
United States
(303) 993-8131
www.cafeaion.com

by Shreddie Kruger

Boulder is one of America’s most interesting cities: like an experimental new age version of America. It’s nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, a 40 minute drive from Denver which is known as Mile High City because of a stratospheric altitude that makes everything just a little bit tiring. Outdoor sports zealots mix with Colorado University students and hippies by the hemp sack-load. Walking around the immaculately clean streets meanwhile it’s not hard to imagine what it was like back in the days of real horsepower and saloon bars. Locals have to be careful of the wildlife that roams around town: dogs frequently get snatched by mountain lions and it’s very common to see deer stretching their legs around the leafier areas of town.

Whilst Boulder feels so different from mainstream America, thankfully it still excels at brunch. Only in America could you get away with eating braised short ribs first thing in the morning. At newly opened Café Aion, near Boulder’s University of Colorado campus, they serve them with shoe string fries and poached eggs on their sunny terrace. You eat and you watch a view of the Flat Iron Mountains, changing colour like a chameleon snoozing in front of a disco light. It makes you want to do a Paddington Bear and bottle the combination in a jam jar.

The short ribs were braised until tender and then grilled to add some charry flavour. The succulent meat was a perfect foil for the flawlessly poached eggs. But the shoe string fries were so thin and crispy that they were impossible to grapple with. Each time you tried to spear them with your fork they splintered into tinier and tinier pieces of carbo-shrapnel. Forget about any yolk absorbtion.

A bowl of granola, yoghurt and Moroccan stewed fruit made us feel more healthy whilst a Bellini cocktail seemed rude to refuse and let us linger for longer as we watched the natives of Boulder go about their lives: students tried to break into a car that had been abandoned in the middle of a main road; runners eased down the hill and struggled on the way back up; Enormous SUVs with tyres the size of Denver rumbled past like earthquakes on wheels; and sprinklings of aspiring writers tapped away at laptops no doubt watching us watching them in a seemingly infinite regression of observation.

Café Aion’s brunch was first class. It’s rare to find such an interesting menu, graced with a range of dishes you hardly ever see at breakfast time. And it’s worth a visit for the short ribs alone.

Campania Gastronomia, Shoreditch

2010-06-09T09:38:00.005+01:00

Campania Gastronomia
95 Columbia Rd
Shoreditch
E2 7RG
020 7613 0015

by Malcolm Eggs

Campania is as authentic a rustic Italian café deli as it's humanly possible to be when you're based at the Shoreditch end of Hackney. There is ramshackle wooden furniture, a tall rack of sepia-tinted bottles and a tiny kitchen manned by a proud-looking cook. In a large, wide fridge sit hunks of meat, blocks of cheese and cans of amusingly named continental fizzy drinks.

But the breakfast menu is about as Italian as Castlemaine XXXX is Australian. Take my 'benerica': fried eggs in olive oil, Neopolitan sausages, pancetta, rocket. A British fry-up, basically, viewed through Rossini-tinted glasses - the chicken tikka masala of fare colazione.

But is this a terrible thing? As we've pointed out before, Italy is known for many things, and many of these are culinary, but none of them are breakfast. It has always been thus: evidence from Pompeii suggests mornings powered merely by bread and water, but at least there was food. Barring remarkable luck, today's breakfasting tourist must learn to get by on dense espresso washed down with strong cigarette.

Give me a Campania breakfast any day of the week - unctuous, dense sausages and tasty pancetta satisfyingly laced with ovals of unyielding fat. My faultless eggs had a healthy - virtually Deep South - olive oil glow. You'll be wondering about the rocket, because rocket on a breakfast plate is always weird: it was true here too, but given that proviso it played its role strangely well - a deft junior partner in an oddball coalition.

Looking around smugly after an excellent double macchiato I noticed an even more telling East London tic: a chandelier. But hey, I reflected, if the breakfasts are this good, I wouldn't care if the whole place turned out to be run by Vice magazine, who it transpired had been bought by Café Rouge, who in turn were a subsidiary of Nestlé. That would be fine, I realised cheerily.

Lucile's, Boulder, USA

2010-05-27T09:16:00.002+01:00

Lucile's
2124 14th Street
Boulder, CO 80302-4804
United States
001 (303) 442-4743
www.luciles.com

by Shreddie Kruger

Gaunt and be-shorted men, women and children loitered around the wooden creole house like addicts gagging for a shot of methadone to sooth them through the sticky morning. Names were called out and faces blossomed as their turn was announced. Being British, the sight of a queue got us hooked and within a skipped heartbeat we were jostling for position wondering what all the fuss was about.

Once invited inside it became clear that the emaciated people around us weren’t druggies. They were just far leaner than their normal American compatriots, which isn’t surprising seeing as most of Boulder lives off lentils, hemp and a healthy intake of medicinal marijuana.

Lucile’s is a creole restaurant housed inside a New Orleans style weatherboard building with a brunch menu that is enough to give you jaw ache just from looking at it. Whilst sipping grapefruit juice we gawped at the food being devoured around us and ordered the most unusual things we could see.

My “Eggs Pontchartrain” arrived with a thud: Colorado mountain trout and two poached eggs slathered in béarnaise sauce and flanked by both grits and sautéed potatoes. The eggs were so perfectly soft that they ran all over the trout like a flash flood, while the béarnaise sauce was so naughty that it had probably just put drawing pins on its teacher’s chair whilst giving its brother a Chinese burn. The white trout flesh flaked sensuously under the weight of the eggs to create a flavour combination not a million miles away from that British summer lunchtime treat of poached salmon with hollandaise sauce garnished with dill.

Washed down with some bitter chicory coffee, it was as delicious as it was filling and unusual. Next door a creole breakfast with stewed beans, spicy sausage, poached eggs and sautéed potatoes was every bit as gut busting – so much so that we were unforgivably unable to order their famous beignets, watching sadly as the sugar dusted square doughnuts wafted past on trays.

Lucile’s is rightly revered as one of Colorado’s leading breakfast institutions and deserves a visit if you are near Mile High City. After just one hit I am gagging for more.

British Airways breakfast, somewhere over northern Portugal

2010-05-17T14:02:00.005+01:00

British Airways breakfast
(somewhere over northern Portugal)

by hAshley Brown

Altitude: 32000 feet, Speed: 532 mph, Outside temp: -55 C.

It's 5.32am (time at destination) and somewhere between an ashcloud and an impending strike, flight BA246 hopes to land at Heathrow sooner rather than later. Rumour has it that whilst we've been in the air (en route from Buenos Aires via Sao Paolo) Heathrow has closed and may well reopen again. But right now, in the cycle of false dusks and dawns regulated by the steely yet good-humoured will of the air stewardesses, the fitful mid night slumbers of my cabin compadres has been forcefully truncated by cabin lights and an offer of breakfast.

It's full English breakfasts, or cheese croissants, that are hidden alluringly below the foil lids and have been tucked up warm since we left Brazil. My stewardess assures me that all the cheese croissants will go, as Brazilians don't really 'get' the bacon and eggs. It's a heavy responsibility for our national carrier: for many, their first taste of our national dish may come on a little tray and be eaten with branded plastic cutlery. (The irony being of course that this pivotal meal is never assembled on home shores. I imagine they have good reason for not calling this one the full Brazilian.)

Considering the challenges faced by anyone trying to keep a breakfast warm and decent-tasting for 12 hours, this meal certainly tries. A fattier cut of streaky bacon, once grilled, now taking on a braised demeanour, is full of flavour if somewhat oversalted. A little sausage lurks behind a pile of baked tomato slices, the tomato prone to blandness, the sausage coarse cut and lightly spiced. But there is a blot on the horizon, like the belching Eyjafjallajökull - a pile of scrambled eggs, ruining everything for everyone. With a granularity not dissimilar to that of looming ashcloud, these eggs are not of this world and certainly not from any chicken i've ever met.

Elsewhere on the tray - a fruit medley of papaya, pineapple and over-eager melon join some brazillian orange juice, the ubiquitous plain muffin (prizes to whoever can get it out of the plastic wrapper with glazed muffin top intact), and some perfunctory coffee.

It's not the greatest breakfast, yet the novelty of its arrival, and the lucky-break in airspace restrictions that followed, makes it taste all the better.

Towpath, De Beauvoir Town

2010-05-12T11:30:00.001+01:00

Towpath
Regent's Canal Towpath by DeBeauvoir Bridge
42 De Beauvoir Crescent
De Beauvoir Town
N1 5SB
Open from 8am, Mon - Fri; 10am Sat; 11am Sun

by Joyce Carol Oats

Porridge: at once the most hated of breakfast foods and one of the most beloved. Porridge done well is amazing, while porridge done badly (the default of too many chefs) can result in a culinary ennui that might put one off eating breakfast for ever. With a name like Oats (of the Dumfries Oatses), you’ll not be surprised to learn that I take my porridge with salt, with honey or maple syrup, and very seriously. Such is the passion of my love affair with porridge that I'll rarely relinquish control over my morning grains to anyone.

But there was just something promising about the porridge at the Towpath, a little cafe tucked into a former canalboat house on the Regent’s Canal towpath (surprise!), now serving breakfast and lunch and cake and coffee to hipsters of a certain age under a modicum of shelter. The seats face outwards, in the manner of the best French cafes, perfect for watching people and dogs and birds go by. The service at the Towpath is shambolic, but this is suited to the shabby-chic (burlap sacks, mismatched cutlery) aesthetic: the staff are friendly and cute and seem capable, but ill-equipped to handle volume. They get testy behind their small counter and you begin to feel a bit nervous that one of them might chuck another one into the canal. This would also be suited to the shabby-chic aesthetic.

The breakfast menu is brief, perhaps because of the limitations of a tiny kitchen, but the porridge stands out: not unreasonably priced (£3), topped with poached pears, something that even this self-described porridge professional had never encountered. And it was pure poetry. Served in twee, chintzy porcelain, the oats themselves were substantial, with just a touch of chewiness, cooked in milk but not too creamy, and with the essential touch of salt that my people (the Scottish ones, anyway) insist upon. The poaching of the pears was perfect: like the oats, they were soft but firm, not mushy, and they had been steeped in – wait for it – rosemary. I know! With a touch of brown sugar, which was supplied separately, this was only slightly short of orgasm-by-porridge. Did you not previously associate porridge with sex, dear reader? You will.

Garufa Argentine Grill, Highbury

2010-05-05T10:00:00.003+01:00

Garufa Argentine Grill
104 Highbury Park
Highbury
N5 2XE
020 7226 0070
www.garufa.co.uk

by Sigmund Fried

The idea of steak for breakfast is ostensibly ridiculous; bloody and parlous it’s synonymous with late nights, shouty conversations and red wine. In the context of a Saturday morning meal, which is all softly delineated regrets and coffee, it seems kind of wrong. But what the hell, I’d made a date with Hashley Brown and compared to his increasingly esoteric culinary forays into the world of the Leopold Bloom-esque breakfast (“Inner organs of beasts and fowls…”), steak was child’s play: a black livered, pastis-slurping French child perhaps, but child’s play nonetheless.

We’d decided on the Garufa Grill by virtue of it being about 30 seconds from Hashley’s house and because we’d had a pretty satisfying late dinner at this charming Argentinian restaurant two weeks previously with Mrs Brown and her visiting sister. So with Ed Benedict and a couple of others in tow we made it to Garufa bleary-eyed and ordered the “Full Argentine Breakfast” (£9.80). Except for Ed, that is, who as a veggie opted, much to his chagrin — and our amusement – for organic muesli with 'milk or yogurt' (£2.50). Still, despite the tears and cursing he seemed to like it, as we all did the numerous, delicious café lattes we mainlined.

Back to the main event, we were more than satisfied. The scrambled eggs were creamy, the Portobello mushroom juicy and garlicky, and the 150g Argentine rump steak an artery-clogging treat, but it was the “Argentine-style” sausage’s pleasing spiciness that garnered the biggest plaudits. And the grilled tomato and toast were as good a supporting cast as could be hoped for. Happily sated and surrounded by good friends, I made up my mind about the steak issue there and then. Would I have it again? Yes I said yes I will Yes.

Volcanic Dispash: Cafe 1916, Palma, Mallorca

2010-04-29T15:42:00.004+01:00

Cafe 1916
Plaza de España, 4
07002 Palma
Mallorca
Spain
++34 971 71 88 19

by Caff Kidston

Mallorcans are generally a happy bunch. Stranded Brits however are morose and sulky. It is suspected that this Hispanic cheerfulness can be attributed to the weather or the plentiful supplies of sun-burnt foreigners, but no, there is a more surprising reason: the Mallorcan breakfast.

This is no bacon or porridge fest. It consists of four basic items, one of them quite surprising. First, coffee; a macho 'solo' for the gents, so strong you can (and indeed for entertainment value probably should) stand a spoon in it. Added fun comes in its being served in a glass and thus impossible to pick up due to the volcanic (topical bit there) temperature. The weaker ladies get a 'con leche' as befits their more delicate nature.

Then, sumo de naranja - orange juice. For some reason this sweet sun-warmed nectar comes with optional sugar to add, presumably for those planning to fly home without a plane, powered solely by the glucose rush.

The carbs are provided by the ensaimada, a snail shaped (though not flavoured) pastry covered in icing sugar which ensures that you will carry the evidence of your breakfast with you on your shirt for the rest of the day.

But the crowning glory of this bracer for the day, the thing which made King Jaime I a true conqueror (nope, me neither), the factor which makes the Spanish mad enough to get into confined spaces with angry bovines is... the shot of Torres brandy which comes as a compulsory ' side dish'. No wonder every day is a sunny one. Viva Espana indeed.

Bistrot Bruno Loubet, Clerkenwell

2010-04-23T09:12:00.004+01:00

Bistrot Bruno Loubet
The Zetter
86-88 Clerkenwell Road
Clerkenwell
EC1M 5RJ
www.bistrotbrunoloubet.com

by Shreddie Kruger

With a name like Bruno Loubet you only have two choices in life: porn star or chef. Sadly for the sex industry Bruno Loubet opted for the latter, which is also great news for anyone who likes rich French bistrot grub.

His boudoir of a restaurant is nestled in the buxom bosom of Clerkenwell on the ground floor of the Zetter hotel. The bistrot has gained a fine reputation since its recent launch for its full on, card-carrying French food, including a hare dish that has the density and delicacy of a porn star’s vagina - so we expected a sensual breakfast of silky eggs and slippery butter.

Several waiters and waitresses danced around like fluffers awaiting orders before bringing us cappuccinos that would have been at their peak five minutes before they arrived on our table. Whilst this works perfectly for roasted meats, it doesn’t for coffee.

As for breakfast itself, we all know that classic Eggs Benedict is composed of a toasted English muffin, a layer of grilled ham, soft poached eggs and lashings of hollandaise sauce. But while the version that was presented to me featured a perfectly poached egg and good if slightly under-acidic hollandaise, I must object to the inclusion of bacon rather than grilled ham. I love bacon. But not with my Eggs Bennie thank you very much. The history of Eggs Benedict is worthy of a tome of biblical proportions. Some charlatans suggest that bacon should be used but many more prefer grilled ham. One item of historical relevance is a letter by Mabel C. Butler of Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts to The New York Times Magazine November 1967:

“Mr. and Mrs. Benedict, when they lived in New York around the turn of the century, dined every Saturday at Delmonico's. One day Mrs. Benedict said to the maitre d'hotel, "Haven't you anything new or different to suggest?" On his reply that he would like to hear something from her, she suggested poached eggs on toasted English muffins with a thin slice of ham, hollandaise sauce and a truffle on top.”

The reason that ham works so well and bacon so poorly is twofold. The extra fat in the bacon pushes the dish's richness over edge – instead of taking one year off your life it detracts a full three and adds a heart bypass in for good measure as well. Secondly, the texture of this dish should be soft. You should be able to eat it without using your teeth, therefore allowing the brain to do other important tasks such as reading the paper and waking up.

But don’t let the cold coffee and bacony Eggs Benedict put you off. Bistrot Bruno Loubet also offers a fine array of fruits, juices, breads, yoghurts and people watching as well as other interesting offerings such as poached eggs on pea pancake with crisp pancetta, which was excellent, or fennel seed cured salmon, vegetable muffin and cottage cheese.

It’s a breakfast for both curious adventurers who want to experiment a little and of course amateur porn stars. We just wish they’d been less ham fisted on the bacon front

Greaseless Spoon Cafe, Holborn

2010-04-19T16:19:00.001+01:00

Greaseless Spoon Cafe by Tefal
7-8 Little Turnstile
Holborn
WC1 7DX
Mon 19th – Fri 23rd April, 9am – 4pm daily
To book tickets on Facebook click here

by Stephen Fry-Up

What better way to spend a Sunday evening than at 32 Great Queen Street in the company of, among others, esteemed Lon Review of Breakfasts stalwarts Malcolm Eggs and Hashley Brown? The whole shindig was a celebration of the recent marriage of another LRB lynchpin, Blake Pudding, to his delightful wife, Mrs Blake Pudding. Monday morning in the office was something of a rude awakening – tweeted offers of morning sherry did little to improve things. The only solution – breakfast.

Thank goodness then for Tefal, who'd invited yours truly to come and experience their new pop-up cafe near Holborn. Now, as much as the phrase 'pop-up' fills me with dread (they really do seem to be popping everything up these days – even toast...) free breakfast is free breakfast. So off I popped.

The whole thing is designed to promote Tefal's range of Nutricious and Delicious healthy cooking gadgets – they're offering customers all the glory of a full fry-up, with none of the guilt-inducing fatty stuff. That's the theory anyway.

Certainly the place looks how you might imagine – a cross between a proper greasy spoon (gingham tablecloths? Check) but with that slightly nauseating cleanliness also radiated by places like Giraffe. The menu is limited (no black pudding or hash browns or bubble) so I thought best to sample as much as possible by ordering the all-day breakfast.

The first thing that stuck me was the odd appearance of the poached egg – it looked like a sort of ceramic cylinder, and didn't taste particularly eggy. The sausages were fine – a cut above the usual, but nothing special, and they did have a rather odd texture. Beans and toast were beans and toast, tomato was tomato, and nowt to write home about there. Two stand-outs though: excellent mushrooms, and more butter than you could ever dream of scoffing. It was as if they were trying to make up for something...

And that something was a lack of grease. The whole point in a fry-up is that it's fatty and delicious. If you want healthy, eat a salad. Upon leaving the Greaseless Cafe I felt strange – somehow both full, and oddly empty. Rather like life then, I suppose: without grease and guilt, it just ain't worth living.

Breakfast from America: The Cleveland Clinic, Ohio

2010-04-13T11:17:00.006+01:00

The Cleveland Clinic
9500 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland
Ohio
OH 44195
+1 (800) 223-2273‎
www.clevelandclinic.org

by T.N. Toost

The Cleveland Clinic is ranked as one of the top in the America by the US News and World Report, and is often seen as one of the best in the world. President Obama visited it repeatedly to discuss the healthcare bill; myriad celebrities, Saudi royalty and even Prince Charles have passed through for their medical care. Some of the doctors and staff are internationally famous for their publications, and with this fame brings wealth: walking through the spacious marble hallways, past well-appointed guards, expensive corporate art and well-placed leather sofas, one might be excused for thinking that one was in a 5-star hotel or a private airport.

Scarlet Pumpernickel joined me at the Clinic one cold, cold morning. Girls make the best breakfast partners: if they’re quiet, it’s with the contemplative, distant-eyed silence that one doesn’t take personally, and when they’re talkative they will ramble on at length about nothing of consequence, which is a better accompaniment to a morning meal than orange juice and most types of tea. I got the eggs with cheese, hash browns and turkey sausage (a total of 769 calories), a blueberry muffin (144 - 266 calories) and hazelnut coffee (calories unknown); Scarlet got a dainty container of grits (143 calories). The grits were $1. My meal was much more expensive, but I would have switched with her any day of the week. The eggs were merely warm, and the cheese – packaged, shredded, American – didn’t melt into them, instead settling on almost like a spice. The hash browns were cold and flavorless, requiring salt, pepper and ketchup. The turkey sausage, also cold, tasted as if it had been mixed with plastic and then freezer-burned. The muffin was implausibly both oily and dry, with stale thrown in for good measure. The hazelnut coffee, the highlight of my meal, was merely passable, and that was mostly because it was warm. Scarlet’s grits were ok, but as she explained, “It’s really, really hard to fuck up grits.”

What left me with the worst taste in my mouth was the fact that my meal – a normal American breakfast, if a bit on the small side – ran to just under 1,000 calories. One would think hospitals would be temples of health, and that they would encourage their patients, visitors and employees to eat healthy food – that they would put as much thought into what went into people as they put into the expensive corporate art hanging on the walls. Instead, they serve garbage, and freely admit that it’s garbage – they post the nutritional information next to each item.

We left, walking through a long hallway filled with flat-screen televisions broadcasting the Clinic’s awards, and stopped by the Intercontinental Hotel (one of the poshest in Cleveland and built specifically for the families of wealthy patients). I hope I never have to stay in a hospital. If I do, though, it’ll likely be because of the kind of crap they serve in Cleveland Clinic cafeteria.

Hawksmoor, Spitalfields

2010-04-08T13:58:00.007+01:00

Hawksmoor
157 Commercial Street
Spitalfields
E1 6BJ
020 7247 7392
www.thehawksmoor.co.uk

by Malcolm Eggs

If Commercial Street was a 1990s wall poster it'd be the type that on first glance looked like particularly revolting wallpaper but would, when you defocused your eyes just so, reveal a 3D image of a howling wolf, an Aztec pyramid or a giant bowler hat containing a crying, hexagonal eye. Equally, this key transit route on the London Inner Ring Road looks on the face of it exactly like, well, a major transit road on the London Inner Ring Road. But squint and focus on the middle distance and other things fade into view: a luxury hair salon, a man in shorts and cowboy boots, a shop selling Banksy prints. Suddenly you are in a 'creative village'.

Keep concentrating. There's something else - a doorway flanked by a menu, barely signposted, almost camouflaged against the tangled shadows of this stupid analogy. It's Hawksmoor, the best steak and cocktail joint in London, now serving a brunch aimed squarely at the customer who demands evidence of his agreeable position in the food chain.

This service is resoundingly delivered by their magnum opus the Hawksmoor Breakfast, £30 for two to share. The sausages alone contain three verses - oink oink, baa baa and moo moo - of Old Macdonald Had a Farm. Then you discover bubble and squeak laced with tender short rib beef, toast soaked in dripping, beans infused with pulled pork, a large smoked bacon chop, a huge cut of black pudding, fried eggs, fleshy mushrooms, explosive roast tomatoes and a neat hunk of cow bone with the marrow exposed. I am, this breakfast tells me, king of the whole pigging world. It tastes good too. The sausage is, as John Torode might yell, "packed with flavour" and the bacon chop is like the core of a star made entirely from umami. A sole stumble is the slightly stiff, flavourless black pudding.

Their extensive brunch booze list meanwhile has not so much been compiled as curated: we share a gin Bloody Mary washed down with a detailed account of the drink's history, as recounted by a barman as oracular and hungover as his role strictly demands.

We pay our £50 and I reflect that I have found the very definition of an event breakfast: elsewhere on the menu are a slightly chastened Full English, a lavish reimagining of a sausage and egg McMuffin and a whole section dedicated to Longhorn steak and eggs. When I finally work out how to turn breakfast writing into hard cash you'll find me cackling over a 1.1kg Chateaubriand with two fried eggs and half a lobster, a mere snap at £159.

The Priory, Roehampton

2010-04-02T11:26:00.003+01:00

The Priory
Priory Lane
Roehampton
SW15 5JJ
020 8876 8261
www.priorygroup.com

by Bloody Mary

So obviously mental hospitals aren’t famed for their food, but this one costs a small fortune, so it should be. The anorexics are fed elsewhere – well, unless only part of your problem is anorexia, in which case you have to cope with the other crazies looking at you as you sniff your apple. Any other food issues and you’re in with the rest of us, the mildly insane. Fortunately, the secure unit also are fed separately, behind the high wall around Scary Compound where they are locked away – so I cant vouch for their eating conditions – but lets hope, if they are to have any chance at all, that their food was better.

Loony bin cooks don’t want to upset the patients, but they don’t really want to waste anything on people who believe all glasses to be half-empty at the best of times. The Priory have clearly decided that a way to make the inmates happy and the restaurant staff happy is to give the former a rough facsimile of what they want to eat, but made so horrible they don’t hang about and annoy the latter.

Mornings aren’t good times for loons, in general, so it’s not the happiest breakfast you’ve ever seen. Sad faces slouch in, stare at the eggs, find the last cling-filmed muesli and a pear and slouch out again. But the manics make up for the silence with their nice loud laughing, the drunkies & junkies are relatively perky in the morning, and the lady who liked to play with food with her toes adds “colour”. Some kind nurse might have brought in the Metro, so you could read about crucial hairstyle changes for Peaches Geldof.

Fried food in vast oily vats are slapped down at 7 and left to harden until 10am. Congealed egg and chipolatas, fried potatoes the consistency of shoes and gritty little nipples of mushroom lie miserably next to each other like failed suicide attempts. The Priory fryery was so bad that I couldn’t indulge my schooldays fetish for crap fryups. I would press a crunchy sliver of streaky bacon, if it had not disintegrated, between two slices of brown bread and drown it in a bloodbath of ketchup. Then I too, would nick a pear and slouch out. The healthy table all looked so dry.

Drink? Well, the coffee at the Priory has no caffeine in it. Crazies aren’t allowed caffeine – so coffee becomes useless, sour fluid that burns your mouth. Milk is in little UHT cartons that cause spectacular ejaculations over depressives sticking thumbs in them. On the plus side, there’s a LOT of fresh juice and pre-made hot chocolate, and these are very good.

A more radiant, sparkly breakfast - blueberries and strawberries in the muesli, french toast cut into sunbeams, pastries with jam and honey and cream, fresh roasted coffee, shimmering poached eggs - might have helped us bust through the day, boosting our fragile immune systems and bringing joviality to the depressed. But admittedly there, the biggest improvement would have been caffeine.

The Cat & Cucumber, Bermondsey

2010-03-18T17:46:00.006Z

The Cat & Cucumber
182 Tower Bridge Road
London
SE1 2AD
020 7407 2945

by Sadie Frosties

Working in the cobbled streets of Shad Thames it feels as if every day the concrete and glass blah of the More London development creeps ever closer, like a real-estate T1000. The glory of this area is that despite the obvious regeneration and Conran Cluster, the warehouses and elevated walkways remain, as do the original building names - cardamom, vanilla, sesame, tea, nutmeg - all a nod to the commodities they once housed.

I often fancy at the whimsical name of my favourite caff. How wonderful it would be that alongside the Vanilla Courts and the Wheat Wharfs this was once the centre of the cat and the cucumber trades, handily positioned beside the railway to enable the easy distribution of felines and cultivated gourds to the Kentish heartlands.

Perhaps this is just a ridiculous daydream of another bored office drone, or perhaps just a touch of this industrial atmosphere remains. Either way, the Cat & Cucumber is a Bermondsey institution. The format is one of strict order; one must approach the counter, order quickly from the vast menu and then find a seat, mindful all the while not to lose your numbered ticket. Your task is then to attempt to maintain a non-distracted conversation with your fellow diner while you keep an ear on the numbers bellowed from the counter, and an eye on the steady succession of plates being hurried past you.

I order bacon, eggs, bubble and mushrooms - in my mind the optimum breakfast combination - but on the particular day in question, in celebration of meeting with up with an old west-country comrade, I add a sausage. The fried eggs are of that glorious oil-basted, crisp-free quality, the bubble is laced with green cabbage, and the bacon cooked to catching point. I forget the mushrooms. The sausage – dear reader you will be more than familiar which such a sausage – is of the perfectly cylindrical variety so prevalent in the caff community. But just like those repugnant recovered chicken-face frankfurters you secretly buy from Lidl, everyone has a guilty pleasure. Sat in my office clothes and heels, ladling perfectly fried goods and questionable sausage towards my face, the Cat & Cucumber is my weekday Lidl frankfurter - and I shan’t hear a bad word said about it.

Little Portland Cafe, Fitzrovia

2010-03-12T15:47:00.009Z

Little Portland Cafe
15 Little Portland St
Fitzrovia
W1W 8BW
020 7636 1439

by Malcolm Eggs

An email arrived from Catherine Carr, a reporter for the Radio 4 show You and Yours. A survey had found that the bacon sandwich at Claridge’s was, at £11.50, the most expensive in the country. Would I like to meet her there to discuss this in about half an hour?

My immediate response was to go and brush my teeth. I needed two minutes to think about it all: my toothbrush contains a timer and whatever I decided, I would need clean teeth. I started at the lower left, fretting that I would go on air in front of several million of my fellow citizens and come across like an oaf or a charlatan by nervously blurting out pompous, anachronistic terms like ‘oaf’ or ‘charlatan’. But by the top right molars, I was determined to give it a go. I figured there is only so far a man can go wrong when talking about bacon; and anyway, it sounded like a fucking good sandwich.

By the time I’d offered a response, Catherine had been turned down by Claridge’s, then the Dorchester, so the assignment had changed a little. She was to collect an almost as expensive sandwich from The Langham and I was to meet her at the Little Portland Cafe, all within sprinting distance of the BBC’s central London operation. I would sit down, try sandwiches from both places, and compare and contrast them in front of a large microphone. We met outside and she plunged in, recording the sounds of the affable owner, the beleaguered chef, the sizzling bacon and the chatting men (for they were all men). The room was packed. My sandwiches arrived.

To make a Little Portland bacon sandwich, they start the bacon in the oven then finish it off by frying it, before delivering it to the counter to be placed between two slices of white bread. The finished product costs £1.90. It’s a process replicated in greasy spoons across the land and it always makes something pretty delicious – the inherent divinity of bacon makes sure of that. This particular sandwich was at the top end of the spectrum, not a surprise after a wait spent observing table after table of incredible-looking fried breakfasts. As for The Langham, I'm afraid to say their £8.50 bacon and brioche number was dry and had a texture like Frazzles in a bath sponge. The sweet taste of the brioche fought needlessly with the over-crispy bacon.

I blathered something along those lines in the direction of the microphone. We thanked the owner and went our separate ways. I walked to the British Library, opened my laptop, and after an hour began Googling hysterically for some kind of public reaction. When none came, I think I was relieved.

Op-Egg: Tinie Tempah's penchant for nice tea

2010-03-10T09:38:00.003Z

by Blake Pudding
Rappers have a taste for the finer things in life and not only do they love luxury goods but they love telling us about their love of luxury goods. Cristal champagne is the most famous example but Courvoisier, Bentley and Rolex have all been praised by hip hop types. Now no one likes conspicuous consumption more than me, but isn’t it a little disappointing that they went for such obvious brands?

If I was in a position to influence popular tastes then I’d go for something more distinctive; something that speaks of taste without being pretentious. This must have been the thinking behind top grime artist Tinie Tempah’s (real name Patrick Okogwu) decision to plug Yorkshire Tea on twitter yesterday. His exact words were “Omdz move over PG Tips.” I’m not sure exactly what he means but the sentiment is clear – Mr Tempah is a discerning tea drinker and he is not afraid to shout about it. Not as discerning, however, as one of his fans who comments that he prefers Yorkshire Gold calling it “the Cristal of teas”.

Tinie Tempah is currently riding high in the charts with Pass Out. Let’s hope that Taylors of Harrogate, producers of Yorkshire Tea, will not now try to distance themselves from their place in popular music as the makers of Cristal did so disdainfully with American rappers. Perhaps they would like to sponsor his next tour with a special one off free gig at Bettys Tea Rooms in Northallerton.

Dean Street Townhouse, Soho

2010-03-03T14:25:00.003Z

Dean Street Townhouse
69-71 Dean Street
Soho
W1D 3SE
020 7434 1775
www.deanstreettownhouse.com

by Cher E. Jamm

It calls us over from across the street. 'Come in, come in' it says, with the call of a siren. We can't resist. It's been too long since we've spent a day together so we've decided to enjoy a secret day off. No-one will ever know; the possibilities are endless.

The sun isn't shining outside, but it may as well be inside. Think cosy country house hotel. Think slick 1950s French bistro. Then mesh the two together sort of, but not really. It's the type of place you want to move into. We're seated at a red banquet. It's hard to believe a branch of the Slug and Lettuce once stood here. The menu appears.

It's early, perhaps only just past half eight, but the place is buzzing with jolly breakfasters, mostly, it seems, made up of Soho's media contingent. This doesn't put us off - we're cocooned from this, in our own little booth, our hands thawing out as we pour steaming cups of tea from a shared pot.

He doesn't falter, and orders Full English as soon as the chirpy waiter trots over again. I hover over grilled kippers for a moment and then order the smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. Kippers seem too uncouth, too harsh, for today.

Breakfast arrives with neither fuss nor bother. An artful Full English: two eggs beaming like two small suns; the bacon is crisp and refined; the mushrooms, silky and somewhat obscene; the sausage lies puffed and glistening next to a grilled tomato, which, as usual, is nothing more than a grilled tomato; the black pudding is elegance on a plate.

He pushes the black pudding to one side. He's gone off it these days. I urge him to have a small taste (for you, dear reader, all for you). He refuses. A flash of anger passes over us, but it would be a shame to break the spell, at least so early on.

We eat in careful silence, stealing glances at one another, attempting to gauge the other's mood. The salmon is pale and delicious, the scrambles creamy and delicate, but I seem to have lost my appetite, I don't appreciate them fully. I'm sorry. He has finished eating, declaring it possibly the best he's ever had. No eye contact. Only the fat disk of blood sausage remains. A quiet and cold reminder of how we walk on wire.

Caravan, Clerkenwell

2010-02-26T15:53:00.018Z

Caravan
11 - 13 Exmouth Market
Clerkenwell
EC1R 4QD
020 7833 8115
caravanonexmouth.co.uk

by Malcolm Eggs

"The beans were just roasted this morning," said the barista, as if by way of warning. "So if there's a certain... fruitiness to the flavour that will be why."

I hereby coin the term 'caravan apology', as in 'an apology for a benevolent state of affairs'. See: "I'm sorry I'm so early" or "I'm sorry, I know we said we wouldn't do presents"; this was the finest cup of coffee I have set to my lips in as long as I can remember, the froth patterned exactly like one of those 70s ring-binders and the taste smoother than a Don Draper infidelity binge.

We ordered baked eggs with chorizo and a side of black pudding. The latter, from Franconia in Putney, was remarkable - light, subtly smoky and, within a matter of seconds, absent. The chorizo and eggs (£11 for two) were delivered chicken madras-style in a handled silver pot, the chorizo bits lurking like crocodiles in a crimson-doused pool of red pepper, green parsley, piquant oily sauce, Greek yoghurt and gloopy, friendly eggs. It became a proper mess, but a bloody delectable one.

What about the service? Tap water was poured immediately without request, then replenished zealously. The room itself? Attractive and light, a mix of Wellington cocktail bar, London bistro and a branch of All Saints. Well-heeled new mothers and rubber-heeled freelancers have already formed a demographic stand-off.

If I must have a gripe, it's that the 'Caravan Fry Up' is £8 but comprising eggs, bacon, tomatoes, soy mushrooms and toast is holding back on some treasures: black pudding and bubble are available but must be ordered as sides at up to £3.50 each. Vietnam-style mission creep is a danger.

Four and a half years ago, I was in this same room - it being until recently Al's Café Bar - complaining in the first ever LRB review that the bacon was only cooked on one side. "I'm sorry you closed, Al's," can be my first caravan apology.

The Three Bells, Heathrow Airport

2010-02-19T17:44:00.003Z

The Three Bells
Terminal Three (pre-security)
Heathrow Airport
TW6 1AD
020 8897 6755

by Joyce Carol Oats

This is the thing about restaurants in airports: they shouldn’t be good. They should be pretty bad. If they were good you might want to linger there, might regret departure, and regretting departure is not something that you should be doing when you are in a place that is all about leaving. We’re pleased to find one, therefore, that strongly resembles a very expensive Wetherspoon’s, and therefore promises to be pretty bad.

Landside restaurants are pretty bad, in particular, because they are full of people being left behind as well as travellers. We are here because only Departing Friend is going: she is emigrating to America, and a trip on this scale, an actual emigration, seemed to require me and Departing Friend’s Brother to pay our respects to her in person, although now we are here we are just grumpy and quiet and sad. We take our seats amongst the other heavy-hearted people: here, a couple clutching hands over untouched plates of breakfast glazed with cold bacon fat; there, a moist-eyed grandmother, her daughter, two small shouty grandchildren who no one would ever want to sit next to on a plane.

This is the flavour of goodbye: a thick Cumberland sausage patty, an egg, a puffy white bun, ketchup. I sink my teeth into it and am immediately surprised because, I realise, I am expecting it to taste like a McDonald’s sausage McMuffin. And it doesn’t, perhaps because it costs about £5. There’s something distinctly British about that Cumberland flavour, that even the most uninspiring Cumberland-esque sausage lacks something of the metallic tang of one with the McD recipe, probably because it might contain fewer pieces of actual metal.

It is pretty bad. And the coffee is pretty bad. And Departing Friend and Departing Friend’s Brother are ploughing their way through their English breakfasts like it is their duty, but they are pretty bad. Departing Friend cannot face the tomato. I bite it and it tastes like nothing, a small mercy on the part of the chefs, to ensure that in a place so charged with emotion, the flavour of the tomato will evoke no feeling. And by the time we pay (something ridiculous, like £20) and proceed to wave Departing Friend through security, we are all so preoccupied by being sluggish and sickly that we forget to cry.

Christopher's, Covent Garden

2010-01-31T23:31:00.000Z

Christopher’s
18 Wellington Street
Covent Garden
London WC2E 7DD
020 7240 4222
www.christophersgrill.com

by Sadie Frosties

I hate the art of Edward Hopper. You had the Nighthawks poster. I saw you buying it at the poster sale during fresher’s week in 1995. You’ve imagined yourself there haven’t you, sitting in that diner. You’re that guy, and that there, that’s your lady.

No you’re not. And nor am I. Although it would seem Christopher’s would really like us to believe it to be the case. Christopher’s fancies itself as just this kind of old fashioned American restaurant... Indeed, sitting in one of its velvety cushioned booths, I felt myself slipping into such an illusion and could almost forget the gaggle of lycra-clad 20 year olds drinking vodka cocktails at 11am on a Sunday.

With its attempts at inventive optimism, the food could also be compared (if, say, a breakfast review’s consistency was at stake) to the art of Edward Hopper. Hash brown with Eggs Royale? Weird, but excellent! I am of the unfortunate breakfast disadvantage of being unable to eat wheat products, so the presence of a crunchy potato rectangle cheers me up no end. And when I told the waiter of my lamentable circumstance in the hope of a stealthy muffin substitution I was met with a stony silence and a glare which suggested perhaps in my youth I’d nicked his wallet and slapped his mum. The muffins stayed.

Still, I’ll try to be objective. The poached eggs were really very good, displaying that bulbous, compact quality that I’ve never quite been able to recreate at home, and were not the slightest bit watery. The smoked salmon was thickly cut and abundant. The hollandaise was fine. The orange juice was, I’m told, outstanding, but I plumped for the coffee, which was abhorrent. The curious hash brown was the one part that felt the most authentically American: flaccid and eggy in a McDonaldsy type of way. It was something that even though every fibre of your body wants to, nay knows it should hate, another part of you is unable to stop eating it. But it’s disgusting! But I secretly like it. It’s how I really feel about the art of Edward Hopper.

Fika, Shoreditch

2010-01-07T17:48:00.003Z

Fika
161a Brick Lane
Shoreditch
E1 6SB
020 7613 2013
www.fikalondon.com

by Joyce Carol Oats

There are few things so stressful as taking a New Yorker to breakfast in London. These people can barely step outside their front doors without tripping over a pile of fresh bagels layered with cream cheese and gravadlax, fluffed stacks of blueberry pancakes, sixteen different varieties of omelettes.

‘You have to take the bus to breakfast?’ says New Yorker One, as we wait for one.

‘It’s raining,’ I say, defensively.

We get to Brick Lane, and I have to think fast: we are hungry, we have just taken a bus, there is a LHR-JFK flight to catch. Albion’s the obvious choice, but I can’t really go back there since the last time when they dropped a stealth prawn into my eggs and a big shellfish-allergy drama ensued. And then I clap eyes on Fika. It’s Swedish. I love Swedish food. I am all about smorgasbords.

‘Do you have Swedish breakfasts in New York?’ I ask my New Yorkers.

‘Not really,’ they say. Win.

The breakfast menu is handed to us by a friendly girl with a fake-looking blonde bob. It’s fake-looking, I realise, because when she turns around it is clear that she hasn’t done a very good job of tucking her perfectly nice brown hair into her blonde wig. This is confusing, and also not propitious: if you can’t make your blonde wig look convincing, will you be able to serve a convincing breakfast? No, you will not.

The choice is not extensive: there are waffles, with a small selection of both sweet and savoury toppings. There are eggs on toast. The bread, according to the menu, is likely to be sourdough. That sounds nice, I think. I like a likely sourdough.

The food comes. New Yorker Number Two ordered a waffle with strawberry jam and cream (£4.50); it is brown and flat and looks uninspiring and small, although it tastes OK. But only OK. New Yorker One and I both opted for the fried eggs. The bread, unlikely enough, is not sourdough at all: it is two halves of what seem to be a rather substantial bun that has been dipped in dishwater. Yes, that’s what I said: dishwater. One half of my bun is water-logged and bitter and soap-flavoured.

Is there any point in going on? Need I comment on the texture of the egg (not bad) the flavour of the reindeer sausage that New Yorker One ordered as a side dish (fine for a reindeer sausage, since I have nothing to compare it to), the quality of the coffee (so-so), the fact that the eggs and toast were served with margarine rather than butter (would be gross if I was not contending with dishwatery bread, which made it seem positively delicious by contrast). I think I need not.

But I do need to apologise to the New Yorkers.

Official 2012 Olympics Event, The National Portrait Gallery, St James's

2009-12-17T13:41:00.005Z

Launch of "The National Portrait Gallery/BT Road to 2012 Project"
The National Portrait Gallery
2 St Martin's Place
St James's
WC2H 0HE

by Kipper Sutherland

Riggs and Murtagh
discount and fireworks
Olympic and Breakfast.

There are just some rare and racy conjuctions that really agitate the submandibles - that promise greatness, with just a hint of danger.

It is the last of these pair of nouns I pondered as I found myself tripping down St Martin’s Lane at 8am, on the morning that the countdown to East London’s sportsday ticked past 1000 days to go.

In my hand, an invitation to toast this occasion, to parley “with refreshments” with Kelly Holmes, Seb Coe and company in the National Portrait Gallery, to find out first hand, how the sporting elite fuel up. I wondered if anyone would be in shorts.

As I turned into Trafalgar Square, a phalanx of corporate sponsors were inserting Dame Kelly into a hot air balloon. Waving a cheery, flaming, helium bye-bye, she was released, bemused but beaming into the morning air. My appetite soared with her.

Here I was, a revolving door away from real Olympians and lottery funded catering. My imagination was going to town. There’d be gymnasts mainlining carbs; isotonic grapefruits; Greco-Roman wrestling in Ready-Brek mud-pits. I stood on the threshold of once-in-a-lifetime breakfast experience.

Or so I thought.

But settling into the assemblage, something was wrong. The NPG’s Ondaatje Wing, an all-mingling, cutlery-precluding Corbusian temple of geometry was to be our dining room; vacant box-office workstations our breakfast bar. There was no smell of victuals. The ambience was an appetite-suppressing soundtrack of singsong cultural burblechore and profane media hum. Nobody was holding a plate.

Panic shot from stomach to brain. Then Jonathan Edwards arrived. He was wearing a broad grin and clutching a Pret a Manger bag from which he pulled an egg bap. He clearly knew something we didn't.

Groping for the refreshment table, fears coagulated. Wineglasses, cups, saucers... There would be. No food. I was facing a liquid breakfast. Not the good kind, either, as although the pinkish tinge of the orange juice winked kir-royal I held little hope of feeling that delicious lightening behind the eyes, the gift of a pre 9am cocktail. The coffee was doping-scandal strong and Motherwell brown. I couldn't finish a cup.

And that was it. Someone asked if I wanted apple juice. But I was too sad to answer.

Empty and dejected. I chastised myself for not checking the IOC’s breakfast guidelines, for too readily subscribing to the Olympic ideal of Little Chef.

I glimpsed Clive Woodward, striding through the throng. Here was a man who looks like he starts his day with a weak fruit tea and four John Player Specials. But it made me start. He also looked like a winner.

Maybe, I reflected, there's more to this. Maybe the breakfast isn’t wrong, maybe I am wrong. These are go-getters. An egg for them is not for poaching and covering in béchamel while you’re in a dressing gown at ten to twelve. It’s for putting raw in a spoon, and running 26 miles without dropping. No fuss, no mess.

As a nation, we mistrust mollycoddled or sports-scienced sporting stars, in the same way we mistrust avocado in a full English. Sure, it may be the right thing to do, and if we gave it a whirl it may give us an edge against the Swedes, but it feels like cheating.

We respect a noble loser. Likewise we only really respect a certain type of champion: the Chariots-of-Fire, leave-the-bag-in, stir-it-with-a-biro, knock-it-back, squeeze-in-the-paper-round, hitch-to-the-stadium, three-gold-medals-and-back-to-the-village-in-time-for-Countdown Champion. Come 2012 that’s who should carry the torch.

I felt like doing a star-jump. I vowed from now on to eat all my food in bar form. I left feeling lighter, sportier. I caught the bus home, had a bacon sandwich and went back to bed. Maybe these aren’t my games. There’s always Rio 2016.

York & Albany, Camden Town

2009-12-11T11:02:00.004Z

York & Albany
127-129 Parkway
Camden Town
NW1 7PS
020 7388 3344
www.gordonramsay.com/yorkandalbany

by Damon Allbran

They say that Gordon Ramsay has a magnetic personality. This may well be true given that he seems to attract and repel with equal force. To me, the idea of dining anywhere even loosely associated with the scrotal wundermensch is anathema whilst, for provincial businessmen, up-in-town for a meeting or assignation his imprimatur is virtual catnip. They patronise his restaurants in barking hordes, their brittle, hard-eyed wives attached to their arms like less benign remora fish, and imagine they have arrived.

The awfulness of both Ramsay and his clientele is really rather problematic for me. You see, the York & Albany, run for Ramsay by Angela Hartnett, is in Camden Parkway - though the extensive PR from the GRH deathstar places it in ‘Regent’s Park’. It’s my local, has a fantastic bar and does a great breakfast.

A few weeks ago, hungover, in need of fortification and unable to face the greased egregiousness of the New Goodfare at the opposite end of Parkway, I dropped into the Y & A for their full fried breakfast, £12.

The place, as usual, was nearly empty so I was seated by the charming and professional waitress in a corner. It was only after the coffee arrived (overextracted, with scorched milk but drinkable) that I noticed the three salarymen sitting in the high-backed armchairs over my shoulder. One was a loud Texan in a glistering blue suit, abidingly awful brown loafers and an aggressive hairpiece. The other two sat opposite in attitudes of supplication; one a beardless junior with artificially spiked forelock, the other an older man whose face formed a rictus of happy compliance while his eyes bled bitter loathing. Their mellifluous Welsh accents seemed strangely out of tune with the Manhattan cocktail-bar roomset and the agonisingly controlled beige decorative palette

My breakfast arrived. A single artisanal Lincolnshire sausage, a slice of Old Spot bacon, a perfectly presented free-range poached egg… but my reverie was interrupted by the urgent voice of the younger suit. He was bartling some vile jargon-laden tosh about how empowering it would be to work with the Texan Mothership. I was overcome with a surge of predatory savagery. Maybe it was the solid whack of haemoglobin from the glorious slice of Irish black pudding, maybe a response to the waft of terror hormones drifting in from the next table.

The Texan was now taking an advantage of a pause in the flattery to hold forth, at length and volume, about his golfing prowess. I hope I betray no sense of anti-Americanism when I say how delighted I was at that moment to see a grilled tomato and mushroom on my plate rather than a smear of baked beans. Full marks to Gordon.

Finally, unable to control himself any longer the young thruster interrupted the Texan’s stream of self-aggrandisement.

Have you considered, he almost pleaded, the financial benefits of locating somewhere outside central London…

I watched as the Texan’s eyes died

…somewhere like Port Talbot.

As I mopped the last of my egg with a crust of sourdough toast, I watched the door swing closed across the broad back of the Texan as across the echoing and empty dining room his two erstwhile partners gazed, disconsolate, at the bill.

Book Club, Shoreditch

2009-12-08T09:50:00.003Z

Book Club
100-106 Leonard Street
Shoreditch
London
EC2A 4RH
020 7684 8618

by Gregg E. Bread and Moose Lee

Good morning breakfast fans! Good morning ping pong fans! Today, at long last, we witness the bringing together of these two glorious pastimes.

With the blue bat, drinking a passable latte, hailing from way down south of the river, the two-time ping-pong champion of London Fields, Gregg ‘The Eggs-ecutioner’ Bread.

With the red bat, drinking a nigh-on perfect if overpriced tea, the undisputed bantamweight of Welsh table tennis: Moose ‘The Metabolism’ Lee.

It’s a rainy morning here in Shoreditch. We’re in the Book Club, formerly known as Home Bar, now refurbished to include a full-size ping-pong table amidst the exposed brick and photo-art.

Ding ding! We’re off, and both players order French toast with bananas and strawberries drizzled in maple syrup. Before the food arrives, they step up to the ping-pong plate. Honours are even (1-1) as the first course arrives: the ‘Metabolism’ shows good early form, mopping the nicely crunchy eggy bread and snarfling it before his opponent has time to chew. The Eggs-ecutioner makes a considered start, lingering over the ripe banana and saving the last sumptuous strawberry for the strongest possible final mouthful. Nothing can separate these two.

Our contestants are still hungry and signal to the referee for a shared Full English in the hope of breaking the deadlock. Back on the bigger table, slightly impeded by their sticky fingers, these giants of breakfast-ping-pong are still gut and gut. 2-2.

The Full English arrives and the rivals touch cutlery. Moose is almost defeated by the inhumanly big – and judging by his expression – distinctly average sausages. He doesn’t fare much better with the button mushrooms which – as this replay shows – are watery and tasteless. Gregg E Bread sets about the scrummy toast with a series of aggressive chomps before the fried egg checks his progress with its peculiar and disappointing underside.

Moose comes alive on tasting the bacon, making an elongated ‘mmmm’ sound – his trademark. Gregg E Bread replies with a cute combination of the cherry tomatoes - but wait a minute he seems to be signalling to the bench that they are cold and uncooked.

The knives and forks are down as the valiant eaters, now sluggish and glazed-eyed, return to the ping-pong table for the finale. The crowd, a lone woman on a laptop, witness a gargantuan tussle that leaves Gregg E Bread to lick the commemorative plate as he triumphs 3-2. No matter the result, it is clear that the real winner here is the sport of Breakfast-Ping-Pong which has, finally, found a permanent home in East London.

Franze and Evans, Shoreditch

2009-12-03T13:21:00.002Z

Franze and Evans
101 Redchurch Street
Shoreditch
E2 7DL
020 7033 1910
www.franzeevans.com

by Joyce Carol Oats

Franze and Evans is the kind of place you want to have in your neighbourhood. You want to say to someone who you are trying to impress (probably because you want them to sleep with you), ‘hey, meet me at my neighbourhood cafe’ and for them to come and find you there and sit with you at a table in the light, pleasant space, surrounded by very high-end Italian groceries, and you want them to think, ‘my, this is a neighbourhood cafe of a sophisticated, cool, person who I rather want to sleep with.’

I am with Nurse Friend, however, who I do not want to sleep with me, so this effect is somewhat wasted. Instead, we look at the menus and decide what we want to eat. And then we wait to be served. And then we notice that Franze and Evans requires customers to order at the counter. This is a terrible mistake. Such is the layout of this sophisticated, cool neighbourhood cafe that the counter ordering system creates an awkward bottleneck. I want to draw them a flowchart to show how they are doing it all wrong, and I have never drawn a flowchart in my life.

I place our order: eggs Benedict for Nurse Friend; for me, a newly-minted vegetarian, eggs Florentine, which comes with Portobello mushrooms here. Both cost about £7.50. I pay for juice, which is served only in tiny glass bottles imported from Italy, and which are only good for a few gulps. I order coffee.

And then Nurse Friend and I sit. And wait. And watch as food and drinks are delivered to people who definitely came in after us. There are three people behind the counter. There appear to be three people working in the kitchen, but maybe more – they keep emerging, like clowns out of a very small car. The chap in charge – Franze? Evans? – brings us some glasses for our juice, long after we’d finished drinking it. We are forced to read The Sun to pass the time.

The food arrives. The eggs are poached too hard, and aren't especially hot: the yolks are a deep shade that indicate that happy hens were their source, but they don’t run, which makes Nurse Friend unhappy. The hollandaise could do with some more joie de vivre, but it’s nice enough. But the fact that I have mushroom only on one half muffin, and spinach only on the other half, makes me frown: it just seems stingy. Oh, Franze. Oh, Evans. Being stingy is neither sophisticated nor cool, and now I don’t want to sleep with either of you.

Breakfasts and Beds: Phileas Fogg, Brussels, Belgium

2009-11-29T15:38:00.003Z

Phileas Fogg
Rue Van Bemmel 6
1210 Sint-Joost-ten-Node
Sint-Joost-ten-Node
Brussels
Belgium
+32 495 22 09 85
www.phileasfogg.be

by Sunni Sidup

On the one hand, Phileas Fogg is a strange name for a Belgian Bed and Breakfast. The English explorer didn’t so much as set foot in the country, nor, I see, do the eponymous crisps come in a ‘Belgium Frite’ flavour. On the other hand, alongside Tintin and European Unions, food is high on the list of things the country is best known for. Chocolate, waffles, and, of course, beer: all Belgian specialities that are as delicious as they are bad for you. I was intrigued to see exactly what a Belgian breakfast held in store.

It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that I’m not, in fact, British. I come from a country where a ‘Full English’ is (perhaps more aptly) called a ‘Big Breakfast’, reserved only for weightlifters and those nursing the severest of hangovers, and I still, despite having lived here for over two years, find the idea of chips with my breakfast morally wrong. Yet on my first morning of waking up for breakfast at Phileas Fogg, I felt decidedly on the nationalistic side of the establishment’s namesake. Having regrettably fallen into the category of those nursing severe hangovers, all I really wanted was a good cup of tea. An Earl Grey would have been lovely, an English Breakfast even better, but when I was handed a cup of hot water with a lemon-infused green tea-bag on the side, I knew that it was going to be a very long morning indeed.

A night at the Phileas Fogg feels rather like you are staying with an eccentric French aunt, then for breakfast you gather around her kitchen table with the various other guests, all of whom cannot speak a word of English. You have two options: embarrassingly try out your limited school-level French, or explore the art of the awkward silence. The table is set with two baskets in the middle; one containing cold croissants and a lonely pain au chocolat, the other filled with pieces of miserly sliced multigrain bread. It will take you a while to realise that this is not just a starter. The bread will not be taken to be toasted. There will be no eggs, no bacon, no fruit, no cereal, no other options. It is a coeliac’s nightmare: bread or bread. The highlight of my morning was a Laughing Cow cheese sandwich; the rest I fed to the two Rottweilers circling my ankles.

The place itself is lovely, the eccentric aunt hospitable, the dogs’ barks worse than their bites, but the breakfast is appalling. Stay there by all means, but do so in the knowledge that you will need an early lunch.

Casa Madeira, Vauxhall

2009-11-26T10:20:00.002Z

Casa Madeira
48 Albert Embankment
Vauxhall
SE1 7TL
020 7735 0592

by Shreddie Kruger

Tucked away under the arches in Vauxhall, just a short mince from Chariots Roman Spa and well within eavesdropping range of MI6 is Casa Madeira. On arrival we were greeted with a pall of smoke from charring baps and a shudder inducing rattle from the trains chugging overhead that made it seem as though we were entering the Battle of Britain experience. The corrugated roof seemed to quake and we all held our breath as the roof to our would-be-air-raid-shelter held true.

With the chaos around us we feared not only a return to wartime rationing but also for our lives and so ordered fast from the Portuguese staff. During our short wait, for what we thought might be our last ever breakfast, we were relieved to see from Sky News that London was not actually under attack - or if it was, that the state of the lap dancing industry was more important to report on.

My full English breakfast was a joy, although I felt like an annoyed dwarf whilst trying to lift my comically oversized fork. The beans weren’t just warmed up, they had been allowed to break down to a slightly sludgy consistency that some hate, but I love. Yes, the sausage was made by robotic machine and not from a family recipe handed down from generation to generation like haemophilia, but that was just what was needed. The poached eggs were perfect with yolks that were so bright they could have been used as the amber in a set of traffic lights and not a trace of detestable vinegar. Bacon was salty and crisp. But the star of the show was a platter of buns that had been lovingly charred on the grill. They were still billowing little feathers of smoke that filled the air of our bomb shelter café like burnt out cars after a riot.

A trip to Casa Madeira is not complete without a shot of their espresso at the end. It was the caffeine equivalent of being woken up on a sleepy Monday morning with Dennis Hopper playing The Flight of the Valkyries out of the side of his helicopter.

This is by far and away the best breakfast meets Blitz experience that you’re likely to get in London. I’m just surprised that it’s not in the guidebooks. Or maybe I got the wrong end of the stick.

Sveti Vrach Spa Hotel, Sandanski, Bulgaria

2009-11-22T14:01:00.002Z

Sveti Vrach Spa Hotel
Sandanski 2800
Bulgaria
+359 746 000 000
Breakfast from 8am to 10am daily.

by Nelson Griddle

Breakfast on the Continent can be a fraught affair.

The French, supposedly, revel in café au lait and croissants, although in my experience the latter tend quite often to be usurped by strange, dry, stick-like biscuits. The Germans have two breakfasts, but even with two goes they never seem to get it right. And one of the worst breakfasts I have eaten came courtesy of a youth hostel in Amsterdam (the exact details have faded mercifully from memory but sour coffee and indigestible cheese figured prominently).

So expectations of breakfasting in God’s Own Country of Bulgaria were not exactly sky high.

Especially when staying for a week or two at Sveti Vrach, a sprawling, neglected hotel in the hills above the southern spa town of Sandanski. Once a retreat for the Bulgarian Politburo, the place features a Henry Moore sculpture, a petting zoo, endless gloomy marble corridors, modernist chandeliers in which 90% of the bulbs don’t work, and a strange aura of repressed menace.

A cavernous, near empty dining room filled with wood panelling, pounding Europop and pistachio-coloured linen is the mise-en-scene for a breakfast as resolutely unchanging as the communist regime Todor Zhivkov imposed between 1954 and 1989. Each morning brings a fried egg, a couple of pieces of feta cheese, half a tomato, half a cold frankfurter, a slice of indifferent ham, a slice of tasteless cheese, two slices of toast with butter and honey and a choice of tea or coffee.

It’s a strange business being presented with exactly the same heavy-going assemblage, morning after morning after morning, and two months after leaving, the experience is etched uncannily on my memory.

Although I can’t say I wasn’t warned. In the guidebook it says Bulgarians usually begin the day with an espresso and a cigarette, and if that doesn’t kill the hunger pangs, they simply repeat the process.

If the alternative is a Sveti Vrach breakfast, one begins to understand why.

Automat, Mayfair

2009-11-19T12:51:00.002Z

Automat
33 Dover Street
Mayfair
W1S 4NF
www.automat-london.com
020 7499 3033

by Rhys Chris Peese

If you really want to hear about it, you’ll probably want to know what an American brasserie is doing in Mayfair, and the décor and the service and all that kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it. OK, so there’s chairs and tables and white tiles. You happy now? This ain’t some kind of interior design website, this is about breakfast.

I like the British, they do a good breakfast. But you ever seen a British breakfast with a steak in it? 'Cos I ain’t. I’ve seen all kinds of crap in their breakfasts, like blood sausage and all, but not that. You go to Automat, though, you get a goddam steak. You got to pay fifteen British pounds for the privilege, but you get it. I guess you’re thinking that twenty-five dollars is a hell of a price for a breakfast, but that steak is USDA premium non-hormone treated Nebraskan corn-fed beef. That stuff don’t come cheap. And it don’t come large, neither: go to this joint expecting some kinda twenty-four ounce T-bone and you leave disappointed. Two small pieces of fillet, that’s what you get. But that’s OK, 'cos this is breakfast. And it’s the best goddam breakfast you gonna find in London: steak, bacon, sausage, eggs, mushrooms, and a grilled tomato as big as a man’s fist. That might be extra: this was such a goddam amazing breakfast that I was distracted from taking notes.

Anyway, I been going on about steak so much, you’re probably thinking, you crazy bastard, what else is on the menu? Well, there’s all kinds of crap, but if you order the fifteen dollar muesli or the sixteen dollar pancakes, all you gonna end up doing is looking enviously at other folks’ plates while they tuck into their steaks and all. No, you pick the Automat Big Breakfast. Best goddam breakfast in London.

Jack N Jill's, Beverly Hills, USA

2009-11-15T23:26:00.003Z

Jack N Jill's
342 North Beverly Drive
Beverly Hills CA 90210
USA
+1 310 247 4500
www.eatatjacknjills.com

by Des Ayuno

I hadn't seen C in 12 or 13 years, and we were never really friends. But when my mum ran into his mum at the shops and reported back that he was now a wildly successful soundtrack composer in Los Angeles, I was curious. While I had sneered at the tall, tanned bullies in our class, C was their nerdy, eternally good-natured tagalong. “Wow, you're coming to LA! It would be great to see you!!” he emailed, friendly as ever, and suggested Jack N Jill's, a Beverly Hills joint considerately close to my lodgings.

Jack N Jill's is a long, clattering, airy room full of identikit ageless blondes in bikini tops, denim short shorts, golf ball-sized diamonds and pneumatic busoms. Whilst the rest of our classmates are busy hitting 30, bearing unattractive children and going soft round the edges, C was skinnier than ever, the wire-framed glasses that must have looked so punchable on his 13-year-old face now lending a thoughtful air. His girlfriend was not just LA-standard gorgeous but also funny, sharp-tongued and immediately likeable. All boded well.

I ordered a Mexican-ish scramble, perky with tomato and coriander. The tortillas were a bit soggy, but the fruit in the accompanying salad - strawberries, pineapple, kiwi - was lusciously ripe. The girlfriend had a similarly sprightly-looking scramble with tomato, feta and parsley, which she sweetly pronounced “delish”. C's plate, though, was breathtaking: a Matterhorn of Reese's Pieces pancakes, with melting chunks both embedded into fluffy half-inch-thick cakes and carpeting the top of the stack like gravel on a drive. Butter and maple syrup were also piled on generously, for a textbook heart attack on a plate. C made a noble effort and got halfway through before collapsing in distended delight. He also insisted on treating me, mentioning a recent, slightly cheesy box-office number one I hadn't seen. “Yeah, that paid for my new studio,” he said a bit sheepishly. “It can pay for breakfast too.” We all sat back and admired one another for a moment, me at least reflecting, blessed are the geek, for they shall inherit the earth.

The Luxe, Spitalfields

2009-11-12T18:38:00.003Z

The Luxe
109 Commercial Street,
Spitalfields
E1 6BG
020 7101 1751
www.theluxe.co.uk

by Sunni Sidup

One of the things that I like best about Saturday morning breakfasts is the routine of dividing and reading the paper. Sarah gets the self-torture out of the way early by reading the Work section first. I start with the magazine and then swap with Kate for the Review, and Raoul goes straight for the news, dictating the world’s events to me as I salivate over Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s latest recipe. Sport is ignored entirely, and it takes a particularly long and lingering breakfast for the Family section to make an appearance. We can be quiet like this for hours, with only the crunching of toast and the trickle of tea to disturb us.

Not so at The Luxe, recently opened in Spitalfields market. Sat beneath a speaker blaring electronic remixes of generic British boy bands, the music is so loud that I’m having trouble discerning if I ever actually left last night’s party. Time is also against us. It seems that half of East London has come to sample the new local, and so the waiters fuss around us, clearing our plates before we can even put our forks down. It’s evident that we’re wanted out, and I’m not even halfway through the Review yet.

For £5.50 the vegetarian breakfast is generous and well-priced: eggs, beans, bubble and squeak, mushrooms, tomatoes, veggie sausage and toast all vie for attention on the same plate. The toast is soggy on the bottom but overall no one complains too much. I opt for poached eggs on toast with bacon and am similarly disappointed with my limp and unappealing slice of white bread. The poached eggs make up for it somewhat with solid white exteriors and gushing yolky goodness, and the bacon is cooked to a crispy perfection.

I am in need of caffeine and order a tea and an espresso coffee, and I am disappointed with both. The tea comes in a mug with the bag still in. As someone who usually drinks her tea black, I am dismayed that the brew (or should I say stew?) is totally undrinkable without milk. The lukewarm and bitter espresso is also a let-down. Despite my fatigue and its diminutive size, I cannot get it all down.

Having only been open a mere few weeks, I’m willing to put my gripes down to teething issues and return to The Luxe at a later date. Open until 11pm and serving as a bar as well as a restaurant, perhaps it's best to enjoy this place from lunchtime onwards, and leave the breakfast papers at home.

Olympia Restaurant, Mount Airy, USA

2009-11-05T10:18:00.001Z

Olympia Restaurant
602 Linville Rd
Mount Airy
North Carolina
USA 27030
+1 (336) 786-7556

by Hashley Brown

...

OUTSIDE RESTAURANT

Hashley Brown rushes from his Cadillac Escalade with New York licence plates through the torrential summer rain. Peering through the steamed up windows of the restaurant, he can just make out the outline of bearded men in dungarees. Most of them are wearing caps.

…

INSIDE RESTAURANT

Taking a seat Hashley is joined by the City Commissioner and his wife. This is the first time they have met.

Waitress: “Hey, how y’all doin?, Whadda y’all gonna have to drink”

HB: “Splendid, thank you. Coffee please”

Waitress: “I just love you're ah-ccent. Hello ‘Lundun’, ‘Splendid’, huh-huh!”

…

IN KITCHEN

Hashley is talking noisily to the owner of the restaurant.

Proprietor: “To have a true Southern breakfast you’ve gotta have grits, you’ve gotta have home-made sausage gravy, gotta make your biscuits from scratch; sell every part of the pig, tenderloin, ham, sausage, bacon..

HB: “What about eggs?”

Proprietor: “Eggs are very important, you can get ‘em scrambled, scrambled soft, scrambled medium, scrambled well, over light, over easy, over medium, over medium well, over well, over hard, now which ones did I leave out? poached, boiled, basted, so I guess that’s what about twenty different ways, at least.”

…

AT TABLE

The order arrives. Pale cornmeal grits like anaemic porridge are doused with butter and salt. The fluffy biscuits, like savoury scones, come with their own paddling pool of sausage gravy. Like a meaty white sauce it slowly thickens as the languorous Southern morning drifts by. Country Ham is the saltiest thing on the table, if not in the whole state. The City Commissioner smiles.

…

OUTSIDE RESTAURANT

Hashley struggles from the table, the last biscuit starting to weigh heavily on his constitution. As he crosses the car park, now sparkling with the clarity that only a rainstorm can bring to a summer morning, the waitress accosts him.

Waitress: “Will you say ‘Splendid’ again?”

HB: “Um, splendid?”

Waitress: “Huh-huh! Now y’all come back and see us again y’hear”

Hashley embraces the waitress.

…

G Muratori, Clerkenwell

2009-10-27T09:00:00.002Z

G Muratori
162 Farringdon Road
Clerkenwell
EC1R 3AS
020 7837 4015

by Hashley Brown

Two days with no letters. If I was a postman I'd stay in bed. Imagine! It's not the kind of profession with many lie-ins, although I guess industrial action isn't about having fun, more about standing in a line outside your office (and, you know, defending a vital industry against unprecedented change, harassment and bullying). But in any case there wasn't really any protest when I arrived at the Mount Pleasant depot last Friday morning for another frontline LRB despatch - in fact there wasn't really anyone. So, in the absence of any inside scoop on a disgruntled postie's choice of pork products, I turned to the proprietor of the nearest cafe. The man in First Class Cafe, on Mount Pleasant itself, seemed very pleased: the union fund the bacon sarnie and cups of tea habits of the picketers, which is good for them and certainly good for him. "I send 'em a bill at the end. One man's misery, is... well you know..." he trailed off.

I needed a sit down to contemplate the complex economics at play, and although the 'First Class' may have won prizes for its topical nomenclature, it didn't really have any seats, so a retreat was in order. Just down the hill, and round the back of the business end of the Royal Mail's sorting office, sits the Muratori cafe. It's wonderfully brown, and run by an Italian lady of advancing years called Vita, who dispatches the cups of tea on the steadier side of very slowly. Vita's been there for 50 years, and as I nervously told her that I'd like to order off-piste from their small but well worn menu, she encouraged me to order what I liked, with enough warmth and affection for me to feel like a regular already, only pausing in taking my order to yell, 'Toast burning!' across the room, in some olfactory pavlovian reaction to the first tendrils of smoke creeping out from the kitchen.

The Muratori is a cabbie's favourite, but looks out on the bustling cycling freeway that is Margery Street. I've often wondered whether the cab drivers are sizing up their opponents over their egg and chips, or just as I was, marvelling at the variety of London's bicycle pushers. Neither probably, but over my sausage, bubble, egg, black pudding and toast I kept a wary eye out for the cabbie who had called me a 'silly c*nt' as I pedalled home the night before. The indignity of sharing a breakfast table with one's 4-wheeled nemesis may have been pushing things a bit too far. Anyhow, the food was great. Fat jolly sausages, generous black pudding, a bubble with a healthy but not over-zealous green to white ratio, and a perfect egg. The tea was good and strong, and the toast not in the least bit burnt - this place really did live up to Vita's claims. "Remember, where the taxi drivers are, the food is the best!". I'd learnt no more about the postal strike, but for less than £4 had had a lovely breakfast.

The Foyer, BBC Television Centre, Shepherd's Bush

2009-10-15T15:06:00.003+01:00

The Foyer
BBC Television Centre
Wood Lane
Shepherd's Bush
W12 7RJ
www.bbc.co.uk
(open to staff and their guests only)

by Eggy Mair

Spare a thought for the philosophical problems of the night shift worker. Breakfast: is it the bowl of cereal you grab after stumbling out of bed in the middle of the afternoon, while still several hours shy of your recommended daily allowance of sleep? Is the meal you put away at the crack of dawn actually dinner, or is it just breakfast in another time zone? Can a breakfast really be considered "all day" when the outlet serving it is only open from midnight till 5pm?

Your intrepid correspondent finds himself considering these dilemmas, while midway through a gruelling week of nights spent in Television Centre. During the day, several thousand people work there, but overnight, a forgotten few are hidden away in its labyrinth of curved corridors, writing the morning's news, keeping services for insomniacs on air, and dusting and polishing Mark Thompson's throne. Making sure all these people can do their jobs smoothly relies on the relentlessly cheerful duo in the Foyer Cafe.

For £2.15, I think it's fair to assume that the 'all-day' breakfast on offer is either subsidised, or made from pretty poor quality ingredients. Having tried most of its combinations, I think your licence fee is probably safe. The bacon is salty, and often so crispy as to preclude cutting with the supplied plastic cutlery. The sausage is bland; its vegetarian counterpart a cylinder of Quorny nothingness. The fried egg can be a saving grace, but only if you can get it back to your office before it solidifies. I tried the poached option one day, and was baffled to find that it tasted of water, not egg.

I still don't know what they use to make the toast, but the plasticy texture and stripey pattern leads me to believe it may be a laminator - fried bread is a tastier, if deadlier choice. The mushrooms are generally too bland to merit a comment, and the hash browns notable mainly for their ability to melt through the polystyrene container. However, it's the presence of the takeaway box that causes a key problem with the dawn feast: baked beans, which can brighten any cooked breakfast, just swamp everything else in the box while in transit back to your desk. I have one colleague who will enthuse about this as a benefit to anyone who doesn't care to listen, but he's generally wrong about everything, and can be safely ignored. Substituting a grilled tomato is still a poor substitute for beans.

Nothing about the Foyer's breakfast is particularly satisfying, but the alternative is attempting the commute home on an empty stomach, and that's a potentially even less satisfying. Just another problem for the night shift worker.

Bob Bob Ricard, Soho

2009-10-08T11:20:00.000+01:00

Bob Bob Ricard
1 - 3 Upper James St
Soho
W1F 9DF
020 3145 1000
www.bobbobricard.com

by Emma Ricano

Last week I was surprised to receive a call from an unknown gent claiming to know the whereabouts of dearest Yvette, who I’d not heard from since our trip to Dottie's. He suggested we meet for breakfast. I suggested Bob Bob Ricard. If my friend was swimming with the fishes I wanted to hear it someplace public.

With an appetite the size of Nelson’s column (and the fuzz on speed dial) I stepped into BBR, just off Regent Street. I made a mental note of the turquoise and gold wallpaper. One day my living space will be as camp as this.

I was ushered to a booth, in which I perched near the edge; I wanted privacy, but also visibility in case the gent decided to abduct me too. I checked my rouge in the reflection of our personal toaster (one is provided at every table) and knocked back a silver pot of English Breakfast tea. It was just the right strength to take the edge off my nerves, but tea is not to be treated like tequila and my throat was seared like tuna.

Tall, dark and wearing a cravat, he arrived. He ordered the BBR Pink lemonade. A satisfied smile played across his lips and he’d drained the glass before uttering a word. I braced myself, for a ransom demand at the very least.

Then he told me that Yvette was doing so well in an NBC cop drama that she’d decided to cut all ties with the UK. What a Judas, I cried.

Small mercy I’d ordered a comforting BBR Morning Toaster selection. I fed soft muffin halves into the jaws of my personal toaster, slamming my hand on the ejection button every five seconds to purge my anger at being both abandoned and much less successful. It wasn’t long before my mood was lifted by lashings of unsalted butter, sloshes of tea and the finest BBR lemon curd I’d tasted this side of the green belt. My friendship with Judas Yvette may have withered on the vine but that buttery, tangy, zesty curd gave me a lust for life I hadn’t felt since discovering sticklebricks.

Emboldened by these victuals, conversation began to flow. He was charming, but I found myself distracted by the plump, poached eggs of his Florentine, which I wanted to stab, like a psycho. Finally the urge grew too much. I distracted him by pointing out the curious pink outfits worn by the waiters, went in for the kill and was rewarded with a sparktastic spinach-and-egg explosion in my mouth.

And then it happened. As I was toasting my last muffin slice, our fingers met on the ejection button. There was an electrical spark, and it wasn’t caused by a badly wired appliance. In that moment I realised I’d found someone who shared my ADD when it comes to toasters, and an exciting future lay before us - such as a full English, with extra bacon.

The Wapping Project, Wapping

2009-10-01T11:09:00.008+01:00

The Wapping Project
Wapping Hydraulic Power Station
Wapping Wall
Wapping
E1 3SG
020 7680 2080
www.thewappingproject.com

by Malcolm Eggs

A while ago I considered starting a political party. It was to be called The Cut and Run Democrats, its one policy being to pool all the money in the country and divide it equally between everybody. With around £100,000 each, we could then get the hell out of here to hotter, cheaper places. The rich wouldn’t have liked it, but being so far outnumbered they could never win an election. It could not have gone wrong.

Since then, the LRB millions have flowed in and my radical ideology has mellowed somewhat. I now think The Wapping Project – a glorious restaurant in a decaying power station – offers a more compelling and realistic vision for the future. Let’s forget the old effort, the old scrum of industry and focus on what we now do best: eating, with a special focus on breakfast.

We’ll leave in the gauges and levers, the cogs and the pulleys. Greened with age but still proud, they remind us of the sterling work put in by our mothers and fathers to get us here. But amongst all that we’ll place speakers playing endless guitar instrumentals. Our milkshakes will be speckled with the black of real vanilla, our conversation will be roused by the pep of proper coffee and our fry-ups will be as carefully composed as the ceilings of central Venice, which is just as well because the whole place is bathed in a radiant light that occasionally forms into a single beam, enlightening a plate of pancakes or a particularly celestial sausage. Everything will taste fantastic, the portions will be generous and, my brothers and sisters, there will be a good range of options on the menu.

We will march on Battersea. We will heat bacon on the nuclear ball thing at Sellafield. We will laugh at the fact that there is a power station called Eggington.

In summary, it was a fucking good breakfast.

Stack 'em High, North Carolina, USA

2009-09-26T10:50:00.003+01:00

Stack 'em High
1225 N Croatan Hwy
158 Bypass MP 9
Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina
+1 (252) 441-7064
www.stackemhigh.com/

by Fidel Gastro

Stack 'em High is always bustling on Sunday mornings, even before the tourists pour into town for the summer. There’s a mix of locals coming back from church service and hungry out-of-towners looking for a good breakfast before the drive back to Washington or New York. It feels like a summer-camp: high ceilings and brightly-painted wooden rafters with various corny words of wisdom written on them; a cafeteria-style queue that offers juice and cold breakfast items before you reach the order counter.

Choosing a breakfast is no easy task: Stack ‘em High is known for its pancakes, including specialty ones, such the "Island Delight" which comes with coconut, chocolate chips and bananas. They also have “Redneck Specials” like Minnie’s Biscuits and Gravy, which I ordered. Then, for an all-out soul food flourish, I got some cheese grits and a cup of coffee.

The nature of a "real" Southern breakfast can be serious business... or a selling point for a weekend tourist who likes Southern food but has mixed feelings about the South. A real Southern biscuit is a blend of baking powder and slight butteriness, not really flaky in the style of French pastry, but with layers that maintain a certain texture that work equally well with jam and butter and the salty white sausage gravy that are staples of Southern breakfast specialties. The biscuit at Stack 'em High was large, fluffy, and versatile. It was so good and so huge that I couldn't bear to waste it all on the creamy white sausage gravy. I took a portion and put butter and grape jelly on it, savoring the masterful Southernness of my breakfast. I’m pleased to say that even after spooning up cheese grits onto another portion of the biscuit, it maintained that flaky integrity with the slightly sour-tart bite of the baking powder. The cheese grits, in contrast, were a slight disappointment -- too salty, not cheesy enough. But my biscuit more than made up for it.

Feeling stuffed and aware of the five hour drive back to Washington, I finished with a last gulp of coffee and left, already looking forward to the next dose of beach time and down-home cooking.

The Milk Bar, Soho

2009-09-17T10:30:00.001+01:00

The Milk Bar
3 Bateman St
Soho
W1D 4AG
020 7287 4796

by Blake Pudding

The Antipodean take over of London continues apace. Now normally this would be an excuse for some ill-informed remarks about their aggressive informality, their funny accents or our recent victory in the cricket. Not this time however because the Milk Bar is run by New Zealanders who couldn’t care less about a little urn and when the coffee is this good I don’t care how inappropriately friendly they are. “Aw look mate, do you mind if I have sex with your girlfriend?” “Not at all, my good fellow, just bring me another one of these delicious flat white things first.”

I was with Natasha Solomons, recently returned from America. She was itching to tell me about her novel but I was more interested in finding out about the cured fish scene in New York. As she told me about the lox in Russ & Daughters on Houston, I actually started drooling. It was time to order some food.

The Milk Bar has a very short menu which is mainly variations on scrambled eggs. Luckily I love scrambled eggs. We could have had ours with bacon, mushrooms or smoked salmon but I wanted to preserve the purity of their ethical eggs so I went for the classic “on toast” option. Greedily I watched the trendy young thing behind the counter prepare them in a battered saucepan – no microwave trickery here. They were perfect, or nearly perfect. Perhaps they were slightly over-cooked but I am prepared to admit that I like mine very runny. I lightly seasoned them with lots of Tabasco and hoovered them up in about a minute. I belched elegantly, sat back and said “now tell me about this novel of yours Natasha,” though I would have preferred to hear more about the Gravadlax.

The Claridges, Faridabad, India

2009-09-09T08:04:00.005+01:00

The Claridges, Surajkund
Shooting Range Road
Faridabad – 121 001
India
+91 129 4190 000
www.claridges-hotels.com

by Des Ayuno

The Claridges was my first five-star experience, and I was looking forward to breakfast very much indeed. Not to be confused with our own Claridges, it is an India-only chain of extraordinary ostentation.

Now, only mugs eat Western food when East, so despite the earliness of the hour and the extremity of my temporal-geographical disorientation, I ordered paneer-filled paratha – a round, flaky whole-wheat flatbread – and a sweet lime juice and masala tea. First came a complimentary silver basket of elaborate (Western) mini-pastries that would have done its English namesake proud. I ignored them – not because they were Western, but because I was dying for tea, in a worse-than-hung-over fug brought on by the monsoon season's extreme humidity. But next along was the lime juice, in a tall, frosty glass with a silver stirrer. I ignored it too. Then a glistening pair of chestnut-coloured pancakes – the paratha. I croaked weakly at the six hovering waiters, but they just looked confused. Finally, the tea arrived. It was glorious – hot, wet, strong, sweet and really quite spicy.

The fug cleared instantly. I absent-mindedly nibbled a tiny chocolate-chip muffin, which was oddly dense and eggy. The sweet lime juice was neither sweet nor particularly sour, but was still a refreshing thirst-quencher in the 40+ degree heat. The paratha, though, was the perfect breakfast, in the proud English tradition – hot, greasy, salty and stodgy. It was a ghee-soaked, cheese-oozing triumph of fatty abandon over good sense. Topped with sharp yoghurt and lip-scorching lime pickle, it was divine. I hoovered up one and three-quarters of the rounds before my knife literally came to a grinding halt on the last quarter.

My first thought was, I have been here before. I have been here before with the hair and even after three years, the debate rages on. But the hair was there, longish and white and curly, winding through my sliver of paratha like a rebuke. I sighed.

One of the waiters came up. “Please thank you ma’am. Everything is ok?”

I thought of where the hair might have come from. With the exception of the odd perky tache, Indian men are uniformly clean-shaven, aside from the occasional Sikh. I thought of my guide informing me, last night, in clipped tones, “This is not a Sikh city. They do not come here. They have their own region, to the west.” I imagined a grey-haired Sikh gentleman slaving away in the kitchen, far from his family, earning less for a day's work than I, or rather my sinister multinational client, was paying for this humble dish. I thought of the luxurious jacuzzi-sized bathtub upstairs in my room, which had taken an hour to fill the night before, and I thought of the Hindustan Times’ headline that had greeted me when I emerged: “Drought Looms, Food Prices to Rise Further”.

I gave a big, enthusiastic grin. “Everything is ok!” The waiter looked suspicious. I kept grinning. Finally he retreated to his customary stance of attentiveness ten paces away. Suddenly concerned for my new Sikh friend’s job security, should the hair be discovered by the over-inquisitive waiter, I spent ten minutes secretively digging it out and disposing of it down the side of the table. Then I finished my masala tea and, ready for anything the day might throw at me, bravely headed forth into the heat.

Trattoria Sapori, Newington Green

2009-09-03T13:29:00.003+01:00

Trattoria Sapori
Alliance House
44/45 Newington Green
Newington Green
N16 9QH
020 7704 0744
www.trattoriasapori.co.uk

by Gregg E. Bread

Our indulgent post-bruncheon gelatos inspired a re-telling of the incidents surrounding the biggest ice-cream I have ever consumed. Six stupendo scoops scoffed at the Trevi Fountain, Year 10 school trip, Easter 1997. I made two wishes whilst I sat there licking away, sticky faced and foreign. Firstly, I wanted to lose the millstone of my virginity to a goth named Lindsey, and, secondly, I wanted England to qualify for the World Cup.

Both wishes came true. Both featured young English lads making their debut. Both led toward early exits and a now familiar sense of disappointment. Happily my LRB debut turned out to be a considerably longer and more satisfying run-out on the home-turf of Newington Green. A sunny morning combined with the ability to perceive the sound of traffic as birdsong, meant that my cohort M and I were able to dine alfresco, perched atop the wooden terrace.

I played it safe and plumped for the Italian breakfast; eggs, pancetta, Italian sausage, tomato, mushrooms and ciabatta, washed down with a latte. M jazzed things up by ordering the open omelette with parma ham, shaved parmesan, rocket and cherry tomatoes, choosing to suck down on a freshly squeezed apple juice.

I thought we were onto a winner when they asked how I’d like my eggs. They came poached to oozy perfection. The pancetta was crisp and the sausages truly meaty. What’s more the cleanliness of it all left me with a healthy Mediterranean after-glow rather than the traditional Full English edgy meat sweat. My only beefs were the inane button mushrooms – do they ever actually taste of mushroom? – and, be warned, the tartier than tart apple juice,

Throw in some chipper service, another round of decent coffee and the aforementioned gelatos for a touch over twenty British and, believe you me, others have wished for far, far less.

The Empress of India, Victoria Park

2009-08-27T10:48:00.003+01:00

The Empress of India
130 Lauriston Rd
Victoria Park
E9 7LH
020 85335123
www.theempressofindia.com

by Blake Pudding

I’m currently researching smoked fish for the forthcoming LRB book (available in all good bookshops and hopefully supermarkets some time in 2011) and have been forbidden from eating a proper cooked breakfast. So at the Empress I ordered the kipper with a poached egg but cleverly persuaded my girlfriend to have the full English so that I could have her black pudding. Our breakfasts arrived and after some juggling to fit the over-sized crockery onto the absurdly small tables we started to eat. A couple of mouthfuls in the future Mrs Pudding noted that her plate did not have any black pudding on it. We called over the waitress and she went away to investigate.

She came back and casually said that the all the black pudding had been thrown away. I was a bit taken aback by this but was distracted by the enormous plate of bacon she brought over to compensate. This waitress obviously knew me.

After scoffing the lot, I pondered Columbo-like why they had binned everything. Hmmmmm. I marshalled my deductive powers, examined the evidence and then it came to me: everything was cooked in advance and not that recently either. Of course! Why and that would explain the generally poor state of all the food. It was like breakfast at a down-market hotel. The bacon was swimming in grease, my kipper was dense with dirty butter, the beans were in a ramekin with a congealed crust and the hash brown was soggy and lukewarm. It was a shame as all the ingredients were good quality; the eggs were freshly prepared and delicious. The Empress of India stops serving breakfast at noon. We arrived at quarter to twelve. If we had arrived at ten we may have had a breakfast worth the money. We may even have had some black pudding.

Canteen, Southbank

2009-08-17T09:50:00.001+01:00

Canteen
Royal Festival Hall
Belvedere Rd
SE1 8XX
0845 686 1122
www.canteen.co.uk

by Sadie Frosties

Recently it has seemed impossible to mention Canteen without prompting serious debate. Perhaps it is to do with the rate at which this Spitalfields start-up has grown since first opening its doors in 2005. Or perhaps the feeling of unease stems from the geographical locations in which one can now find a branch of Canteen – do we secretly fear that, one day in the future, branches will open in Chelsea and Brixton, thus creating an upside-down five-pointed star, and giant walls will rise up from the dirt and we will be entombed forever more within a Canteen fortress, ruled by a dictatorship of additive-free pies? Well I don’t. Nor have I spent a disproportionate amount of my time plotting the locations on Google Maps.

Actually, the Royal Festival Hall branch of Canteen is one of my favourite places to supper. I’ve never been disappointed with the food, and my consistent ordering of the smoked haddock, spinach and mash, I believe, classifies my opinion more as scientific fact than subjective review. But during my most recent visit my eyes glazed over and widened as they settled on the first column on the menu. Breakfast is served all day. Why haven’t I noticed this before? Has haddock-vision denied me life-enriching breakfast experiences?

At precisely 8:55pm I decided to throw caution to the wind and live as dangerously as one can after 14 days of living, post-tonsil extraction, on a diet of liquid food and Spanish cinema. I ordered the bacon, fried egg and bubble and squeak.

Service was swift and pleasant, and I was met with two very happy eggs, fried to perfection, and allowed the freedom during cooking to form whichever eggy shape they so desired. Disappointingly the bacon, although of the streaky variety, was vastly under-cooked in two of the three examples on my plate. However, the bubble and squeak was satisfyingly lumpy in a way that you could believe it was created by man not machine, and measured in at an almost obscene circumference.

There was something intensely satisfying about the act of eating this dish after 9pm, while everyone around me ate ‘proper’ suppers. I then ordered Eton mess, which seemed so fitting after breakfast I wondered why other breakfast menus don’t include a dessert course too.

So now, a few days on, as I settle down to my supper of cabernet sauvignon and jam tarts I wonder, why are we so bound by such strict meal timetabling? Why shouldn’t we be able to have dessert with breakfast? Is it really so unacceptable to eat baked potatoes at dawn, and bacon and eggs at dusk? Now, if it came to breakfast-time at Canteen, I think I’d have the haddock.

The Lead Station, Chorlton, Manchester

2009-08-11T09:40:00.000+01:00

The Lead Station
99 Beech Rd
Chorlton
Manchester
M21 9EQ
0871 434 8872

by Grease Witherspoon

It is rare that I am thrown into a situation that I am not able to foresee to some degree. Obviously, it is impossible to predict the future, but I do a pretty good job based mostly on forward planning, generalisation and stereotyping. In fact, I’m fairly flawless. Provided, therefore, with the following components- a Mancunian suburb, an English ‘summer’ morning, a shabby pub and an irritable temperament (hunger), I made a quick assessment: this wasn’t going to be a breakfast to write home about.

We arrived at The Lead Station not so much out of choice, but out of necessity- it was the only place open that particular Sunday morning in Chorlton. We were lead through the main body of the empty pub towards the back to a bright sun-trapped garden, filled with families and gossiping friends, spread out supplements and all smiles. Tea and coffee flowed, provided by amiable staff fully prepared for free top-ups and who proved more attentive than one of those waitresses with the little aprons in Hollywood film diners. I had to do several comedy double takes. Wasn’t it meant to be grim up north?

When the breakfast arrived, it was so packed with ingredients it practically fell off the plate. The sausages provided a satisfyingly crisp crunch, oozing the right amount of grease. I was delighted to see the addition of a potato cake, that Lancashire speciality. The eggs were the only disappointment as they were just a tad too rubbery and overdone for my liking and the slightly limp tomatoes lacked the effort I would have liked to see. A miniscule pot of baked beans sat in a decorative attempt, which ultimately seemed a little unnecessary. But as I sat basking in the sun pretending I was on holiday, these things didn’t really bother me. Not when the black pudding was so rich and my breakfast companion let me polish off her vegetarian haggis, a well-seasoned mix of lentils and pearl barley.

Happily, there was an abundance of toast and as I sat watching my little foiled slab of butter melt in the sun I felt perfectly full and content. They let us sit there for another hour without so much as a hint of an evil glare, quite happy to pour more and more coffee. I decided I’d leave my crystal ball behind next time, as my lesson had been learned- all for £6.95.

Breakfasts and Beds: Hotel Cabinn City, Copenhagen, Denmark

2009-08-03T12:03:00.003+01:00

Hotel Cabinn City
Mitchellsgade 14
Copenhagen 1568
Denmark
+45 3346 1616
www.cabinn.com

by Joyce Carol Oats

‘You cannot leave without me, Joyce,’ the chap who had been chasing me around the dance floor at my friend’s wedding declared in a husky gush of schnapps fumes. ‘Take me back to your hotel.’

‘Even if I fancied you,’ I replied, prising my forearm from his grip. ‘It would be impossible.’ I paused, gazed with meaning into his dilated pupils. ‘You would not fit. Into the room. The room! It is far too small.’

And that is why I am breakfasting alone this morning at the Cabinn City Hotel, the cheapest hotel in expensive Copenhagen. For about fifty quid, you get a miniature room with two narrow bunks and a bathroom where it is impossible to take a shower without soaking the toilet paper. There is a television and a chair if you like sitting. There are even some lights. And in the basement there is a cafeteria where they serve the breakfast buffet. The breakfast costs an additional sixty Danish kroner, which is about six pounds.

The price is an affront: the choices are cold: muesli with yogurt, cornflakes and puffed rice. There are three kinds of juice, including that very highly sweet kind of orange that tastes suspiciously like it contains some high fructose corn syrup. Tea and instant coffee, butter and jam, and then the breads. There are a wide range of breads: white and brown and those square seedy rolls that they have in northern Europe. I love those square seedy rolls, so I select one and grab some packets of butter and jam. I skip the ubiquitous northern European breakfast ham and salami, and then I see it: the cheese slicer.

It is a miraculous little machine: two bricks of cheese sit across from each other on a round board. In the centre is a sort of screw atop which sits a handle which attaches to a wire (I know, it is difficult to envision: this is because you have never seen such a cheese slicer). You spin the handle and the wire slices off a perfectly even slice of cheese from each block; a second round, and it slides down the central screw and slices two more. I am riveted, and not just because I am hungover: it is a thing of beauty, a masterpiece of Scandinavian design.

I join a long table full of other travellers, who are munching away with the bleary, dazed affect of people who have just suffered three hours of Carlsberg nightmares in a narrow bunk bed in a room with no air conditioning. I consider my selection: a seedy roll, marg, jam, and six slices of cheese because, well, I got a little carried away. The flavours are indifferent. The texture requires a fair bit of chewing. I wash it all down with the instant coffee. I take a sour green apple for the road. I attempt to take the cheese slicer, but it is too heavy. I wonder what my would-be suitor is eating for breakfast, and if it is more delicious. I decide I'm quite content not knowing.

The Bruncheon Club, Hackney

2009-07-29T14:27:00.008+01:00

The Bruncheon Club
A Secret Location
Hackney
Sittings occur once a month
Reservations essential
thebruncheonclub.blogspot.com

by Malcolm Eggs

All around the garden, people watched with baited breath. I flung the boule in my trademark style, which I'm sure at least one person would have silently christened ‘the stoat’. It was seven points all. The dense little sphere arced into the air, landed about a metre away from the jack then rolled downslope into a patch of weeds.

We were at the first ever Bruncheon Club, a socio-culinary venture dreamt up by two friends, Gregg and Maya. It’s a hangover-soothing addition to London's new wave of what they’re calling ‘underground restaurants’. These shadowy eateries are a cross between dinner parties and those underground raves in the 80s and 90s, where you’d call a secret number to get the address of a freshly infiltrated warehouse off a slip road somewhere. Twenty years on, I’m sure it must be many of the same people who now go to a private house or flat, eat a home-cooked set menu then pay a suggested donation at the end.

The boules came after three courses served at a garden table, washed down by oft-replenished coffee and water and seasoned with congenial conversation and heaps of newspaper supplements. The atmosphere was that of going to a friend’s house for an 'event breakfast' such as on the morning after a mild win on the premium bonds. Our suggested £12 donation got us bloody maries, fresh strawberries and warm croissants, but the magnum opus was an eggs royale in which duck eggs took all the egg roles. It was one of the eggiest things I have ever seen: impossible amounts of the boldest possible yellowy-orangey yolk gushing out across the smoked salmon, then mingling gloriously with duck-egg-hollandaise, then quickly entering my mouth. The poor muffin halves came nowhere near being able to mop everything up.

After my disappointing throw of the boule my team, hurriedly and a little cringingly titled 'De Beauvoir Rovers', was engaged in a tribute to British sporting patterns: the strong start followed by the pointless unforced errors, the nailbiting war of attrition, the whittling, entropy-like journey towards failure. But, actually, there’s nothing like mutual defeat to help you bond with a group of complete strangers - so my one suggestion to the Bruncheon Club is this: keep the leisure sports, but move them to the start of proceedings. Or indeed replace the leisure sports with hard techno, the food with uppers and hold the whole thing at night in an old business park near Bracknell.

Breakfasts and Beds: The W and The James, Chicago

2009-07-22T09:22:00.001+01:00

The W
644 North Lakeshore Drive
Chicago
IL 60611
USA
++1 312 943 9200

The James
55 E Ontario St
IL 60611
Chicago
USA
++1 800 745 8883

by Shreddie Kruger

Americans approach breakfast with the gusto us Brits reserve for grumbling about the weather and joining promising looking queues. So when choosing a hotel in America the only important factor is what their breakfast is like. Everything else is insignificant. A hotel with no beds and rats scurrying around is fine by me if it serves a sensational breakfast.

So… if you are visiting Chicago you must avoid the W at all costs. Their room service breakfasts had me seething with irritation. Not only does a modest breakfast of muffins, tea, juice and granola cost $33, but it also comes without milk, is wrapped in Clingfilm and is utterly miserable. Their cooked breakfast is more expensive. And to make matters worse… worse. Eggs are over cooked and lack the illicit trickling of yolk that we all need to set our days off on the right track. I left the W vowing never to return.

With the W spurned the James stepped in. The contrast couldn’t have been more stark. Breakfast is served in David Burke’s Primehouse restaurant, at the base of the hotel, where they age their beef for up to 90 days in a room clad in Himalayan salt. So expectations were high. On the first day my enormous blueberry pancakes with maple sauce instantly turned me into the Cheshire Cat. I giggled all the way to our meeting and spent the rest of morning flying on a sugar high until I spiraled out of control with a migraine as the syrup wore off!

The next morning things got silly. Not content with eggs Benedict, I couldn’t resist ordering a dish titled “fill your own doughnuts”. How could you? It’s impossible. A small cardboard box arrived filled with sugared, hot doughnuts the size of golf balls and two squirty pipettes laced with vanilla cream and butterscotch. Wow. Now, this is what breakfast is all about. Before you could say the word “coronary” I had filled two doughnuts full of gunge and was running around the restaurant like a banshee who’s just injected taurine into his eyeballs.

So if you are on a business trip to Chicago go to the James and make the most of their stupendously good breakfast. And avoid the W at all costs – they put the W into Woeful.

Fluffy Rock Cafe, Glastonbury Festival

2009-07-15T20:10:00.002+01:00

Fluffy Rock Cafe
Glastonbury Festival
Worthy Farm
Somerset

by Cher E. Jamm

Glastonbury 2008 was the year I learnt that one should never to get on the wrong side of a vegan. After last year's debacle with cafe names at Glastonbury, I promised myself that I'd go and sample the real Manic Organic's vegan breakfast and report back to you. You see, last year, in my post-festival haze, I attributed eggs to them in a review for this fine organ, when really, the eggs belonged to Cafe Tango. They didn't like it one bit. I apologised and we'll never quite know if they accepted. Eggs are apparently a big deal when you're a vegan.

So this year, I braced myself and trotted towards Manic Organic with a spring in my step and a song in my heart. I stood patiently, edging forward in the long queue (a good sign!), watching people enjoy their expensive vegan breakfast in silence, wondering if it was going to be as revelatory as I hoped it would be. I reached for the tenner in my purse only to find a two pound coin. Two pounds doesn't buy many alfalfa sprouts, my friends.

I left the Manic Organic queue and started to make my way to the Cashpoint queue. The sheer amount of queueing was weighing heavily on my heart by now. Starving, bleary-eyed and in need of immediate sustenance, I stumbled across what at first looked like a mirage. A yellow and green tent with a small sign stating: Fried Egg Bap - £1.50. I stood staring at the sign for some time. I worried that if I looked away it would disappear. I had to make a move soon.

With much trepidation, I edged into the tent and towards the counter. "May I have a fried egg bap please?". The lovely hippy girl behind the counter smiled and said "yes, yes you may", then skipped out back and came back with my breakfast. The egg was fresh and freshly fried. The bap was white, soft and floury. I helped myself to brown sauce and salt and pepper from the counter. I handed over my two pound coin. She handed me fifty pence back. Another hippy girl came out with a cup of tea and handed it to me. "It's free - looks like you need a good cuppa". I thanked her. My eyes welled up at the kindness of it all. The hippy girls in the Fluffy Rock Cafe saved me that morning. I even forgave the fact that they watered down their brown sauce. I took a bite. And another.

Perhaps the vegans are right; I never knew eggs could be such a big deal.

Breakfasts and Beds: The White Bar, Chic and Basic, Barcelona

2009-07-11T10:51:00.003+01:00

The White Bar
Chic and Basic Hotel, Born
Princesa, 50
08003 Barcelona,
España

by Kiwi Herman

Music festivals and breakfast don’t mix.

That’s unless well into your 30s like me, you prefer to couple spontaneous hedonism with premeditated comfort (ie. sack off camping in mudbaths for boutique hotels in the Med).

Commissioned to write a review of Barcelona’s Sonar Festival, I decided to lord it up at the Chic and Basic Hotel in my favourite district, Born - and made damn sure I got up for breakfast (after all who knew when I might eat again?).

Sonar: let’s just say if Glastonbury is medieval, like people going to war, then Sonar is more tribal, like people going to dance, make love… and then eat.

Ever seen a 61 year old Amazonian, once muse to Andy Warhol, hula-hoop in a thong swimsuit? Thanks to Spain’s 3 day electronic music mecca and the scariest lady on the planet - Grace Jones, I have.

But that’s actually all I saw (or remember seeing) because Barcelona has too much else to get involved in – like tapas. Apparently there’s an art to eating them, ‘tapeo’. Well, if it’s artistic to stuff your face at every given opportunity – little and often – then give me a montadito and call me El Gordo.

The hotel: Literally one of the most bizarre places I’ve ever stayed in – like living in an iPod. I now affectionately refer to it as the ‘disco spunk’ hotel.

You enter the century-old building under what looks like a giant jellyfish-slash-womb. Then there’s the corridors – massive plastic tentacles come down from the ceiling and change colour via LEDs every few minutes. It’s all a bit “beam me up, Scottie”. Oh, the photo opportunities that can be had after indulging in too much cava (andthentherest).

As if that’s not psychedelic enough, you can change the colour of your very white room via remote control (and make it flash like a disco – ‘chromo-therapy’ apparently), the glass shower is in the middle of the bedroom (my researcher and I now have no secrets), and the manager knows the perving hotspots on the beach to check out fit Spaniards (what a shame I’m not really their type on these particular beaches).

The breakfast: At the hotel’s ‘White Bar’. Imagine all the above, then add a disco buffet bar made of mirrored tiles (surpassed in kitsch only by the disco boat I’ve spotted on Regent’s Canal by Broadway Market), ‘Streetlife’ coming through the speakers, Guinness bottles lining the walls and another jellyfish thingumejig on the ceiling.

For 8.50E you get all that, plus an all-you-can-eat Catalan buffet of croissants (er, aren’t they French?), cheese and meats. Weirdly there were also Coco Pops (or Spanish equivalent, er… Caca Poopoos?).

Screw cereal, I’d eat gazpacho for breakfast every day if I could (might as well start the day stinking of garlic as you mean to carry on). The White Bar offered the next best thing - a big bowl of fresh tomato pulp mixed with olive oil, garlic and sea salt – ready and waiting to be added to rustic bread to make ‘pan con tomate’, the ubiquitous 19th Century Catalan dish. Simple - but also the best thing that's ever been done to bread. Or to a tomato for that matter. Thanks again Spain for bringing the veg, damnit, fruit, to Europe.

Chic and Basic’s ‘White Bar’ had me at the pan con tomate.

It’s chic. It’s basic. It’s camp - and I’m never camping at a festival again.

Car Park and Cafe, Bethnal Green

2009-07-01T13:54:00.003+01:00

Car Park and Cafe
Malcolm Rd
Bethnal Green
E1 something or other

by Joyce Carol Oats

You walk past Car Park and Cafe every morning: it’s the halfway point on your way to the Tube, after the council estate and the railroad bridge, before the drunks sitting on the park benches. Sometimes you walk past it when it is raining; sometimes you walk past it in the sunshine; sometimes you walk past it when you are looking forward to getting to your office and sometimes you walk past it when you are feeling very grumpy and not looking forward to work at all. You are, in general, a moody girl, but Car Park and Cafe has never evoked any emotion from you. You decide to investigate.

You take your flatmate Ben. You and Ben crunch over the gravel in Car Park and you see Cafe: it’s in a corrugated industrial caravan. As you walk towards the entrance, a giant black Doberman leaps at you in a hungry way. It’s fenced in a pen, with a dog house and a lot of large tins of Chum. You feel worried about the dog.

Inside Cafe, a pallid man stands behind a counter. The wall is festooned with pieces of fluorescent card with menu items. The room is full of acrid smoke from the grill. You think about asking for something vegetarian. You think better of it. You and Ben sit at a table as far away from the smoke as possible, which happens to be next to a one-armed bandit, which happens to not be very far from the grill, not really, because it is, after all, an industrial caravan. Ben hands you a tabloid newspaper. You find out what a topless model thinks about the MP expenses scandal (she disapproves).

You drink instant coffee. The food arrives. Fried eggs, fried bacon, fried tomatoes. Fried baked beans. Fried bread which is something you have not eaten since you were a much younger moody girl, on holiday with your parents at a B&B in the North of England: by the fourth day of fried bread, you cried and refused to eat any more. But here, at Car Park and Cafe, it is devilishly good. You are not sure if it is actually good, though, or just better than the sausages, which are two perfectly smooth extruded tubes of phallic meat product.

The man who is charge of the frying is now playing with the one armed bandit. He pumps coins into it from the cash register; he loses; he goes back to the cash register; he pumps in more coins. He loses some more. The one-armed bandit makes cha-ching noises. You finish your fried bread. You look at Ben. He looks at you. The acrid smoke in the room is thicker. Your eyes are watering, or maybe you are just crying. You and Ben agree to leave. He pays because you cannot see in to your wallet. You walk past the hungry dog. It barks. Your stomach churns. You see your reflection in a window: your tears have carved a thick black line down your cheek. You cannot, you realise, endorse Car Park and Cafe under any circumstance, not even an ironic one. You also realise that you are wearing too much makeup.

Covenant Community Church, Cleveland, USA

2009-06-21T19:08:00.004+01:00

Prayer Breakfast
Covenant Community Church
3342 East 119th St.
Cleveland
Ohio
USA

by T.N. Toost

The morning started badly. I’d only gotten a few hours of sleep and, in my grogginess, I had trouble choosing clothes. On the one hand, I wanted to show respect and not under-dress, but on the other I wanted to be comfortable. What if I was in jeans and a t-shirt? Would they turn me away? I half wanted to tempt them to do so, to then ask, What Would Jesus Wear?

When I did get there, my clothes didn’t really matter; it was my skin above the collar and below the cuffs that stood out. As I’d suspected, the congregation was entirely black. Well, aside from two middle-aged white women sitting in the front. I immediately thought of Fight Club, of Jack branding Marla a “tourist.” These women weren’t there for the right reasons. They were there to observe, then go back to their middle-class white suburb feeling like they’d been adventurous, intercultural; like they’d gotten something out of it. My motives, of course, were pure.

We were called to breakfast, where women served small portions of eggs, grits, hash browns, bacon, sausage and a half-Danish. I took my plate, got some orange juice and suddenly realized that women surrounded me. One carried my juice three steps to a table and introduced me around to the women already eating, telling everyone my name and saying that we were family. They referred to me as “brother,” and I thought of a third way, one Derek Zoolander had not anticipated: not as an actual brother, or the way that black people mean it, but as siblings to Jesus, and God’s children. I’m not sure which is more meaningful.

The eggs were astounding – rich, buttery, creamy. A woman found me to put a slice of American cheese on my grits, which was something not everyone got, apparently. The cheese was rubbery and gave some resistance to my teeth, in contrast to the otherwise mushy grits. The Danish was average, the sausage small and dry, the bacon gristly and the orange juice reconstituted.

It was good that there wasn’t much food, as there wasn’t much time to eat before we were called to the central hall. We flooded in, almost choreographed, and I was seated by the organizer in the front. The row of girls across from me started dabbing their eyes daintily just as the program started. It was as if they were pretending to be so moved by what was happening and what was said that they had to make a big deal of it. I thought back to Mark Twain’s descriptions of congregations and imagined them at a tent revival, feeding on the spirit – that is, if the white folk would have let them join in.

The talk was abbreviated. Aaron Hopson, the speaker, only quoted a few verses: Genesis 3:8-9, Peter 5:8, 1 Corinthians 6:12 and 10:23. He mostly talked about drinking, doing drugs and chasing tail. Then, when he was in Daytona Beach, Florida for spring break, drunk and stoned, a man walking down the beach stopped and prayed for him. Hopson started hearing sounds and voices, and had visions of angels and demons. Even in my fatigue it sounded ludicrous.

At first, every time I saw someone stand up to applaud, I did the same, assuming the whole church would join us. That’s what would happen in a white churchgoing audience – like sheep, a critical mass would force everyone to stand and applaud. At this church, though, one person standing meant nothing, nor did fifteen. Some people didn’t even applaud when others wept in jubilation. My girlfriend later told me she always assumed that when a black audience didn’t applaud, they were being rude; I thought they were being honest. Standing ovations are a dime a dozen – I read an op-ed once that called for fewer standing ovations at symphonies, saying they were too cheaply granted. Here, applause had to be earned.

Hopson went through some of the common sins to be guarded against – sins on television, pornography on the internet, smoking, drinking, drugs. Then he said, “Some of you are sleeping with other peoples’ husbands. Some are sleeping with other peoples’ wives." “What?” I thought, glancing around. Some people were nodding, while some had blank looks, as if trying to avoid detection. I was in a den of sinners, and, really, I was far from innocent myself. Suddenly I realised that the problems in my life were not based in the outside world – they were part of me, the result of my own actions and weaknesses. And suddenly, salvation was within reach, provided that I changed my ways. When, normally do we recognize our own faults? It’s human, I think, to believe that we’re perfect and others are full of flaws; isn’t that what Jesus was talking about, with the beam and motes in eyes?

Is this why people go to church?

The organizer said that the breakfast was “not about eggs and grits; it’s about souls.” The food, certainly, was not worth $10; the servings were tiny and, except for the eggs, mediocre. However, I was shaken. The experiences of others were my own. They had their own secrets and shortcomings, and I had mine – shortcomings which, no matter how prominent, I always manage to overlook or excuse. For a brief moment, I had to face them, to realize that we’re all guilty, all tainted, all fallible.

At the end, Hopson held up two copies of his books to show the audience that they were for sale, then came down off the pedestal, handing one to the organizer and one to me. I thought they were to be passed around, so I handed it to the woman behind me and headed off, shaking hands, patting backs and praising my way out.

I was halfway down the block when a man’s voice called out. “Hey! You left your book!” I ran back to him and took it. As he stretched out his hand, I thought of the Sistine Chapel.

Then I thanked him, turned around and was gone.

Mon P'tit Chou, East Dulwich

2009-06-15T22:39:00.020+01:00

Mon P'tit Chou
53 Lordship Lane
East Dulwich
SE22 8EP
020 7564 3800

by Malcolm Eggs

Hello, my little cabbage. Sit down for a moment: I want to tell you a story. Well, alright it’s not exactly a story - it’s a breakfast review, and is lacking much in the way of plot and character.

Ten years ago I found myself at the opening event for Mon P’tit Chou. We stood on a small raised area, drinking champagne and crunching on bruschetta and it all seemed very exciting, this suave chamber of Gallicism wedged between the optician and the kebab shop.

These days it’s still out of place, but that’s because the bread basket contains mere baguettes, which is plain retro on a high street that offers so many £3 artisan sourdoughs that if you bought them all and placed them end to end they’d stretch from here to the Moon. By Moon I mean the Half Moon pub in Herne Hill, but you see my point. The tabletops are all embedded with black and white photographs of New York reminiscent of the 'arty' section of a Hallmark outlet, which also feels retro but in a way that harks back to a past that, when you think about it, never actually existed.

My old friend Martha and I each ordered the smaller version of Mon P’tit Chou’s full English. It exemplified the “one of each” or “all the talents” approach and was £5.95. The sausage – compact, hot, vivid - was best; the rasher of bacon and ample beans were no-fuss but cooked with, well, decency; the eggs were available any way we liked as long as we liked them scrambled and overdone.

It was a nice, normal breakfast, substantial yet completely ephemeral - like a Sebastian Faulks novel. We ordered some smoothies and then nothing else interesting happened, which is where we feel glad that I said very early on that this isn't a story.

Prime Burger, New York

2009-06-08T23:37:00.004+01:00

Prime Burger
5 E. 51st. Street
(Between Madison & 5th)
New York, NY 10022
+1 212-759-4730
www.primeburger.com

by Dee Caff

If you ever find yourself wandering the streets of Manhattan in need of a breakfast fix, go to Prime Burger. As the name might suggest, it’s pretty unassuming from the outside (in a Baker’s Oven rather than a Fat Duck kind of a way), but the array of somewhat faded press clippings plastered to its glass doors give an inkling of the greatness lurking within.

We found it by chance. It wasn’t in our guide books, and we’d have walked straight past it, had it not been for the beady glare of my travelling companion, whose penchant for French toast saw her eyeing every potential eatery with an air of crazed expectancy. I wasn’t convinced – frankly it looked a little shabby – until we got closer and I peeked inside at what can only be described as a quintessential American diner.

On entering we found it not to be the sort of twee, contrived affair I despise, but more of a mystical time warp, a portal into early 60s New York - complete with beige leather seating, deco light fittings and shining wood chip walls. We took a seat at the long bar and fawned over the laminate menu which revealed that Prime Burger is the proud owner of a prestigious James Beard award for ‘Classic American Restaurant’.

Living the American service dream, we waited mere seconds before the Peruvian waiter glided up to us in his starched white waiter suit and dickie bow. It wasn’t long before we were swigging on coffee and OJ, looking like we were in the middle of an Edward Hopper, tummies rumbling in wait for our first, and most important meal of the day.

And then came the main event. Two plates piled high with glistening, golden French toast – dusted lightly with icing sugar and accompanied by some of the saltiest, crispiest, crumbliest bacon I’ve ever tasted. I must have poured about a quarter of a jug of maple syrup on mine too, savouring the novelty of drenching my food in runny sugar. I’m not normally one for sweet things in the morning (give me a full English over a continental any day of the week) but, somehow, this was an almost obscenely delicious exception to the rule.

So next time you’re swanning it on the other side of the pond, don’t bother with the Lexington Grill (as recommended by ‘local experts’ in the Time Out guide), its nonchalant ‘we’re in all the guidebooks’ service and overpriced pancakes. Go and talk to the boys from Queens and eat French toast. Or do as I did, and have a burger for breakfast. A Prime Burger.

Breakfasts and Beds: Aaron House, Port St Mary, Isle of Man

2009-05-29T12:35:00.003+01:00

Aaron House
The Promenade
Port St Mary
Isle of Man IM9 5DE
+44 (0)1624 835702
www.aaronhouse.co.uk

by Kiwi Herman

For the London-centric of you, a quick geography lesson... the Isle of Man is nowhere near the Isle of Bestival. You’ll find it smack bang in the middle of the Irish Sea (left at Liverpool or right at Belfast). And the Manx folk? They’re white, 4-horned-sheep-eating, tailless-cat-owning, tax-avoiding, Martin Clunes-haters. Oh, and their 3-leg-logo looks somewhat like a Swastika.

But they sure know how to smoke a kipper.

I found myself in the Wild West of the windy Isle last week – alone in the honeymoon suite of a seaside guesthouse advertising an organic breakfast with a ‘Victoriana ethos’.

Welcome to the living museum that is Aaron House – all decor is period. Patterned wallpaper? Check. Bone china tea sets? Check. Chequered black and white floor? Cheque. What’s more, the relentlessly jolly proprietors Reggie & Kath dress in Victorian attire at all times. It’s Upstairs Downstairs fetishism by day and lordknowswhat by night.

Kath knows her place – pummelling away her homemade breads. I’m not entirely convinced of the Victorian historical authenticity of a full fry-up inclusive of Buck Rarebit and kippers, but she stews her own fruit and makes her own jam… what a woman! (What is it well-known philosopher/ feminist Jerry Hall said about being a maid in the living room, cook in the kitchen and…’?).

Well, if the Victorians were Opium-smoking sex-mad hippies, then there were only 2 things missing from my dish. Or were they? The lure of the grub and Kath’s mumsy, large apron-ed breasts proved addictive. I never get up at 7am, but managed 5 days in a row. Plus, I wonder if you ding that little bell with a certain rhythm you could get more than just a fruit tart.

Oh, and did I mention Reg loves showing visitors his telescope? The puns write themselves.

Portorais Hotel, Palermo, Sicily

2009-05-12T12:51:00.002+01:00

Portorais Hotel
Via Piraineto, 125
Palermo, 90044
Sicily
Italy
+39 091 8693481
www.hotelportorais.com

by Blake Pudding

We were somewhere around Corleone on the edge of the mountains when the Prosecco began to take hold. I had been commissioned by Oligarch magazine (incorporating Toff Monthly) to write an article on a classic car rally. Girls, Alfa Romeos and louche antics, the piece would practically write itself and I would get a free holiday. It was not to be. When the rally organisers found out about my intentions they threatened to run over my legs with a 1972 Cadillac Eldorado. I was skint and commissionless in Sicily so I patched a call through to Malcolm Eggs to ask whether he would take a special breakfast dispatch. He said yes and generously agreed to pay my expenses out of the LRB budget. I was back in the game but rapidly running out of words without having touched on what I had for breakfast.

We had eaten that morning at the Hotel Portorais. Everyone looked a little peaky after the night before though not as peaky as the hotel itself with its air of faded grandeur and thwarted ambition. The staff’s uniforms looked like something from an Am Dram production of HMS Pinafore. They laid on a top breakfast though. Excellent coffee of course - it is very hard to get bad coffee in Sicily - but also cakes, tarts, croissants, yoghurt and best of all a kind of flat calzone thing stuffed with ham and cheese. Not knowing when, where or with whom I would be having lunch, I made a bit of a pig of myself. I need not have worried, as after getting slightly lost, we ran into the rest of the group just outside Monreale. The Cadillac was groaning with food and wine. I necked the best part of a bottle of Prosecco, ate more pizza and then shouted “follow me to Corleone, I know the way,” though of course I didn’t and was just drunk and showing off.

Wild Cherry, Bethnal Green

2009-05-08T16:14:00.004+01:00

Wild Cherry
241 Globe Rd
Bethnal Green
E2 0JD
020 8980 6678
www.wildcherrycafe.com

by Joyce Carol Oats

I am meant to be in Chicago this Bank Holiday weekend, eating spongey pancakes drowned in sticky brown syrup that tastes of twenty different E-numbers, accompanied by my nice ex-boyfriend and the faint hope that Ira Glass might turn up in the diner. But alas! A twist of fate has left me in Bethnal Green - usually my favourite place on the planet, but not when I'm meant to be in Chicago. To simulate the experience I crave, I decide to breakfast at Wild Cherry: they do a passable American-style pancake, albeit with a maple syrup that doesn't require quotation marks.

Wild Cherry is a not-for-profit operation, run by the London Buddhist Centre, which is next door. And maybe this is why the service is so appalling. The staff members get orders wrong, fail to bring food altogether, or sometimes just blink and smile beatifically. It's the kind of behaviour that would make me very short-tempered anywhere else, but here it makes me sigh affectionately and think, 'Oh, you guys' in a way not dissimilar to how I regard my untrainable but lovable border collie.

The breakfast menu - only served on Saturdays – has two things worth eating. There are pancakes with fruit, maple syrup and mascarpone (and variations thereof), or a vegetarian full English affair which includes by far the best scrambled eggs I've ever had the pleasure of interacting with: fluffy and not greasy and decorated with chopped fresh chives. I assume they are the product of zen hens. There is also some kind of muesli, but I have never seen anyone order it (what kind of person orders muesli in a restaurant?) and a choice of wraps that look less than delightful.

The garden outside is non-smoking, which pleases me, since I am an asthmatic square. When the pancakes arrive they are a little thinner than usual, like someone forgot to add the leavening agent because he was thinking about more spiritual things. But they are still whole wheat-y and delicious, topped what must be more than £6.25 worth of chopped seasonal fresh fruit alone, a generous blob of thick mascarpone, and a glistening pool of syrup that was once actually part of a tree. I am sad that the café upgraded its old drip coffee maker (free refills) to an espresso machine (non free refills, and tastes burnt). But munching my way through the pancakes and reading an interesting essay on Beckett in the New York Review of Books, I think: OK, no Ira Glass, or E-numbers, or ex-boyfriend. But almost.

Breakfasts and Beds: Escape, Llandudno

2009-05-01T11:43:00.003+01:00

Escape Boutique B&B
48 Church Walks
Landudno
LL30 2HL
01492 877 776
www.escapebandb.co.uk

by Cher E. Jamm

I don't know about you, but when I go away to a bed & breakfast, I'm usually disproportionately excited about the prospect of breakfast the next morning. I don't care for soft furnishings, and I certainly don't give two hoots about where we dine on the day of arrival, but I'll drool and fantasise and lose sleep over the morning to come. And I'm usually disappointed and left fuming and tearful at the piddly excuse of what lay before my eyes.

At the Escape Boutique B&B, from the moment we swanned into the ornate dining room, with its parquet floors, high ceilings and fancy table settings, I got the feeling that past experiences could potentially wash away. Linen napkins and neat little menus greeted us, as did the extraordinarily gorgeous, smiling waitress who would not look out of place in a Californian beauty contest. I had to ask Mr Jamm to retrieve his jaw from the floor.

And with that, a flurry of ordering took place. Freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and a cafetiere of Columbia's finest arrived with a flourish. Deliciously fresh fruit salad with natural yoghurt served in classy tumblers were gobbled up within seconds. A glance at the Sunday papers and then it was then time for the Grand Poobah, the real test of metal. The Escape was about to show its true colours.

And what colours they were. Two neat, finely fried eggs lay in the middle of this handsome plate, surrounded by the holy hexagon of all that makes a Full English. Two sausages of rare and fine pedigree (and still sizzling!); crisp bacon that is a reminder to all of why we should only eat animals that have led happy lives; a grilled field mushroom that could have doubled as a parasol; a grilled tomato that was actually cooked (I can't recall the last time that happened); a few spoonfuls of beans that didn't swamp the plate and finally, the piece de resistance: black pudding as I never knew or liked before. It was about the shape and size of a cocktail sausage and perfectly cooked on the outside, and full of bloody, oatey goodness on the inside.

I implore you all to go. Go to Llandudno, that rusty and charming old seaside resort. Go stay at the Escape B&B with it's fine soft furnishings and lovely staff. Go and find salvation in a breakfast fit for gods. And then go tell all your friends to do the same.

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

2009-04-25T12:12:00.010+01:00

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

2009-04-13T12:00:00.000+01:00

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

2009-04-07T19:52:00.003+01:00

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

2009-04-03T14:14:00.003+01:00

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.

Fortess Cafe Restaurant, Tufnell Park

2009-03-31T22:09:00.005+01:00

Fortess Cafe Restaurant
122 Fortess Road
Tufnell Park
NW5 2HL
[Street view]

by Nelson Griddle

Greasy spoons, in my experience, come in two varieties: there are Harolds and there are Alberts.

These two categories derive, of course, from the two Steptoes of the TV sitcom. Harold, the son, is undoubtedly on the rough and ready side, but possesses a certain debonair charm, a puppyish enthusiasm. Greasy spoons of the Harold variety try to make you feel comfortable. They have aspirations - like serving cappuccinos or sandwiches made on ciabatta.

Alberts, meanwhile, are determined to stay as they are, however grim and impoverished that might be. Echoing some innate stubbornness in the British character, they almost seem to revel in their status at the bottom of the pile.

Such cafes are the gathering places of the dispossessed and unhinged of the earth. The semi-legendary Rock Steady Eddie’s in Camberwell is a good example - containing on an average morning more loonies than a scene of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Alberts nurse the misfortunes of their customers. They offer no consolation but the consolation of despair. In short, they are depressing, and often not terribly clean.

Fortess is one of the London’s Alberts. The food is average greasy-spoon fare. Nothing about the set breakfast I order is particularly bad (or good). But what marks the place out as an Albert is the unmistakable atmosphere. Despite walls painted heavy red and actually quite friendly service, there’s something comfortless and vaguely Soviet about the place. You feel as though you could be in hospital or prison.

Maybe it’s the insufficient lighting, which makes the main eating area feel gloomy and cavernous. Or perhaps it’s the long, cold, peeling corridor that leads to the none-too-clean toilet. Then again, it could be the condensation, which mists the plate-glass frontage of the café and trickles down endlessly, seeming to whisper to each and every passerby: “I am an Albert... All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

Pastis, New York

2009-03-27T15:09:00.002Z

Pastis
9 9th Ave
New York, NY 10014
USA
+1 212-929-4844

by Emma Ricano

Three months trawling LA casting circuit (see Dottie's True Blue Cafe) and no work to show for it. Agent says economy is hindering chances for young actresses but that I should update my Michael Bolton haircut first. No dice, I say, has taken me ages to foster that look. Occurs to me that maybe I was put on God’s Green Earth to procreate rather than earn a dime; read in Grazia that Angelina Jolie is looking for pad in NYC's Meatpacking District so I head over to the East Coast to mine her for information on How to Create the Perfect Family, Step 1.

Collar an undernourished Manhattanite dressed in hip acid colours and beg to be told where people like Angie and the SATC girls hang. He points me in the direction of Pastis, whose plain yet stylish exterior plus cobbles are matchy-matchy with Grazia article. Bingo.

Staff friendly and helpful, particularly when seating me in far corner after I decline their offer to stow my high-vis jerkin and hat. Notice that clientele are all dressed in slim black cigarette pants and worry that Angie might not be let in wearing pregnancy kaftan.

Drink huge bowl of excellent, strong milky coffee to remain alert for her arrival. Disregard light dishes clearly designed for celebs e.g. omelette aux fines herbes and head straight for a carbo rocket: brioche French toast with maple syrup. Knock back a freshly squeezed orange juice (essential to dose up on the vitamins necessary to prepare body for birth and/or adoption) then remove high vis gloves to applaud arrival of breakfast plate, a gravy boat of colourful seasonal fruits and two pieces of brioche so large and angular I worry how anyone without a gob the size of a truck will manage. Feel sure Angie would help me out if she were here but in her absence I carve off hefty chunks of what turns out to be light and eggy heaven dosed liberally with maple syrup and powdered sugar. The accompanying fresh fruits take the edge off the sweetness and I relax back to enjoy food high.

Half an hour later I come crashing down and start searching menu desperately for further fix, like side of bacon, pastry or house specialty, tartine. In the end I plump for a glass of champagne which emboldens me for some crucial groundwork ahead; must attract mate if I am to procreate so suggestively wink at likely looking gents. Ten minutes later kindly waiter approaches with eye drops and the bill. Engage him in conversation over excellent quality of breakfast and discover he is big fan of Michael Bolton.

The Brill Restaurant and Cellar Bar, King's Cross

2009-03-19T09:38:00.004Z

The Brill Restaurant and Cellar Bar
Omega Place
6-8 Caledonian Road
King's Cross
N1 9DT

by Salmon de Beauvoir

On my left there’s the psychotically painted façade of Tony’s Hemp Corner. On my right, the boarded-up windows and doors of The Flying Scotsman: strip-pub. This is the unlikely location of The Brill, a sophisticated-looking British eatery on Cally road, close to King’s Cross.

Everything’s beige and demure – and clean, which is ultimately why I go in (they also boast a dedicated breakfast/brunch menu). As the nervously smiling eastern European waitress shows me to a table (quelle elegance!), I approvingly note the artwork: watercolours of fish on plates. It’s not worth writing home about in any way, but it nicely counteracts the rather stiff atmosphere. Everywhere, couples sit quietly and obediently and wait for their food, which, let me tell you, is quite a wait. My companion comments that this bodes well, that a full English should take time to prepare.

Just as I start contemplating the disparity between this place’s deçor and its low prices (£4.50 for salmon and scrambled, £5.50 for full English) the food arrives. Aha! The Brill have aped the formula of the nearby St Pancras Champagne Bar: tiny bits of chopped-up smoked salmon nearly disappearing in a nightmare of overcooked scrambled eggs. Nothing stays together on my plate and the low price is suddenly explained. My companion's full English is “reasonable” – for the price, and for what you ordinarily get in London, but I feel like I was led to believe there’d be at least ‘Taste the Difference’-standard sausages, or slices of dense, “it’s-my-Polish-gran’s-recipe” bread. The absence of the advertised fried bread only makes matters worse. I wish I could tell you that their chrome espresso machine delivers something to savour, but alas, the cappuccino is some kind of mini Lait Russe.

It seems as if the owners spent all their money on the bohemian yellowy glass jars containing candles so could only afford to offer an uninteresting breakfast. I feel quite let down. From the waitress’ smile, the watermarked menu paper and the splendid name, I’d simply expected more. The old proverb has been proved right yet again; don’t judge a brekkie joint by the decorative mini trees flanking its entrance.

Oh, and they didn’t have any pastries... Scandal.

Cafe & Grill, Camden Town

2009-03-09T18:18:00.004Z

Café & Grill
19 Kentish Town Road
Camden Town
NW1 8NH

by Nelson Griddle

Quite what made me decide on a full English breakfast baguette, I’m not quite sure, but almost immediately I came to regret the decision.

The meal started well enough. Café & Grill, a little eaterie that has sprung up like a daffodil between the British Boot Company and the United Reformed Church on Kentish Town Road, was bright and clean and smart - well, for Camden, anyway.

Décor-wise, it sported a couple of those mystifying photographs of central London with absolutely no one around (At what time of the day or night, I wonder, is Piccadilly Circus completely deserted? How do they do it - photoshop?) The waitress was certainly very pretty even if her command of English didn’t extend to being able to explain the ingredients of the breakfast baguette.

Not that she was concealing any wonderful secrets. The baguette, it turned out, contained that breakfast Holy Trinity of bacon, egg and sausage. But the bacon was under-done, the egg rubbery, the sausage bland. Even the bread was under-par: like all English attempts at baguettes, it failed to attain the crisp, celestial lightness of true French bread.

But ultimately I cannot just blame poor ingredients or execution. At the best of times the breakfast sandwich is a dubious institution. There’s something about stuffing the manifold ingredients of an English breakfast (all of which should be savoured alone or in carefully considered conjunction) into a bready bun that’s unnatural, uncalled for; strange and depraved.

Yet no one had forced this upon me. It was a calamity I had brought upon myself. I had tempted the gods, and got my come-uppance: a breakfasting tragedy of Sophoclean proportions.