The Breakfast Club Manifesto

Carriages, Ash Vale

I am a huge fan of cooked breakfasts, and would even go so far as to suggest that they were my favourite meal. I cannot think of another meal that can be respectfully eaten at any time of day, and there are few other dishes that can warm the consumer's heart in the same way.

It has long been an ambition of mine to discover the finest cooked breakfasts that Brighton has to offer. Indeed, it was a new year's resolution back at the start of 2012 to try and review a cooked breakfast from a different venue each week. Sadly, due to my own indolence and lack of motivation this never occurred. 2013, however, is a new year, and since I have received my first post-Xmas payslip the time has come to get this project going.

I have held the cooked breakfast in high regard for most of my life. Something that I have only recently come to appreciate over the last year and a half though has been meeting up with people on an individual basis, usually over a hot beverage, to chat and talk and converse and compare notes on various things. This is a trick I've missed badly. Someone should have told me about how good this was when I was still a bairn. I am aware of its astronomical benefits now though, and intend to make up for lost time. As a result, I hope be accompanied to each different venue by a different pal.

Boston Tea Party, Exeter

The aim of this project is therefore twofold. I hope to discover where the best cooked breakfast in Brighton is, but also I hope to learn from my friends and their knowledge. In his book Dave Gorman vs. The World, Gorman travelled the country playing games with complete strangers. Although he enjoyed (most of) the games he played, he took greater satisfaction from meeting people and the overall experience of the meetings. This is what I hope to emulate.

For the reviewing of the breakfasts, I need to establish a critical framework. Here then is what I consider to be the essential components of a cooked breakfast, along with the criteria that I shall be using to judge the breakfast's worth.

The Breakfast Canon

1. Egg
2. Beans
3. Carb Option (toast, hash browns, etc.)
4. Flesh Option (meat, meat substitute, tomato, mushroom, etc.)

Breakfast Evaluation Criteria

1. Function (should be comforting, homely, hearty and make you feel better about life)
2. Adherence to the Canon (see above)
3. Taste
4. Value for money (price vs. size)
5. Presentation
6. Venue

After every breakfast, I hope to post a brief and candid review up on this blog, along with some photographs documenting just how crispy the hash browns or gag-inducing the scrambled eggs were. If they consent, there'll also be a photo documenting just how crispy or gag-inducing my breakfast companion was, just so you know I haven't just snuck out on my own to eat fried vegetables under the cover of darkness.

Thus concludes the first manifesto for the Breakfast Club. May the fast be well and truly broken.

The 'Jock Scot Special', Brighton