Lucky 7, Westbourne Green

Lucky 7

127 Westbourne Park Road
Westbourne Green
W2 5QL
0207 727 6771
www.lucky7london.co.uk

by Bee Loobury

After ranting to anyone in earshot on the subject of blueberry pancakes, in particular the lack of authentic blueberry pancakes (by that I mean what I know from my childhood in the Pacific northwest of America) in London, I have happily been appeased. All can rest easy now, or at least in peace and quiet.

Growing up in Seattle, the best part of the weekend was the Saturday breakfast outing to the Pancake Corral. Here I will fess up that in part my adoration of the blueberry pancake might stem from the co-mingling of delicious food with AN ENTIRE ROOM DEVOTED SOLELY TO AN INDOOR CAROUSEL, the magic of which never failed to astonish and delight my 3, 4 and 5 year old selves. Nonetheless, the pancakes held their own.

As way of a brief bit of background, that part of the United States is blueberry country. Blueberries are, or at least were, an important cash crop and culturally significant. There were blueberry fairs and in the late summer/early fall we would go blueberry picking: pail in hand. I remember the excitement at being told it would soon be blueberry season.

Granted, the patina of time may have rosied (or rather blued) up my relationship to the berry but that doesn’t detract from the fact of what comprises a proper blueberry pancake. Well a proper, and delectable, blueberry pancake is on offer at Lucky 7. Unlike at other Diner(s) that shall here remain nameless, a blueberry pancake is not a pancake topped with blueberry compote my friends.

As it should be, at Lucky 7 the whole blueberries are mixed into the pancake batter so that when they hit the griddle those nearest to the heat explode in gorgeous hot blueberry juice. These cakes are packed to the rafters with luscious little berries in various states of exploded succulence. My mouth literally watered as the cheeky (very American-like) waitress settled the white oval plate before me. Nestled in a splayed stack were 4 hot roundels of loveliness; perfectly sized - just smaller than a CD, and dusted with a light sprinkle of powdered sugar. Needless to say the syrup on offer is at its mapely best and the strips of bacon crispy (also something I’ve found to be more American than British).

On this note there is the issue of size, or actually thickness, that I can’t fail to mention. Here I must set the record straight. What most Brits have come to regard as a pancake, in reality is a crepe. I’m sorry to be the one to have to write this, especially seeing as the crepe is, well, yes, it’s French, and I know how you all feel about the French. But a pancake has depth, look at the word: pan-cake. It is a cake made in a pan. It should not be comparable to a thin sheet of paper; it should not be practically see through – that is a crepe.

My Lucky 7 pancakes were a bit on the thin side in relation to American standards, but in all truth I think this enhanced and showcased the blueberries to their advantage. They were still pudgy little cakes, thick enough to resist a fork but light as air in the eating.

The place is a stunning homage to the American diner in its many incarnations, from ‘40’s burger joint all the way to retro-hipster irony. The extensive menu is basically a treatise in temptation, including cocktails - a very inauthentic yet welcome addition to the diner repertoire. My feeling is as long as Lucky 7 continues to serve up the most delectable blueberry pancakes this side of the Atlantic, whatever else they do is alright by me. Thank you berry, berry much Lucky 7.

Ozone Coffee Roasters, Shoreditch

Ozone Coffee Roasters
11 Leonard St
Shoreditch
EC2A 4AQ
ozonecoffee.co.uk
020 7490 1039

by Homefries Bogart

My breakfasts on the internet have taken a skyward theme. The last visit had seen me enter a cloud and this time I was in Ozone, although oddly both places seem to be at street level. And they told me my research was off. Hah! 

I am not an early breakfast person, which is why at 9am, overlooking the chefs from my bar seat at Ozone Coffee, I was surprised to have ordered a ricotta maple pancake with candied walnuts and dried fig. 

Pancakes are not my area of expertise, but it was safe to say that neither I nor my Belgian or Canadian companions had ever seen a cake of such tectonic proportions. I mean this thing was the Earth's crust, a 'platter' pretty much the size of Tibet. I tried to explain this to a fellow baker later on in the day, and he didn't understand a word I was saying.

Was it any good? 

The Canadian wasn't sure. It was a little cakey for her. The Belgian was politely speechless (probably still taking in the vastness). But I say yes.

It wore its size with confidence. Its crispy crust alone was probably thicker than most other pancakes. I felt like I was on the breakfast table of Honey I Shrunk The Kids. In Tibet. 

It was on the cakey side, but that's not to say it wasn't fluffy and light. The maple syrup had drizzled through nicely, and although I thought I was going to get away with it, ended up ordering a tad more, which I do every time. 

I find that when fruit comes with a pancake it can make the affair a bit polite, but the combo of the ricotta, walnuts and dried fig had an elevated earthyness and did a damn good job at telling the bacon where to stick it. 

Perched up high in this spacious urban coffee shop with benefits, I was ready to climb down the mountain and be on my way. A few raised eyebrows from my new Ozone friendlies at the almost emptied plate and I was out the door wondering where breakfast will take this adopted Antipodean next.

The Breakfast Bible: what people are saying

Last updated: 26 February 2013.

Here is a round-up of what everyone's been saying about our book The Breakfast Bible.

Eleanor Morgan, The Observer: "Is it funny as well as practical? Of course... Among the lovely breakfast recipes from around the world, the book has surreal interludes such as the page dedicated to a dream Freud once had about a breakfast ship... We say: Seb is to breakfast what Brian Cox is to space." [Read more]

India Knight, on Twitter: "This book about breakfasts is a small masterpiece." [Link]

John Koski, Daily Mail: "Food Book of the Week: What a sizzling-in-the-pan treat it is, a witty, informative and irresistible celebration of the history, philosophy and practice of the ‘most important meal of the day’. Like one of those build-your-own-breakfast menus, this is a book where you can pick and mix whatever takes your fancy and be guaranteed a rewarding read." [Read more]

Extract in the Financial Times here: "The meaning of breakfast: is it the best meal of the day? A new book looks at the idiosyncratic – and delicious – dimensions of the morning meal."

Stylist Magazine: "Every witty, wise and wonderful thing you can do with words about the first meal of the day is found in The Breakfast Bible."

John-Paul Ford Rojas, (front page of!) The Daily Telegraph: "Seb Emina, author of The Breakfast Bible, said that swapping a proper breakfast for a rushed meal on the way to work might be responsible for giving people the feeling that they were much busier than they really were." [Read more]

Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian: "Should we talk over breakfast? Heavens no, argues Seb Emina, author of The Breakfast Bible... My fear is that Emina is legitimising the insane sensibilities of the morning grump who refuses to engage in human interaction until they've had their coffee." [Read more]

Oliver Pritchett, The Daily Telegraph: "Breakfast is the best time for couples to talk, I believe. Although Seb Emina, author of The Breakfast Bible, has suggested that we eat our corn flakes without exchanging a word, I’m convinced this is the time when the quality of communication between husbands and wives is at its peak." [Read more]

Virginia Blackburn, The Daily Express: "Seb Emina has just come up with the best piece of advice I have heard for years: people should not talk during breakfast. "If there are other people in the room don't feel obliged to speak to each other," the author of a book called The Breakfast Bible said." [Read more]

Amy Verner, The Globe and Mail (Canada): "The author of a new book titled The Breakfast Bible is quoted in the Telegraph as telling BBC’s Radio 4 that people need not ‘“feel obliged to speak to each other”’ nor ‘“feel offended if the room is completely silent.”... Anyone who devotes a whole book to breakfast – musical accompaniments, recipes, international fare and more – might simply be making a case that we should be eating better before the noon hour." [Read more]

Agenda, The Independent: "Bring some serious joy to that most important meal of the day with this new book of recipes, tips, essays and musings." [Read more]

Richard Godwin (contributor), Evening Standard: "At the London Review of Breakfasts — the online journal established by my friend Malcolm Eggs in 2005 after a slightly disappointing experience in a Kentish Town greasy spoon — we have come to view breakfast not only as an excellent source of puns, but as the embodiment of the city." [Read more]

Maddy Hubbard, The Mancunion: "While firmly focused on the subject of breakfast, the form is more literary than food blog.... Clearly, this is a man that respects breakfasts and treats it with due reverence and sincerity. One would be a fool to visit London without referring to the London Review of Breakfasts, and now his new book will enable lovers of breakfast to create the perfect breakfast at home as well." [Read more]

Hot List, Fabric Magazine: "Chock full or recipes, advice, illustrations and oh-so-appetising info on everything from famous last breakfasts to Freud's breakfast dream, this is the most important manual on the most important meal of the day." [Read more]

Jessica Carter, Fed Up and Drunk: "Within its almighty pages, this book holds a wealth of divine knowledge, supreme guidance, and righteous advice that (I reckon) we could all do with in our lives – especially first thing in the morning." [Read more]

Henry Jeffreys, Henry's World of Booze: "It’s a book to cook from and to savour in bed. As a contributor to the book and the website, I can with all disinterest say that it’s timeless masterpiece." [Read more]

99 ways to have breakfast

Here's a guest illustration by Badaude featuring Oxfork in Oxford. To view, just click and enlarge:

Our book: The Breakfast Bible

Our book's cover

We love going out for breakfast but we also love staying in for breakfast. We love it when, while still lazing in bed, we decide what we want and then realise we have the ingredients we need. We love the comforting crackle of a grill full of bacon and the promising hiss of a tea-bound kettle. We love it when it all comes together just so and we sit down to a plate on which the food is hot, the yolk is runny and the toast is buttered, and there is a hot drink, and a cold drink, and our guests are delighted and our day is already worthwhile. That's not to say we don't love the solitude of a breakfast before work, the way in which we strive to make the morning's toast, porridge or cereal just a bit better than yesterday's. We love that too.

Simply put, we love breakfast – all of the breakfasts, all of the time.

So we are pleased, excited and a little nervous to announce the publication of our book, The Breakfast Bible. Published by Bloomsbury, it will hit the shelves on the week of 11 February 2013. There really couldn't be a better week in which to release a book about breakfast than one containing both Pancake Day and the inexplicably forgotten Collop Monday, on which it is traditional to gorge your face with loads of bacon and eggs.

The Breakfast Bible is in part a compendium of recipes for the classic and time-honoured dishes of breakfasting tradition around the world. Alongside an exploration of the magic nine ingredients of a full English breakfast, it contains methods for everything from eggs Florentine to the perfect Bloody Mary, as well as the best pop and rock songs to boil an egg to ('Listen to your Heart' by Roxette is one perfectly-timed song) and a note on Sigmund Freud's 'breakfast dream', which we think gives a new insight into his true beliefs about what drives us all. And much more.

The book was largely researched and written by a team of five – Emily Berry Richard Godwin, Henry Jeffreys, Peter Meanwell and me. But in the spirit of collaboration from which this website was born, there are contributions from breakfasters across the world.

To be honest, Bloomsbury have created an object so beautiful that it almost doesn't matter what we wrote.

Find it in your nearest bookshop or online, for example here at the Foyle's website, here at Bloomsbury or here at Amazon.

Seb Emina, Editor-at-large
3 February 2013

Special dispatch: The Rex St. Lucian Hotel, St Lucia

The Rex St. Lucian Hotel

Rodney Bay
St. Lucia
WI
www.rexresorts.com

by Emmanuel Petit-Déjeuner

The St. Lucian by Rex Resorts is the oldest swinger in town... Forty-odd years it's been snoozing amiably on one of the better beaches, as boutique upstarts wax and wane island-wide. Big or small though, pricey or not, they all fall prey to that charming yet notorious Lucian horizontality that sees swimming pools regularly built 'lickle but DEEP BWOY!' due to volume taking precedence over area at the planning stage. 

Still, you can experience wonderful culinary excess in St. Lucia, as was the case with the job in hand – breakfast. Setting aside the quotidian hazards of the all-inclusive resort (pre-printed apology cards to cover a range of likely gripes arrived like clockwork, accompanied by mollifying Israeli cava faster than we could drink it) this was one arena in which our tired old maid of a hotel truly perked up.

The usual cornucopia of pastries, cereals and eye-wateringly fresh fruit (guava, paw-paw, soursop and green fig all delivered with alacrity by Crazy Laughing Machete Fruit Boat Guy) was augmented with above average scrambled eggs, admirably crisp bacon and the noble rot of the pancake and French Toast station. This last had Les Mini Petit-Déjeuners excitedly klanging an imaginary countertop bell and demanding "Breakfast number four pleeeeease!" in the manner of a particularly gluttonous bank cashier.

To one side, with the mercury hot enough even at 7am to make your own T-1000, the luckless omelette sous-chef stood sweating like John Leslie in full whites and a toque (vraiment de trop, non?). A more wan individual it was impossible to imagine, but despite his five vicious burners turning his kitchen corner into a close approximation of Tartarus, he could do things with a spatula that would embarrass many Michelin-botherers back home.

Add to this a surprising and delightful array of local specialities freshly made each day, from the lip smacking akkra fritters (black-eyed peas and saltfish flakes to you or I) to the primordially satisfying griddled plantain and cassava (plus a few curve-balls in the rather unedifying shape of deep-fried dumpling 'bakes', the terminally weird breadfruit – imagine making a salad with DHL foam packing pellets - and baked beans wearing their Sunday best Scotch Bonnets) and we could have lingered there for hours if it weren't for the lonely flagon of Piz Buin crying in Chalet No.4.

So would we go back to St. Lucia? For sure. Almost certainly not to that particular hotel, but did the breakfast linger in the memory? By jingo yes... and who knows, come Jazz Festival time, if you see a somewhat sun-kissed 'heavy fork' bogling under the palms with a stack of perilously teetering pancakes - say bonjour, do.

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.