Special Dispatch: Breakfast in Yangon

by Daw Aung San Mue Sli

Most shop-bought food in Myanmar is consumed sitting on tiny plastic stools of the sort you might find in a kindergarten. They come with both backs and no-backs, and in numerous colours though sun-bleached red and blue are favourites, usually with matching tiny tables. I have seen many of these stools stapled back together where a particularly heavy customer has flattened one. Such fixing is proudly described as doing it ‘Bamar-lo’, the Burmese way of getting around even the most arduous junta-imposed restrictions. These stools are not limited to teashops and rice shops, they can also be handily brought out to seat passengers sitting in the aisle of a bus. Myanmar's people may be small and stunted through years of malnutrition but their knees almost reach their ears when they sit on them too. They are quite small.

Not necessarily the most comfortable position in which to digest breakfast.

But dear reader, the breakfasts are worth it even if you have to eat them folded up. The greatest of all breakfast food in Yangon (and many other parts of the country) is mohinga. Your mohinga server unthreads a handful of fresh noodles from the clump of noodles in the display case, dumps them in a bowl, and spoons over them a grey-brown coloured fish broth out of a big tin tureen. It’s optional to add a boiled duck egg, or broken up bits of fried corn wafer, or fried gourd, or a few other fried items. This dish [there's a recipe at meemalee.com] is then brought to your plastic table where you can add a squeeze of lime, a pinch of fresh coriander from a little tin bowl, a spoonful of dried chilli.

Tin Tin Aye mohinga shop on the roadside in Yankin Township (and 4 other locations in Yangon) produces the richest, fishiest broth (if you prefer it thinner, you are better off at Myaung Mya Daw Cho). Tin Tin Aye’s broth is made in a factory somewhere in Okkalapa, an old kingdom of Myanmar on the outskirts of Yangon. Apparently it tastes so good because of the special salt that they bring from the seaside resort of Ngapali, but it could also be the MSG, which adds a special zing to most breakfast options in the Golden Land.

Hackney Bureau, Hackney

Hackney Bureau
3 Mare St
Hackney
E8 4RP
020 8533 6083
www.hackneybureau.com

by Typhoo Mary

I mooched my way to brunch, the first time in Hackney for four years, beyond the beginning of the Saturday kerfuffle of Broadway Market, arriving at the Bureau in a slightly detached frame of mind.

There were chilled beats and big bay windows, allowing one to gaze out at the multitudes of white vans roaring past on a soggy Mare Street. There was a lot of light wood: cork floors, mixed and matched tables and chairs with an open plan kitchen. Above my head, it looked like someone had pulled the ceiling down and thought – bare boards, bare lightbulbs, concrete I-beams, protruding nails and visible trap doors – that looks GREAT, let’s just leave it like that. If Rachel Whiteread visited, she’d embalm it all in resin.

I thought that for my first LRB review, I should go traditional with a full English (£8.50). I decided on poached eggs, and there was not a flicker of disapproval when I asked for fried tomato rather than black pudding. The veggy option, £7.50 had also looked tempting, with mashed up avocado and sourdough bread. Another option, truffled mushrooms, had also appealed, although the mention of rocket should have been a warning for what was to come.

The French chef bore more than a passing resemblance to Matt the Horn from the Blues Brothers sans hair net and saxophone. The waitress made a comment about the distance to her art studio. A father and his sons came in silently, in football strips, presumably from a Vicky Park practice. The boys looked miserable. Perhaps their team had lost. Perhaps their dad was the coach. He looked stern as he barked at them as to whether they wanted bacon rolls. Which were not on the chalk board menu… Regulars then? A small child gleefully was sat in the window pulling a huge croissant into piles of decorative crumbs. His beatific American mother carefully sipped her soy latte.

The counter groaned under a huge pile of pastries. I am always suspicious when there are so many cakes – are they fresh is my question… But I suspect one of my usual companions to brunch, Edwardian Man, would have been pleased at the breadth of selection. But he was in Russia with his lady, so he’ll have to wait.

Artist/Waitress cheerfully delivered my breakfast. The poached eggs looked perfect, the tomatoes golden, the bacon crispy, and although the sausage was cut in two to be fried flat on a hotplate (not aesthetically pleasing please note chefs – it indicates a need-for-speed over traditional means) it looked home-made or at least well-sourced so I was pacified. The baked beans were home-made, carrots and beetroot ahoy, and were DELICIOUS. (I first came across baked beans with veg in my stalwart Little Georgia, and these beans could give them a run for their money). The bread was glorious. But hold on, wait a moment, what’s this… Oh dear god. SALAD? Salad with DRESSING?

Like vampire films, brunch will always have its variety on the core themes – different riffs on bread, bacon, black pudding, baked beans, but never in my life have I seen a full English with a handful of salad garnish. Dressed garnish no less. These were jolly leaves, and they looked like they were dressed well – but in my book the only thing green on a brunch platter should be wilted spinach with eggs Florentine. Et c’est TOUT! Edwardian Man would have sniffed. I, in turn, did not touch the jolly salad.

I had a second coffee, which was much better than the first, and a teeny blueberry friand from the mound of cakes. It was fresh. It was delicious. It gave me that brunch pudding hit I love.

A bevy of men came in. They all looked French. Some ordered coffee. Their arrival had pushed back the rain, and when I left, the sun had come out on Mare Street.

Breakfast in America: Barney Greengrass, New York

Barney Greengrass
541 Amsterdam Avenue at 86th Street
New York, NY 10024
USA
+1 212 724 4707
www.barneygreengrass.com

by Pam O'Raisin

I wasn’t going for the lox, nor the sturgeon for which Barney Greengrass is famous: even though this is the self-proclaimed “Sturgeon King”. And whitefish salad I prefer to keep for after noon, thanks. No, this breakfast was all about the blintz. I’ve had them at Katz’s, the vast portion enough to feed a small family for about a week. I’ve had them at Veselka, in the East Village, radically folded around the sweet cheese filling in a delicate triangle.

But I was still in search of the best: so the Upper West Side, and Barney Greengrass it had to be. On one side, a deli and takeaway, counters piled with bagels and rugelach and black and white cookies, huge trays of smoked fish.

On the other side, a crush of Formica tables, all packed with noisy families and kvetching Jewish men, even at ten thirty on a weekday morning. I didn’t need the laminated menu.

“I’ll take the cheese blintzes, no sour cream, but maple syrup on the side.” The waiter’s eyes narrowed. I was tampering with the proper order of things. Would it be allowed?

The blintzes arrived, three plump parcels of pancake, briefly fried in butter, the sweet cheese filling oozing out as I cut into them, drizzled in maple sweetness. This was my perfect Manhattan breakfast – almost.

More heresy was to come as I accessorised the blintzes with my own pack of raisins. The waiter caught sight of my plate.

“Raisins, huh?”

I held my nerve. “Yes, actually. They’re delicious.”

As he took my empty plate, later, scraped clean of telltale syrup and dried fruit, I caught sight of a wink.

“Raisins!”

He was still smiling when I left.

Frank's Café, Southwark

Frank’s Café

132 Southwark Street

Southwark

SE1 0SW

0207 928 3850

Mon – Fri 6.30-3.30

by Evelyn Waughffle

Do you believe in love at first sight? What about love at first breakfast? 

A few months ago at a friend’s wedding I felt that irresistible tug towards another person that is a little like falling over and a little like being gripped about the kidneys by an invisible fist. He was flailing somewhere in the middle of the reception with what looked like a handheld mixer. I was at the edge of the room with a paper plate full of potato salad. Was it his helplessness that drew me to him? His evident laissez-fair attitude to the wrapping of wedding presents? Or was it his coal eyes and crumpled black suit? Whatever it was I longed to be near him. I tried to follow his progress while making small talk and spearing resistant cherry tomatoes onto my fork but lost him somewhere between the disobedient crudité and a story about the bride’s due date (imminent). Moments later he was in front of me, asking if there was room on my bench for one more. I said there was, shuffled along awkwardly, and then wracked my brains for a suitable opener, something that would convey to him our shared fate, our comingled destiny, our blended reasons for being. I found myself looking into his eyes and asking instead, “Do you have a favourite greasy spoon?”.

We talked for a while and in the confusion of toasts, tears and cake were separated. I was kicking myself for being so inane when suddenly he was beside me again, a dark figure in the awkward mill of friends and relatives that had accumulated in the space between the tables and chairs. The band began to play. As the conga line started I felt him put his hands around my waist and tried not to fall over. 

That was three months ago now and I would have forgotten all about the mysterious stranger from the conga line had I not chanced to walk past the café he had recommended during our fleeting (too fleeting!) moments of conversation. What would I discover about him there? Not to be confused with Peckham’s gentrified car park rooftop bar, this café remembers when Campari was as cool as, well, your mother. With an unprepossessing façade, plastic lettering that doesn’t quite achieve nostalgia, and food photographs that look to have been boiled before they were stuck to the window, you would be forgiven for walking straight past this humble humdrum haven. But reader, Franks is the place the proverbial book and cover were coined for. It is an exquisite greasy spoon. If these things do it for you then prepare to be seduced.

As soon as you enter you are greeted by two countermen who take your order. Behind them, ’spoon essentials cram themselves into view; epic constructions which have more in common with ancient sites of worship than kitchen ingredients. Stacks of bread teetering like plaster columns, pyramids of butter pats and a vast totem of a peanut butter pot which demands submission from the tea bags that surround it. Along the walls hang framed pictures of sporting heroes, a collage made for ‘the world’s best Dad’ and several shots of a variety of people holding up an implausibly large fish. I felt myself go weak at the knees.

Even ordering was a joy. The man behind the till performed an acrobatic ritual combining money taking and coffee pouring that was the most dexterous thing I have ever seen at such close quarters. He whisked away my note and threw it down on top of his till whilst frothing milk in a small white cup with his other hand. Between filling the cup with coffee from a great silver drum and placing it onto a saucer he had somehow also scooped the note into the till and fished out my change. He handed me coins and cup with a flourish and, after admonishing another customer for swearing in a lady’s presence, told me to sit down. 

I sat down obediently in a booth next to the kitchen hatch. Lists of ingredients were shouted out when ready. Delicately tuned combinations like, “Fanta, chips, lasagna!” “Sausage, chips, beans!” and “Double scrambled eggs on brown toast!” The words were like music to my ears, a song sung which only I could hear. Is this what love feels like? My breakfast arrived in a three-slice stack which glistened pleasingly. It was thinly sliced bread of good quality (crisply crusted but forgiving in the middle) and generously spread with crunchy peanut butter. The coffee was too hot to taste and somewhat overwhelmed by bathwateresque foam. I followed it up with a black one which was thick and bitter (much better). 

As I sat in the booth, enjoying my second coffee and the clatter of crockery, I could not help but think about what might have been. A man who knows how to breakfast is hard to find. Could it be that he is sitting somewhere, above a fried egg sandwich, dreaming of me?

We’ll always have the conga line. 

Op-Egg: Pro tips for a good business breakfast

by T. N. Toost

There was a recent article in Forbes by an attorney named, curiously, Judge, that discussed the advantages of breakfast for business. It was an article worthy of Forbes. She told stories about breakfast, and how she was in a big city in the States and learned how to eat breakfast and do business at the same time, and oh! when she came to London it was such a foreign concept to the peasants! and she discovered The Wolseley before it was popular, and now it's popular, so she goes to The Lanesborough, but it might be a bit expensive for you, and it has a lot of tourists so it is good for business!  

Sigh, sigh, sigh.

It is nice to see a rag like Forbes getting into the breakfast game. Maybe they're trying to diversify their income stream or something. Of course, any regular reader of the LRB can tell that they have a lot to learn, but they have to start somewhere, don't they? At least she brings a lawyer's attention to detail to her observations.

While she touches on some of the virtues of a business breakfast, she doesn't really get into the finer points of how to pull one off. Instead, if one were to read this piece carefully, one would learn:

1) She started in the business breakfast world by being nice to the maitre'd;

2) Breakfast is generally cheaper than lunch or dinner, and she does not drink as much;

3) Lawyer Judge quotes herself;

4) She can laugh if she makes a joke about breakfast, because it's funny;

5) She won't pay £15 for a cup of coffee, even if it comes with breakfast;

6) She will deny it, but among some people, her opinion of breakfast restaurants is rated very highly indeed;

7) She likes to have breakfast where there are important people like her around; 

8) She can't hear very well;

9) WTF is that picture? Don't tell me she chose it for herself? For God's sake, don't these Americans have any taste?  

Now, I've similarly had a "lifetime of breaking bread with clients," even if my lifetime has been much shorter than hers, and not nearly as tied to the rise of atomic energy. Regardless, here, mes amis, are some pro tips that you can use to have a good business breakfast:

1) Keep it to a reasonable hour, and leave when you have to. Don't be shy about cutting it short in the name of D-U-T-Y.  

2) Scope the place out beforehand, and figure out where the restaurant has its clocks. You want to sit where you can see a clock so that you don't have to rudely glance at your watch when you think you might have to leave.  

3) Become a regular at a place. In fact, become a regular at a few very good places, and offer to meet clients at a place convenient for them. They think that they have the home court advantage, but you should have already left several healthy tips for the waitress, who will remember how you like your eggs.  

4) If you can't be a regular at a place, at least get there a few minutes earlier than your breakfast companion. Review the menu and choose what you will order. If they know what they want when they arrive, it puts you on equal footing; if they have to scan the menu, it gives you an upper edge.  

Order coffee early and put a discreet amount of sugar in it. Opt for brown crystals over white, of course; hell, if they have pieces of raw cane on the table, use that. Just get a small amount of it in your system early so that you can regulate your blood sugar. If your dining partner decides not to poison his veins with that tropical filth, laugh inwardly at him, knowing that your brain will be working faster, faster.  

5) If you're at your regular spot, order the same thing every time. There's no need to make it the healthiest thing on the menu, but don't order the Fullest English in England. Tweak it in some way - get the eggs shirred, or over easy on the potatoes so you can pierce the yolks, or ask for Sriracha (actually, always ask for Sriracha). Do one thing different so that not only does the waitress remember, but your partner will notice how particular and exacting you are.  

6) Tip well.  

7) Bring paper. Sketch things out with a pen. Breakfast time is no time for tablets, and certainly not a time for your partner to stare at the back of a screen.  

8) Bring a newspaper so that, if you have to wait, you can be productive.  

9) Do not use your phone at all, especially if you're waiting for the other person. Use the moments for reflection and thought and preparing for the day. Or read the paper.  

10) Come with a goal. If you know what you want, clearly, you're more likely to get it from your companion. People are very agreeable at breakfast, all things considered.  

11) Leave with action items that you can email around immediately upon arriving at the office.  

12) If you are not independently wealthy, make sure you tell people what you just did at the office, and get them in on it. "Hey Gary!  I just had breakfast with Lady Judge.  No, she doesn't look like that picture at all. I know, I know. Yeah. Well it's confusing, but she's American. Oh, no discretion at all, mate. Or style. Well listen: we should invest in atomic energy, it's about to blow up. No, no pun intended. Yeah. Well, she's going to send me a spreadsheet of the companies that they're going to contract with so I can move money into the right accounts. Yeah. OK then, ta."

13) As long as your breakfast partner doesn't have a hearing problem, go somewhere moderately loud. The advantage is that it forces you to lean in, forcing intimacy and a sense of camaraderie.  What's more important than anything is the table size; you want to be close yet have a wide surface on which to write and sketch and doodle.  

14) Do not order kippers. In fact, don't order anything that requires any thought or special effort whatsoever to consume. Don't distract yourself; eat something simple and relatively healthy and focus on what you want out of the business, not the breakfast. I once had breakfast with Malcolm Eggs, and we both ordered kippers, and were silent for almost a whole minute. Then we had a bottle of champagne, had a good laugh, became close friends and got on with our business in the allocated hour. On our subsequent meetings during my trips to London we always had breakfast like that.

Special Dispatch: The Breakfasts of Portland

By Grits Lang

You might have heard: Portland, Oregon is kind of a Thing right now. Things, in my humble opinion, always warrant eye-rolling mockery. I, however, am a third-generation Portland native, and being a proper Portland hipster, can say without sarcasm that I was here before it was cool. As a native, I have a love-hate relationship with the television program Portlandia. Portland natives mostly just hate it when Portlandia is accurate, and that show is very accurate about one thing: Portlanders are completely stupid for breakfast.

In Portland, foods that, anywhere else in the United States would be eaten only by farmers and the working poor, warrant an hour-long wait and $20. True, there are things like marionberry-studded pancakes with honey from neighborhood bees, and cold-smoked fish wrested from local waters. These things are not at all a cliché, and are, in fact, delicious and worth every inconvenience; these are examples of Portland doing things properly. But for the most part, everywhere you go, you’re beaten over the head with foods invented to sustain lumberjacks and other beardymen. I don’t even have to mention any specific establishment, because no matter where you go, this is what you’re offered:

1) Biscuits and gravy. Seriously, I can’t think of any restaurants that don’t have B&G on the menu. Due to the overall drear of our climate (and a populace overwhelmingly originating from drier states) Portland is in the middle of a long, sordid love affair with gravy. High-end places have their versions using sausage made in-house from hazelnut-fed pigs; dives have theirs served with gravy from an industrial food service drum. Even vegan places have their own almond milk versions, just as savory and delectable as library paste. Biscuits and gravy are more ubiquitous than bacon and eggs.

2) Fried chicken and waffles. This combo dates back to the 1800s in cookbooks from the South, which is an instant formula for success in Stumptown. Take a waffle, put a bird on it, and then douse the whole thing in honey or maple syrup. This sweet/savory flavor profile is ideal for our city, since Portlanders are prone to smoke crippling amounts of marijuana.

3) Strange amalgams of fried chicken/biscuits and gravy. One place serves this beautiful chimera under the name “The Reggie”: fried chicken, bacon and cheese on a buttermilk biscuit, topped with gravy. Some genius thought to himself one day, “Let’s just take all of the things and put them together on the same biscuit. Oh, what the hell: Gravy.” Jealous? Well, take heart. Your friendly neighborhood breakfast joint is just one wake-and-bake away from its own Reggie.

4) Grits. Seriously, what is this, Louisiana? Restaurants don’t even bother calling it ‘polenta’ anymore. Grits sounds folksy and rustic, and Portland, with its penchant for pairing flannel with expensive spectacles, is all about being rugged, or at least the illusion of it.

5) Shit with bacon on it. Shit with kale on it. Bacony kale on grits with a fried or poached egg on top. (Disclaimer: I will admit that I have been known to make grits and put greens, gravy and fried eggs on top. Completely sober!) Speaking of fried or poached eggs,

6) Things that are hashed and have fried or poached eggs on top. I think it goes without saying that the yolk must be runny. Yolks are nature’s gravy, and Portland loves gravy! Pork shoulder, duck confit, beef brisket; all are fair game for shredding and frying with root vegetables. Being in the Great Northwest means there are several places to get a good smoked trout or salmon hash, but the hash scene is justly dominated by meat. But hey, some places offer vegan hash, and they don’t even get laughed out of town.

7) Ridiculous Bloody Marys with like, fifty different house-made, artisanal pickles on top of the glass (Portlandia also got the “we can pickle that” thing embarrassingly correct). One place I frequent even includes a pickled, hard-boiled egg on the same skewer as spicy asparagus, lactofermented pearl onions and a cube of house-cured pork belly. With bacon and eggs in your morning cocktail, do you even need to look at the menu?

I guess I should be thankful that the worst thing about my hometown is that the food scene is a parody of itself. It sure as hell beats living in Darfur. If your heart yearns for handcrafted foods created by aggressively handsome people who take pride in their craft— in everything from growing baby heirloom turnips to slinging shade-grown, fair-trade espresso— then please, come to the gastronomic wonderland that is Portland. And while you’re waiting in some line— some god-forsaken, Communist Russia-length breakfast line, remember that there is probably a really decent plate of pancakes at the completely empty café across the street.

Grits Lang is the alter-eggo of Heather Arndt Anderson, author of Breakfast: A History.

Breakfast in America: Buehler's Grocery Store, Ashland, Ohio

Buehler's Grocery Store
Ashland
1055 Sugarbush Dr.
Ashland, Ohio 44805
+1 (419) 282-9800
www.buehlers.com

by T. N. Toost

Ahead, on the side of the road, something rose up out of the pavement. It swayed, serpentine, and at first I thought it was a palm tree, then realized it was an unusually thick cobra coming out of a furry body, with a deer head at the end, a cobra with a deer head and a deer nose straight up in the air, the tongue protruding even further up, the mouth opened, gasping. The neck whipped back and forth, the head shooting left, then right. Then, with a final, graceful curve, it collapsed onto the road, vertebra by vertebra, until, in slow, peaceful motion, the head settled on the ground, not even bouncing. This happened in two, maybe three seconds, and I muttered, "Holy shit that's a fucking deer," as I passed by its newly lifeless form.

I realized that it must have been screaming, as a deer screams, and in pain, and scared. It may have been warning another deer of danger, or lamenting its own demise. Two hundred yards down the road, a black Volkswagen with temporary license plates was pulled over to the side. A woman in the driver's seat was rigid, with her mouth open, just like the doe's, and, from the bubble of my passing car, just as silent. If I hadn't have pulled into a rest stop to search for a breakfast spot nearby, we could easily have been in different positions.

Five minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot of Buehler's. It was nearly deserted, save for a man sorting large racks of plants for sale. The restaurant, however, was moderately busy - several full tables, and a guy who looked like he was getting off of the night shift was sitting at the counter. I joined him. The waitress seemed artificially pleasant in the American manner, but was nice enough, and brought my egg, bacon and cheese sandwich out in short order. It was delicious - the bacon was crispy, the egg puffed up well, and the cheese was American and oily and clung to everything. The fruit salad, while fairly standard, was at least an attempt at health, and the coffee was weak but pleasant. Five minutes later I was out the door, and the night shift man was chatting to the waitress. I wished them both well. She was pretty in the way a small town waitress might be pretty, making an effort to marry before even that is taken away from her.

And then it hit me. After our few words exchanged - the "have a nice day" crap - she went back to talking to the man at the counter. They had some business together. I looked back, and they looked conspiratorial, but not in a lover sense - in the sense that they had deep understandings that others would not understand just yet. They had secrets. What if American superficiality was actually a form of courtliness, a cover for deeper thoughts and ambitions?  What if it was a way for them to be pleasant to each others' faces as they planned to put daggers in each others' backs? What if their greatest feat was getting everyone in the world to think they were simple when, in reality, they were actually quite complex?

I looked back. The waitress guffawed unconvincingly at something her customer had said. Maybe she actually did have designs on him in which case he would be the fool and I realized I shouldn't project such grand abilities on such simple people.

Breakfasts and Beds: Seaham Hall Hotel, Sunderland

Seaham Hall Hotel

Lord Byron's Walk

Seaham

SR7 7AG

0191 516 1400

www.seaham-hall.co.uk

by Fleeter Noggins

If work takes you to Sunderland there are worse hotels in the region than this five star boutique hotel. Admittedly 'boutique' has in this, as in so many cases, come to indicate a keen yet amateur approach, more enthusiastic than stylish: pink track lighting behind repros of old masters, cocktails that the bar man has never had experience in mixing. But they mean well.

The staff are all smiles. They stand to attention and they do their very best, but like the interior décor it's all a bit amateur. What I will not complain about is the beds. The mattresses are thick, the sheets very fine and once you have learnt how to control the twenty button control panel of dimmers and air conditioning the rooms are pretty good too. I got the hang of this but my poor colleague could not silence the continuous whirring of his air conditioning. Neither could the desk clerk he phoned for help.

I regret to report that this well-meaning-but-amateur theme extends to breakfast. Any modest cook can manage hollandaise sauce and if you are offering it at breakfast you can make it in advance and store in a preheated wide neck thermos. Seaham Hall Cook! Here are some instructions for you: it's just like mayo only warm because you heat your lemon juice and vinegar and use melted butter instead of oil. It couldn’t be simpler. Put your eggs yolks in a blender, drip in the heated lemon and vinegar and then drip in your foamed and unburnt butter. It thickens like magic. It's beautiful. How can you, then, how can you serve, a full half an hour after I ordered it, a whipped egg, curdling with butter grease, with no thickness at all and no seasoning? Don’t put it on the menu if you can’t cook it. I had a train to catch otherwise I would have gone into the kitchen and given you a lesson.

The cafetiere coffee was faultless. God knows what it cost, I was on expenses. My colleague took care of it.

Special dispatch: Breakfast in Naples / Gran Caffè Gambrinus

Breakfast in Naples
(via Gran Caffè Gambrinus
Via Chiaia 1
Piazza Trieste e Trento
80132
Naples, Italy
+39 081 41 75 82
http://grancaffegambrinus.com/en

by Maggie Arto

It has been written in the LRB before that the Italians do not know how to have breakfast. Or don't have breakfast at all. Many a disappointing hotel table – featuring, for example, those small packets of dry toast biscuits, sugary yoghurt and an individual pod of jam – testifies to the fact that in Italy you might be better off waiting for the primi pasta and seconde of carne at lunch.* Which is sad, for where lunch feels functional, a punctual interruption to the tasks of the day, breakfast is hopeful: you begin half-there and end half-high. The transition from bleary-eyed to awake is a space not only where dreams linger, but where fresh ideas are made.

Alas, breakfast in Italy rarely summons reveries.

This noted, I'm here to write about the most essential Neapolitan morning ritual:  coffee. It is said, in some roundabout histories, that in 1901 a gentleman in Naples complained about the time that his coffee took to brew, that in response an engineer in Milan invented a faster method of coffee extraction – what we would come to know as the modern espresso machine.

Today in Naples, the expression of espresso occurs via hefty manual machines – still several models removed from this early prototype – whereby a large lever is pulled down to build up pressure, and as it is lifted, the shot starts to drip. At first caramel in colour – this is the coffee's surf, the oil-ish amalgam that will form the espresso's head – a chain of steady, small pearls soon become thin mice tails, which curve slightly inwards, then stop; for the Neapolitan espresso is nearly always more of a ristretto, and must be cut off before in any way dilute. Next there is the option of a macchiato dash of foam, or for the sweeter inclined, a spoonful of nocciola cream, which is dished out of an obscene-looking vat. If, and only if, you're drinking mid-morning or earlier, you may enjoy the svelte foam of a cappuccino.

Such is the espresso spectacle at the Gran Caffè Gambrinus, one of the prestigious nineteenth-century establishments in Naples' Vomero district. As is proper, it has a metres-wide machine and a solid zinc bar. There's also a marble-floored tearoom, should you wish to linger, a gelato bar and a pastry counter. If you must wedge your hunger, a slice of anything orange or lemon-scented is desirable given the proximity of Sorrentine citrus groves. Those who can stomach sweetened ricotta in the first part of the day could opt for sfogliatelle, a local confection of fine pastry leaves forming a clam-shaped shell, piped with candied fruit filling. Biscotti come sharded with almonds, sometimes in the shape of thorny crowns.

This same ritual may be observed in countless other corner cafés. Your espresso is served with a thin glass of effervescent water while you watch other shots delivered in plastic cups, on yellow trays with covers, to nearby households and businesses; a zip-fast, to-the-door service that seems, from the perspective of a waitress, overly generous, but also crucial to the functioning of an informal but highly caffeinated city. Waiting staff develop keen right angles between their upper arm and elbows, my favourite delivery sighting being macchiato-by-moped, one arm on the bars, one beneath the tray.

As I write this, over a slow home breakfast and a fast coffee take-out, I am grateful for the Milanese engineer's invention.

*I had once believed that the breakfast situation in Portugal could be similarly under-thought, but one of the best hotel breakfasts I have ever experienced was on a twenty-five degree morning in the Lisbon hills - the kind of early spread that requires much rearrangement of crockery: freshly baked madeira cake, wild strawberries and home-strained yoghurt, seedy bread drizzled with olive oil alongside sliced, glistening tomatoes and soft white cheese, delicate jasmine tea and a silver pot of coffee…

Breakfast and energy: an experiment

by Blake Pudding

Hypothesis:

From my vast experience of cereal eating I had noticed that Shreddies seem to keep me full of energy longer than most cereals. But was this really the case? I put the most popular brands of cereals through a rigorous scientific test so as to discern which contains the most energy. 

To liven things up a bit I added some non-cereals to the experiment. Who wants to just eat cereal for breakfast for two weeks?

Method:

At 8.10am every morning I ate breakfast.

At 8.40am I cycled to work from my home in Bethnal Green, East London to Holland Park, West London, a distance of 8.2 miles.

This normally took about 40 minutes. I then settled down to my working day and noted the exact time that I began to feel hungry again.

The control breakfast was 2 slices of brown toast (I opted for the nutty low GI loaf from Percy Ingle on Bethnal Green Road) with butter and marmalade.

Cereals tested: Corn Flakes, Bran Flakes, Weetabix, Shreddies, Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes, Sugar puffs, Coco Pops, Shredded Wheat and porridge.

Amount consumed: 50g of each cereal (a variety pack contains 25g of serial, which is not enough for a fully-grown adult) with 200ml of semi-skimmed milk.

On one of the days of the experiment my wife made me a sandwich consisting of two slices of toast as above with 2 fried eggs with a little cheese and some Red Rooster hot sauce. Mmmmmm, that was a good morning!

Apparatus:

Bowl 

Spoon

State-of-the-art circa 1989 14 speed racing bike with flat handlebars for city riding.

Results (in order of efficacy):

Sugar Puffs – 10.32am

Coco Pops – 10.40am

Corn flakes – 10.43am

Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes – 10.50am

Bran flakes – 11.06am

Shredded Wheat – 11.10am

Control – 11:20am

Weetabix – 11.21am

Shreddies – 11.38am

Porridge – 12.02pm

Double-fried egg sandwich (see above) – 12.37pm

Conclusions:

Shreddies are indeed good at filling one up. 

It is interesting to note how not very filling the best known brands are: Corn Flakes, Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes etc. After a bowl of one of these I was starving again very soon afterwards.

The best cereals were the stodgier ones such as Weetabix and Shredded Wheat.

The ‘fun’ sugary ones fared particularly badly.

The best cereal was the most traditional, porridge. With a bowl of porridge inside me, I worked without a rumble until well after noon and had a most productive day.

My control breakfast beat all the fun cereals and held its own with the stodgy ones.

The victor, however, by a long way was the least healthy breakfast: double-fried egg sandwich with cheese.

So tests prove that if you want to work without a break, you should have a big greasy sandwich before you leave home.