The Breakfast Club, Shoreditch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.