Special Dispatch: Norman Carr Cottage, Monkey Bay, Malawi

Norman Carr Cottage
Monkey Bay
Malawi
00 265 1 587 316
www.normancarrcottage.com

by Blake Pudding on location

I was slowly awoken from a beautiful dream by what sounded like a monkey running across the roof. A little face peered at me through the mosquito net. It was a monkey! What the fuck was going on? I looked to my left and saw a girl, her hair spread over the pillow. Was I still asleep? No, I was on holiday with the fabulous Alice Wingate. My heart skipped with joy and my stomach rumbled loudly. We may have been in a romantic paradise but it was breakfast time and I was bloody starving. We walked outside into the balmy heat. Lake Malawi stretched out to the horizon before us. After a moment sitting admiring the view, our hostess Jenny appeared and inquired whether we would like bacon and eggs for breakfast. “Hell yes,” we replied in unison.

The bacon was of the streaky variety and cooked crisply. Proust himself could not have cooked more evocative bacon. It took me straight back to family holidays and my father cooking the only meal he knew how. It came with perfect fried eggs and rich, gooey grilled tomatoes. You may think it wilfully perverse to have such an English meal in a location such as this, but at the Norman Carr cottage it all seemed to make sense. Perhaps it was the company, perhaps it was the location, or perhaps the food really was that good - but I don't think I will ever eat a finer breakfast.

The Engineer, Primrose Hill

The Engineer
65 Gloucester Avenue
Primrose Hill
NW1

by Corin Flakes

Breakfast in celebrated gastro-pub The Engineer - with its Brooklyn garden, its complicit air of middle-class serenity - should be fantastically smug. The brazen expense (the menu reads like the window of a Mayfair estate agent) gives faith that the ingredients, and their dexterous preparation, will be worthwhile. Reclining in sun-kissed splendour – ivy snaking down the period brickwork - Ed Benedict and I readied ourselves for something special.

Our initial assessment was uniform positivity. The sausage looked prodigious, amply stuffed with zesty herbs, and it collided with succulent, salted tomatoes. The bacon was skilfully charred; under inspection from a probing knife, it crunched with inviting, fleshy smokiness. As Ed tucked into mushrooms on toast (the presentation charmingly wild, advanced by parmesan and peppery rocket), he commented on their quality, though mourned the mysterious absence of strong flavours. Sadly, the toast was thick as hay bales, and impatiently underdone.

Forward-thinking gastronomes emphasise the importance of perception in the dining experience and here, everything seemed set. What I hadn’t anticipated were the throaty intrusions of another diner. The adjacent American grimly declared her eggs were “like, way rotten”, then thrust an accusatory fork at my poached pair, which, I thought, were wonderfully done, flowing with tantalising lava. I suspect the subtle dash of vinegar confused her parochial palette, yet my breakfast was plagued by hellish visions of a day spent praying weakly over the sink. It’s impossible to enjoy a meal when death looms, waiting to collect your plate and steal your soul.

I’d recommend the Engineer – just blockade yourself in unilateral isolation. The Special Relationship means nothing at breakfast.

Art to Zen, Islington

Art to Zen
27 Upper Street
Islington
N1
020 7226 5300
www.art2zen.co.uk

by Hamish Pastry

What’s in a name, readers? Is it more enjoyable to breakfast at a venue that sounds exotic, cosy, or just full of breakfasty promise, than one called something like 'Turds on Toast', or worse (shudders), 'Art to Zen'?

While I’m firmly against judging a place until you’ve had the full English, the name of this café-cum-gallery-cum-Buddhist hangout has always bugged me. It sounds like the worst kind of Upper Street pretentiousness.

Breakfast options include said full English for £4.25, and a few other bits and bobs (parmesan on toast is one). I ordered the former. It was alright. The toasted ciabatta was light and buttery, but it doesn’t soak yolk in the same pleasing way as your bog-standard white sliced. The sausage was fat and herby and the eggs nice and runny, but the bacon was a crashing disappointment, not at all crispy and with a taste reminiscent of something long ago (school dinners?). The mushrooms were chunky but strangely wizened, like an old lady’s thumbs.

So what is arty about Art to Zen? Inside, canvases dot the wall. The menu cover is some kind of painted effort. It doesn’t feel very arty though. It doesn’t feel very anything. There was, we realised, a distinct lack of atmosphere (is this the Zen?). We decided to ask our waitress (the staff, by the way, are pleasant and efficient). It turned out our waitress was the owner, and she happily explained that she is an artist and a Zen Buddhist. The ‘to’ part was added to form a cunning A-Z London connection.

There you have it. I left feeling fairly satisfied with my breakfast and very pleased to know that Art to Zen’s name is not some affectation, but a reflection of its owner’s life. I am bugged no more.

Bodrum Cafe, Stoke Newington

Bodrum Cafe
61 Stoke Newington High Street
Stoke Newington
N16
020 8809 1165

By H.P. Seuss

The aged Professor dropped the empty husk of his vitamin pod and shot Züü-27 a weary smile.

He was tired. He had never adapted to the brave new world that his calamitous discovery of 2017 had helped to create. His inner world remained a past of plastic and wood, where fleshy beings fornicated, read newspapers and subsisted on unfertilised chicken eggs and the sliced haunches of pigs. Züü-27 downed her silicone, and tried to cheer her grandfather.

"Did you breakfast like this in the past?" she asked.

A look of terror crossed the Professor's wrinkled face. "The past is full of ghosts", he said cryptically. Then, just as Züü-27 was preparing to change the subject, his expression changed: "Breakfast, my girl, was not always protein pods and zinc injections. You want to hear of our breakfasts?"

Züü-27 nodded. The Professor took a deep breath.

"Then I shall tell you of the first time we entered Bodrum, on what is now U5987 Street," he began. "Our group was ramshackle and unruly after a night of debauchery. But the kindly staff — Turks, I think — found space for all nine of us, and distributed a menu so comprehensive and inexpensive that even the fussiest was contented. When our ripaste arrived, contentment turned to unbridled joy. You have to understand, child, that such cafés abounded with undercooked bacon and limpid albumen. Not Bodrum. Their breakfast soothed the soul, turned a menacing hangover into sleepy satisfaction and spectacularly transcended the N16 ratio that so blighted the vegetable joints of the more upmarket U5988 Street round the corner." His voice shook: "And it made of bubble and squeak a work of art!"

The Professor hung his head.

"Wow," said Züü-27. "That's got to beat a vitamin pod".

"It most certainly did", said Professor Seuss, wiping away a salty tear.

Manolis Cafe, Lower Holloway

Manolis Cafe
1 Hercules St
Lower Holloway
N7
020 7263 6703
www.manoliscafe.com

by Blake Pudding

This breakfast took place about two months ago after my flatmate Michael and I had been taking part in the tall bikes challenge. This involves three terribly brave, strong and rather stupid men cycling around Britain on bicycles made by welding two bike frames together so that they stand over 5ft off the ground. The silly men then don pink helmets and cycle round the coast of Britain no doubt dodging missiles thrown by scallywags. We went to see them off at Hyde Park and followed in a procession down to London Bridge. Obviously Michael and I were on more conventional machines. It was like being a in a ridiculous chain-driven carnival; there were penny-farthings, recumbents and rickshaws. All good clean fun, even if a small cloud of self-righteousness did hang over the whole day - but that’s cycling for you.

Anyway I was soon bloody starving so Michael suggested a trip to Manolis on Hercules Road. We met a couple of Jewish friends and all tucked cheerfully into pork-based products. I went with bacon, egg, tomatoes and chips. The chips being of the chunkier variety which I don’t normally favour in a caff but here they were superb, the bacon was not remarkable but it was properly cooked as were the tomatoes and the egg was fresh. What more can I say about such simple food? Manolis is a haven just off London’s horrible Holloway Road; I would recommend it to Jews and Gentiles alike.

Café Z Bar, Stoke Newington

Café Z Bar
58 Stoke Newington High Street
Stoke Newington
N16 7PB
020 7275 7523

by Orva Easy

It was alone and shamefaced that I slunk into the Z-bar, armed only with an oversized newspaper to protect me from my monstrous hen-party hangover. It was already packed, even on the wrong side of Sunday lunchtime. I had barely brought my gin-crossed eyes to focus before I was hustled by the waitress. Set 15 please: halloumi, mushrooms, spicy sausage, fried egg, salad, Turkish bread. Tea. And a mixed juice. God. Please.

The tea appeared first, in a stupid trendy mug. Its spectacularly badly-designed handle was perfectly round, highly glazed and tubular, which meant that the middle finger crooked underneath slid inexorably towards the scalding hot cup every time I picked it up. It was infuriating. And you couldn’t stop it. I hate those mugs! Apoplexy threatened as I struggled in vain with burning fingers. Bread arrived, a vast basket of the stuff as big as the table. The mixed juice looked like it came out of a bilge pump. I left it to settle. The breakfast itself was carefully arranged on the stark white plate like a Bloomsbury still-life, the sausage a saucy salami-pink, balanced on the other side by three golden-tinged slices of halloumi, a cluster of button mushrooms gleaming between them.

Ah, halloumi! It was everything it ought to be – mouth-fillingly buttery and pleasingly squeaky on the teeth. Juicy, gamey sausages with a hint of spice cut through the rich, cloudy egg, though it tasted a bit disgusting in a forkful with the mushrooms. Which explains why you don’t get mushrooms much in Turkey.

I perked up, enjoying my tingling billiousness. I drank my scum-topped but actually rather nice mixed juice and felt healed by a decent, if now slightly cool cup of builders’. I will be back next week. But I’m taking my own damned mug.

S & M Café, Islington

S & M Café
4-6 Essex Road
Islington
N1
020 7359 5361

by Poppy Tartt

Francis Bacon is said to have enjoyed a good whipping every morning before breakfast. I reminded Slave X of this, when he demurred a little at his preprandial caning. “The finest philosophers in all the land were masochists,” I said sternly, “and they were not even lucky enough to be treated to a slap-up meal at S & M Café.” “Slap up?” he mumbled nervously. “For this pathetic show you will wear your nipple-clamps throughout breakfast,” I commanded.

If, like myself, you find the touch of bean on egg as unsavoury as a paedophile’s handshake, you could do no worse than to order the S & M All Day Breakfast. Oh Jesus, Mary, and the Marquis de Sade! I could have run five thousand miles without stopping, screaming all the way: my egg, my sacred egg, was covered, entirely covered with beans!!!! “Slave X!” I cried, ripping the gag from his mouth, “Crawl on your knees to the kitchen and find me the chef who dared to degrade his ingredients so!”

Meanwhile I observed the extreme heat of the venue, the insufferable volume of the music, the inexplicably long queue for a table. Whilst the salvagable remains of the breakfast were perfectly adequate, there were no hash browns, an unforgivable oversight. The tea was so hot it might have been brewed in molten lava and it never cooled – a fire-eater would have been off work the next day after one mouthful. This was certainly a plus. By this time Slave X had re-emerged, bearing the brand of a frying pan upon his cheek. “Let me deal with this!” I said, cuffing him about the ear. I took out my riding crop and strode towards the kitchens.

"Call of the House of Rasher": In Defence of the Local Shopkeeper, by Hashley Brown

As I quietly surveyed the sunrise over our grand metropolis, steeling myself to rouse the nation with the balletic follies of Gounod, my thoughts strayed from my imminent radio production duties to the plight of the local shopkeeper. For how long have we neglected the small businessman in favour of fancy eateries and corporate smorgasbords? I vowed that today I would raise my fork in defence of the local retailer.

In these hallowed pages you will find many a reference to the flaccid bacon or limp sausage with which less favourable establishments brazenly embellish their breakfasts, as well as breakfasts whose exorbitant price-tag is justified by locally sourced organic ingredients. But how much might one, locally sourced, organic gourmand breakfast set one back if cooked at home?

Within half an hour of purposeful striding around the vicinity of LRB's NW5 headquarters I procured the necessary: Organic smoked back bacon, organic pork, leek and parsley sausages, free range organic eggs, large earthy flat mushrooms and a vine of juicy red tomatoes. Add a crusty cob of bread and I had sourced my breakfast from a rosy cheeked gaggle of independent shopkeepers I one day hope to regard as friends.

Catching the fastidious Dr Fried at the tail end of his ablutions I prepared as fine a breakfast as I could muster, rendering the fat on the bacon to a golden crisp, and slow roasting the tomatoes with butter and garlic. Within an hour we had a sublime meaty treat that touched the edges of the LRB gold standard, and at £8.52 for two this undercut any similarly sourced feast I've so far encountered. Though heavy on preparation time, and inevitably washing up, it is refreshing to know that greatness can still be achieved at home.

Hashley Brown
March 2006

Maria's, Borough

Maria's
Borough Market
Borough
SE1
Open Wednesday - Saturday

by Pam au Chocolat

Maria is café aristocracy. Her parents – Italian, of course – used to run the Borough Café round the corner on Park St, which was famous for its bubble ‘n ‘squeak and, in the days before gentrification hit the warehouses of the Borough, always reverently referred to as ‘Mama’s’.

But Mama died, Network Rail closed the Borough Café, and for a while Maria set up herself in a hole in the wall on Stoney Street, before moving last year to a stall and a little enclosure of tables within the market itself. She is large, incredibly ruddy, always grinning and has that fantastic bellowing Cockney-Italian screech of a voice that is shared with café owners the city over.

Today it’s unseasonably cold and I’m a little grumpy, so it’s time to hunker down in my thick puffa jacket with the Sun and a plate of bubble, bacon, egg, tomato and black pudding. The bubble is possibly the best thing ever – crusty and crispy with those delicious burnt bits, while at the same time hot and comforting. It cooks in a gigantic frying pan, occasionally replenished from a vat of mashed potato and another of cabbage, the new getting worked down into the old crunchy bits at the bottom. The bacon is thick and salty and has the hint of a crunch around the edge. The over-easy egg (cooked with a casual wrist-flick I’ve never seen elsewhere) does its magical thing, oozing gloriously soft inside its veil of white.

As I eat, I hear Maria shout out to the other traders and customers, trading jokes that always end with her in hysterical laughter, wiping the hint of a tear from her eye as she shakes her head. And the tea, of course, is strong.

Goodfare, Camden Town

Goodfare
26 Parkway
Camden Town
NW1 7AH
020 7485 2230
Breakfast served: 8am - 10.30pm

by Malcolm Eggs

It was a bright cold day in April, and my mobile phone said 13:00. Mabel and I, our hands nuzzled into our pockets to escape the mild drizzle, slipped quickly through the glass door of Goodfare. The room smelt of tea, roast beef and clean aprons. A tinny music was trickling from the sandwich counter and we sat at a table by the big window. An old waitress, working the room with a sort of military precision, approached us and we ordered.

Now if you want a picture of my Goodfare breakfast, imagine a glass of tap water being delivered--immediately. Imagine an omelette, slightly curved on one side, flat on the other, making almost the shape of a waxing farm moon. There was a pleasing oiliness, as of a good antiques dealer, in both the egg and the cheese. Through it all, magnified by grease, were comforting, pink, succulent bits of bacon that recalled rose petals or Danish flags. The taste was delightful. Mabel was eating bacon, egg, sausage and tomato. 'Yes, I like that,' she said.

I gazed out at Camden, the Town once inhabited by the great Eric Arthur Blair. Thirty years it had taken me to learn what kind of breakfast was hidden on those dark streets. Two final sips of tea trickled down the sides of my throat. It was alright, everything was alright, the breakfast was finished. Once more I had won the victory over my incessant peckishness. I loved Goodfare.