Sleep-deprived man (David Varela) reviews imaginary breakfast: Raoul's, Ivory Coast

Raoul's

Cap d'Hiver
30km west of Abidjan

Ivory Coast

Commissioned by Malcolm Eggs

Back in December, the writer David Varela devised a project in which he would write "whatever people want, live, on webcam, for 100 hours straight, to raise money for Arvon's work with children's literacy and writing projects". Struck by this opportunity to generate new breakfast content, I made a donation and requested a review of "an imaginary breakfast in an imaginary cafe in an imaginary town". Exactly a month ago to this day, after over thirty hours of constant writing, David responded with the following:

The Ivory Coast's continuing drive for tourists has now reached the high-end market. Raoul's Guesthouse, with its private beach and distinctive lighthouse, is offering secure luxury accommodation for a Western clientele, with a heavy emphasis on pure cotton linen, white driftwood and a sumptuous dining experience.

Having arrived late on the Friday night, my first opportunity to see the layout was at breakfast on Saturday morning. Descending from my guesthouse lighthouse penthouse by fireman's pole, I was greeted on the ground floor by Raoul himself, who showed me to the slide which would carry me to the breakfast room.

Swirled gently around like a delicate wine, I arrived in the breakfast room to find the architect had opted for a subaquatic design. The reinforced glass dome, located some 75m out to sea, afforded ocean views from floor level in every direction. My table was on the beach side, giving me a clear vista of coral and white sand, with colourful fish whisking by in schools or stopping to pucker up against the glass.

The breakfast menu had a similarly pescatarian feel, focusing on salmon dishes (for the European palate) and local catches fresh from the guesthouse's own nets. At lunch, the waiter informed me, Raoul himself would catch the Fish of the Day with a sharpened stick.

I chose the 'Croc, Monsieur,' Raoul's personal adaptation of a traditional Abidjan dish, combining smoked crocodile, kelp, goatfish, bigeye, moony, bubu and electric catfish. 

While I waited, the table team acquainted me with the desalination system which allowed me to process and evaporate the seawater at my seat, producing delightfully fresh flakes of salt.

When the dish arrived, the salt turned out to be redundant. Perfectly seasoned and cooked, the solidity of the crocodile was balanced by the moony, which simply fell apart, and the smoother texture of the goatfish and bigeye. The catfish, lightly seared, added an extra crispness. The bubu, however, was a disappointment.

After a rubdown by the breakfast masseuse, I returned to my winch and wound my way back to the penthouse, eager to see what Raoul would be skewering us for lunch.

Food: 4/5

Service: 3/5

Decor: 3/5

Slide: 4.5/5

Original review and much more here.

The Shepherdess Cafe, Shoreditch

The Shepherdess Cafe
221 City Road
Shoreditch EC1V 1JN
020 7253 2463

by Brannie Hall

***London Review of Breakfasts News Flash***

The full English at the Shepherdess Cafe in City Road, London, won the title of “Best Builders’ Breakfast in Britain” on 26 November 2012, beating out the eggs, bacon, beans, and chips of eateries in Bolton, St Leonards-On-Sea, Durham, and SW1. MyBuilder.com surveyed thousands of breakfast-eaters in the building trades about their favorite morning cafés, restaurants or food vans. The Shepherdess is popular with culinary luminaries such as Jamie Oliver and staff from the Moorfields Eye Hospital as well as those working on nearby building sites (not, presumably, Eagle House, that monument to the financial crisis of 2008, a giant empty structure that was supposed to open in 2010 as one of the largest recent private residential developments in Shoreditch but which has sat nearby, half-finished, for years).

The proprietor of the Shepherdess, Nick Menagatos, was presented with a trophy at a breakfast celebration in late November. A regular said of the Shepherdess that “there is always a warm welcome, they use the best bacon for their fry-ups, and there is always a good mix of people.”

- Brannie Hall

2 Comments:

HappyCamper said:

Well, I'm from Oregon, USA, and I ran across your review looking up the lyrics for a song I used to sing at camp (in the 1950s!), called “Walk Shepherdess Walk” (one of my favorite camp songs - beautiful!). While reading, I came across the term "Fry-up" - does this mean just what it sounds like - fried food? Can you tell me more about the British specialities at the Shepherdess Café? I've never been "across the pond," but that IS on my "to-do" list - after the fjords, that is!

2:15 AM, December 16, 2012

Brannie Hall said:

Dear HappyCamper,

Welcome. I am glad your search for nostalgic mid-century campfire songs led you to this site. The term “fry-up” does, in fact, refer to fried food; specifically, it denotes cold food heated up in a frying pan, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED also places its origins in the 1960s, citing sources such as Elleston Trevor’s 1968 novel A Place for the Wicked, in which a character says, “Are you hungry?...We'll have a fry-up, shall we?” One kind of fry-up is the  “full English breakfast,” often shortened to “full English,” which includes back bacon, eggs, fried tomatoes, fried mushrooms, fried bread or toast, sausages and baked beans, and a mug of tea.

This is what I ordered at the Shepherdess Cafe on a recent visit. (Technically, I ordered “eggs, bacon, tom’s & mushrooms” with a side of beans and a tea and stole some of a friend’s sausage. I got chips as a garnish. Nice.) The food at the Shepherdess, happily, is as straightforward as the term “fry-up.” It is not a place where the waitress would ask if you have any questions about the menu, such as, “Could you please tell me what cardoons are?” or “Where do you source your chicken?” It is fairly impossible to ask questions about the menu at the Shepherdess Cafe, which, next to each omelette listed, includes a parenthetical assurance about the plentiful number of eggs used in each (3 eggs) as well as a note at the bottom of the omelette category that reminds diners that each omelette contains 3 eggs. I did not order an omelette, 3-egg or not. I fully enjoyed my runny, bright-yellow-yolked eggs, which they happily and competently poached, my tasty bacon, my friend's hearty sausage, and my plentiful beans, all served at the correct temperature. The tomatoes & mushrooms could have been a bit more assertively grilled. The coffee was weak and the tea strong (“builders’ tea,” as it is known in the UK). The checked curtains are painted on.

Staff were friendly and efficient, yelling over orders from table to counter, and food appeared nearly instantaneously. My friend ordered green tea and was the subject of many solicitous questions about her health from fellow diners, one of whom told us about her childhood in Turkey. HappyCamper, when you visit London, I hope you find time for a breakfast at the Shepherdess Cafe. It’ll be just what you need after a trip to the fjords.

PS: The lyrics to “Walk Shepherdess Walk” are:
Walk, Shepherdess, walk, and I'll walk too
To find the ram with the ebony horn and the gold footed ewe
The lamb with the fleece of silver, like summer sea foam
And the wether with the crystal bell that leads them all home.
Walk, Shepherdess, Walk, and I'll walk too,
And if we never find them, I shan't mind, shall you?

Question for you: what is a wether? Oh, I see.  A castrated male sheep.

Special dispatch: Thunderbird Café, Wellington, New Zealand

Thunderbird Café
154 Featherston Street
Wellington
New Zealand
+64 (0) 4 499 1966
www.thunderbirdcafe.co.nz

by Egg Miliband

Economy class, London to Wellington, New Zealand, via Shanghai. I’d spent two days staring at the back of a chair and eating meals that felt like being walked through by ghosts. Now I was standing in the wind on Wellington’s waterfront, with two old friends at my side: one hungover and heartbroken, the other freshly arrived from a stint in Japan. I realise now that all of us were in various stages of trauma, and perhaps in need of more than breakfast. We thought we might wash up at Astoria on Lambton Quay – one of those spindly-chaired cafés, full of people shouting through mouthfuls of chef’s-special beans – but on our way there, we were drawn towards a sign with a red eagle on it. Thunderbird Café.

Inside was a vast wall-print of an Arizona highway rolling through a desert. An inflatable deer’s head stared fixedly from the wall, while a real hog’s head lolled beside the cakes cabinet. Above the wall menu were the words “YOU LOOK AMAZING!” The tables were covered in butcher’s paper, with bunches of crayons in jars, so we sat down and immediately began to doodle in silence.

After a series of meals eaten in mid-air – bandagey buns, flubbery omelettes, stewed tea – most foods will taste good. But let the review be unbalanced. My scrambled eggs on knobbly buttered toast were perfect because they were so ordinary. Part of it may have been the satisfying heft of real cutlery in my hands. Heartbroken friend had mushrooms glistening on toast. Japan friend had something called Big Brains, a plate consisting mostly of animal things: bacon, sausage, fried eggs, “Thunderbeans” (ham and beans), and potatoes. On toast. It came out as a reddish-brown mountain that he worked his way through slowly, heavily, like someone in a Raymond Carver story. Everyone ate everything.

There’s something about a breakfast like this that darns all the holes in a ragged day. We went back into the wind, full of beans. Our lives were going to change. I felt it.

Bill's Produce Store, Soho

Bills Produce Store

44 Brewer St

Soho

W1F 9TB

020 7287 8712

www.bills-website.co.uk

by Malcolm Eggs

What was that old saying again? "If Mohammed will not go to the mountain..." For years I'd been hearing about a place in Lewes called Bill's. People said it was the capital of breakfast for the entire south coast. In 2006, an LRB agent paid a visit and reported good things. But I have still never been to Lewes.

They opened a branch in Brighton and I didn't go there either. Then they opened five in London, one in Cambridge and another in Cardiff. They were spreading, and eventually the path of least resistance led directly through their door.

There is a pattern to these things. A restaurant becomes popular, so the restaurant owner opens more branches. Muttering commences, and the restaurant becomes less popular. There is a certain tone of voice used when people say of an old favourite "it's a chain these days" and all of the rumours that had reached me about Bill's Soho, Bill's Islington or Bill's Covent Garden had been muted and a little sniffy. There was a sense of betrayal. What was Bill's doing in London? It's a Sussex place.

But my Bill's Breakfast (£7.95) was excellent. The sausage element was two herby miniatures, formed from very finely ground meat (first bite mind-response: 'hmm do I like this? Yes, I do'). The bacon was streaky and had been cooked by one of those people who know about the existence of the zone between fatty wetness and brittle dryness. The fried eggs were perfect. The tomatoes had not been shoved in the grill at the last minute and served barely lukewarm, but slow-roasted by someone who cares about the medium-term future. The mushrooms needed salt, but that was on the table.

As for the flat white, well, that was only OK. But while the coffee round the corner at Fernandez and Wells is better perhaps I'd come here for coffee meetings: the room is huge, so you'll never have to stand around awkwardly nibbling on a pastel de nata and gently glaring at a woman reading Slate on a tablet device. The chairs were comfortable, the wooden tables were homely, the service was efficient and the wifi was free. Tinsel and dried tomatoes hung from the ceiling. There was a pootle of music in the background but my dining companion and I could hear each other speak.

I am glad that Bill's has come to London and I am glad I have never been to the original so I don't have to grumble about how much better it is. I shall also look forward to visiting the London Kremlin, the London State Building and the London Sphinx.

Another saying, this time from Morocco: "better a handful of dried dates and content therewith than to own the Gate of Peacocks and be kicked in the eye by a broody camel." I have never been able to work out what the hell this means, but I am sure it has never been more relevant.

Special US dispatch: Republican Party Pancake Breakfast, Brunswick, Ohio

Republican Party Pancake Breakfast

Medina Mapleside Farms
294 Pearl Road
Brunswick
Ohio 44212
USA
www.gop.com

In which The London Review of Breakfasts officially endorses a candidate for the next President of the United States of America

by T.N. Toost

The weather that day was sunny and pleasant and warm. My breakfast companion, Rose, came over and we got on the motorway, and 45 minutes later we were climbing up a hill into blackness.

"Do you see that?" she asked. Around us was bright sun, but straight ahead of us looked like Mordor, and under the storm clouds you could see the atmospheric disturbance that indicated rain.

"This is such an omen," she said.

Sure enough, the center of the very real storm was the Brunswick field in which we were to have breakfast with Mitt Romney in the first and only of the London Review of Breakfasts' 'Breakfast with the Candidates'. We parked and, trying to stay dry, walked arm-in-arm under an umbrella to the entrance, where your correspondent was given a cursory pat-down by the Secret Service and waved in with a smile. "Thank you, Mr. Toost," the greeter said, and, to see what it was to be normal Americans, we then sat down amongst the masses at long, wet folding tables.

The talk around us was, of course, about politics. "Socialist" was tossed around like a baseball, as was "Un-American," "Kenya," "Fascist," and, most commonly, "scary."

Rose couldn't help herself: "What the fuck are they talking about? Do they honestly believe this shit?" It provided me the perfect opportunity to kiss her in the name of our personal safety, a strategy I commend to all men.

****

The announcement came over the loudspeaker: please form lines for pancakes. People moved like automatons into position, snaking around the perimeter. We joined. We waited. Blonde children played in puddles while their parents talked with friends. Smiling youths waited behind stainless steel serving trays, each holding stainless steel tongs, and deposited two pancakes on each of our plates. Then we were directed to other tables, with weak coffee, reconstituted orange juice, butter, sugar syrup and nothing else.

That was the kind of breakfast the Republican party provided for your correspondent. Not even a sad rasher of bacon.

The pancakes themselves were abysmal - so dry, mealy and flavorless that the syrup was sucked in like droplets of water in the Saharan sands and the butter sat cloyingly on top, not even having the decency to melt. The coffee and the orange juice were little more than flavored water, just at different temperatures. Around us, people seemed annoyed, but focused - they weren't there to eat so much as to be angry together.

****

The speakers were not eloquent. They were not engaging. They were bitterly angry, and unashamedly racist, and they gave voice to the masses, who answered their rallying cries with guttural, simian moans. Joshua Mandel, a particularly malodorous career politician now running for the Senate, was representative of their ilk - a stump speech wherein he claimed simultaneously to be an independent political outsider, yet fiercely and consistently loyal to the Republican Party; to be a Washington outsider going for one of the plushest Washington jobs next to Supreme Court justice; to be a political neophyte running on his experience. Unsurprisingly, his blatant hypocrisy was missed by the crowd. Just days earlier, he had adopted a false Southern accent in his speeches in order to sound more country and not like the product of a wealthy suburban family, and it was on full display here.

Apocalyptic gusts of rain and wind washed over the crowd, Romney was late, and even the politicians had run out of things to say. Children cowered under the tables while their parents, deprived of a central figure on stage, ceased their baying and waited anxiously. An emcee urged the crowd to be patient, as the campaign bus was almost with us, and then the microphones fell silent. Grumbling spread, but not against the candidate - against the weather, against the Democrats, and against comrade Obama for causing it to rain as part of his master plan to destroy the country.

Finally, Rose could not take it anymore. We left. On the way out, one of the secret service guards looked at us with what I thought was a touch of envy. He, performing his duty, was stuck to his post whereas we were free to escape for something better. He had to stay and listen to the drivel, the lies and the false promises and trickery of the Grand Old Party, whereas we could escape. The most he could hope for would be cold, dry pancakes, whereas we were free to find better fare elsewhere.

And, my dear friends, if you are able to vote in the American election next week, we urge you to do better than breakfast with, or vote for, the Republican party.

Since at least 2008, Americans have relied on the London Review of Breakfasts to make important political decisions for them based on which party would best preserve and provide breakfast in their great nation. It is for this reason that we have decided to endorse President Barack Obama for a second term. As we have seen firsthand, the Republican idea of breakfast does not comport with the grandness of the American dream and vision. We were promised a hearty breakfast and were instead given nothing but lukewarm batter and watered-down beverages. Their idea of breakfast has no room for meats, for eggs, for fresh juice or decent coffee, much less a nice cup of tea. Their idea of breakfast is hard tack, and they expect that you will enjoy it and appreciate it. They talk a nice talk, but the reality of their breakfast policies stands in stark contrast to their rhetoric.

This is not enough for these United States. Reagan famously said that it was morning in America, and here at the London Review of Breakfasts, when it is morning anywhere in the world we demand breakfast - and not just breakfast but a better breakfast. Obama, while nowhere near perfect, inherited a floundering economy and an unstable geopolitical atmosphere wherein many people were unable to provide even cereal for their families. While his record is inconsistent, he has at least shown that he can get a better breakfast on more tables than his opposition. For that he deserves a second term.

Special dispatch: The Garden Restaurant, Mayford, Surrey

The Garden Restaurant
Woking Garden Centre
Egley Rd
Mayford
Surrey GU22 0NH
01483 714861
www.thegardencentregroup.co.uk

by Emmanuel Petit-Déjeuner

“Dear Gardeners World, I have a leylandii hedge along the north boundary of my garden. I dislike leylandii as I find it boring (and I'm allergic to it!). There are too many to dig out, and due to the terraced nature of my garden, I can't grind or pull the stumps out. The hedge is about 5m long with about 18 leylandii (planted about 30cm apart). The hedge is currently about 1.5m high. As it's a northern boundary, I want to have something to protect from wind etc, and a panel fence wouldn't suit the rest of the garden. I was considering trimming all the branches and some of the top of each leylandii to leave bare stumps of about 1m-ish tall. I then wanted to plant or transplant other plants in-between the stumps. I have 2 buddleia and 2 ceanothus that need relocating. Have you any other suggestions? 

Thank you!

KittyC”


Well Kitty, the first thing I would advise would be to visit the Woking Garden Centre, where they have a fantastic selection of climbers such as Clematis Montana which could easily spread if you enrich the soil with manure or compost first.

While you’re there, if you’ve got a mo (not a fly-mo though!) you could also consider forking up (!) some breakfast from the fortuitously-named Garden Restaurant. Park up your wheelbarrow, kick off your Hunters and dig in (!) to the Great British Light Breakfast – it’s guaranteed not to be pot luck! – and dilute with one very small heat-resistant watering can full of Rainforest Alliance or Tregothnan botanical tea…the Camelia sinensis in particular is a real grower!

In the winter months, you’ll be wanting to provide hardier nourishment to keep out the cold, so turn over a new leaf (!) with the Hearty Breakfast, wherein Freedom Food bacon and sausages, organic ciabatta and free-range eggs all mulch together nicely!

Now, Kitty: if your garden is anything like mine, things get unruly pretty quickly and it takes a real effort to keep your borders and bushes tidy, if you catch my drift… so have a look on the noticeboard and see if you can’t rustle up a good solid local professional who can come round and give you a good strimming. Are we still talking about gardening? I don’t mow know!!!

Made in Camden, Chalk Farm

Made in Camden
The Roundhouse
Chalk Farm Road
Chalk Farm NW1 8EH
020 7424 8495
www.madeincamden.com

by Poppy Tartt

It’s four years since I wrote a breakfast review. But it’s not four years since I ate breakfast, thankfully, and I have continued to form opinions of my breakfasts, albeit privately. Welcome to the site of my first public breakfast opinion in four years. The venue is Made in Camden, the Roundhouse’s mysteriously underperforming eaterie. The location is promising. The food is good. In fact, this is my fifth visit. But perhaps there’s something wrong with me, because nobody else seems convinced. The restaurant is often barely a quarter full, great big airport lounge of a space that it is. This may be because working out how to gain access is unusually challenging, especially the morning after the etc. (Look for the strangely inconspicuous three-metre-wide door to the right of the frontage.) It’s almost as if the architect were briefed to design a room large enough to accommodate everybody who’s ever been to the Roundhouse (and a door that could admit ten of these people abreast). I’m only exaggerating slightly.

But let me tell you about the food. I always order the fritters – previously sweetcorn, now a chickpea/courgette composition – served with bacon, avocado, sour cream, chilli jam and salad leaves. Once a diehard opponent of salad-at-breakfast, I have made a frenemy of my foe. I cannot speak more highly of this dish, hence why I have never ventured to order anything else. In my old age I hanker after the avocado and the chickpea like a vegan Antipodean. My companions’ plates bear testimony to the sparkling menu: pomegranate seeds in the shakshuka, beetroot leaves in the salad. It’s colourful, more so than the venue, despite the hip retro event posters papering the scene. Something is missing, restaurant-makers. It’s atmosphere.

There is another, more troubling element: the tea. The brand is Tea Pigs, faux-artisanal tea de rigueur, which comes in gossamer pouches known by the company as, yes, tea temples. Okay, it’s a flavoursome tea. But tea should be hot and in Made in Camden it is merely tepid, urged quickly towards cold by the heat-conducting cast-iron teapots in which it is served. The lack of hot tea hurts me, especially in this bus depot of a room. But I do enjoy those fritters.

Carluccio's, Marylebone

Carluccio's
St. Christopher's Place
Marylebone
W1U 1AY
www.carluccios.com

by Emmanuel Petit-Déjeuner

KLANG!!!

"Sorry?"

"Oh, I was just saying the breakfast in here is quite..."

KLANG!!!

"...actually. OK, they've dressed up eggs and bacon and toast in 84 different non-inflected Indo- European dialects...but the eggs are buttery and the mushrooms Briatore-rich, the pastries crumple obligingly and the pancetta is as salty as an anchovy's..."

KLANG!!!

"...and just as crispy. And you've got to admit, the Colazione Magnifica sounds a million times more awesome than its maiden name the Full Italian. Add to that regal prosciutto, bitchin' Bicerin and the Rubenesque splendour of the deli counter, and really the only thing crashing the party is the terrible..."

KLANG!!!

"The what now?"

"THE ACOUSTICS, MAN, THE ACOUSTICS! I mean, who's their barista - Michael J..." 

KLANG!!!

Brazas Restaurant, Brixton

Brazas Restaurant
45 Tulse Hill
Brixton
SW2 2TJ
020 8678 0697
www.brazas.co.uk

by Egg Miliband

Down the back of Brazas, thick louvres block out the sunlight. I am here with my usual breakfast companion Ivan, and my brother Frank and his two-year-old daughter Ngaire. In the dimness, the four of us sit at our table like moths in a wardrobe.

The menu is hearty but rather solemn. There’s the Full, the Mini, the Omelette with French Fries and the Breakfast Bagel. But the ‘vegetarian sausage’ option on the Veggie Breakfast has been blacked out! There’s something jokey and jolly about the vegetarian sausage option – it is the definition of ‘silly sausage’ – and I’m always cheered to see it on offer. So I order my old friend, scrambled eggs on toast. Frank is second-breakfasting, so he orders the ‘dessert breakfast’: pancakes. Ivan orders a bagel. Ngaire has an orange juice, to which she adds the crushed petals of a flower she picked earlier.

At this point, review etiquette demands that I mention the cakes. When you enter Brazas, the first thing you see is a display cabinet festooning with fancy cakes and meringues in full bloom. One reviewer reports that a gateaux made her ‘cry with delight’. My cake-mentioning duty is now fulfilled. What of the breakfast?

A friendly waiter in a neon shirt delivers our meals, two of which look bouquet-fresh – the pancakes piled high with banana and blueberries, the bagel a riot of poached egg, bacon, and mushrooms – but my scrambled eggs seem reluctant to be eaten. The toast is basic multigrain, unbuttered, with one slice forming a central stage for the eggs and two triangles acting as the wings. Sourdough would’ve been more stylish, a hand-cut pat of butter more flirtatious. But as it turns out, the only thing that has let me down is my scrambled-egg snobbery. These are fine, upstanding eggs. This is a meal my grandparents would’ve tucked into while reading the paper together. ‘Nothing wrong with those hens,’ they would’ve said approvingly. Then they would've opened the window to let some sun in, but never mind.
Despite the ‘strange toughness’ of his pancakes, Frank leaves a shining plate and declares it good. Ivan hasn’t said anything about his poached-egg-and-bacon bagel, but he eats it rapidly, with keen focus, and in the future, he will talk with nostalgia of the bacon.

Just down the road from Brazas is a takeaway called The Olympic Kebab. I hope this attracted thousands of tourists during the Olympics, some of whom, nonplussed, wandered down to Brazas.

The Russet, Hackney Downs

The Russet
Hackney Downs Studios
Amhurst Road
Hackney Downs
E8 2BT
0203 095 9731
therusset.wordpress.com

by Stephen Fry-Up

I met a traveller from an organic land
Who said: Two vast and yolky eggs of duck
Stand on a crumpet. Near them, on the plate,
Half dunked, a buttered liquid lies, whose flow,
And acidic nip – a smear of Sauce Hollande –
Tell that its maker well those passions read
Which yet survive, ladled on these flawless things,
The hand that sourced them and the heart that fed.
And from the crumpet these words I hear:
“My name is new season Asparagus, king of kings.
Look on my stalks, ye Hungry, and devour!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the crumbs
Of that colossal Brek, boundless and fair
The lone and level Downs stretch far away.