March 6th.
There are deep existential crises and then there are deep existential crises.
I've referred to one particular form of deep existential crisis frequently during this project, namely the one that is easily acquired via a night of excessive and carefree libations. However, this month I experienced a very different form of deep existential crisis. One that shook up my thoughts about the breakfast project and left me feeling hopeless, washed away into a sea of anxiety.
Recently Joe's Cafe had been given the joint highest score in my breakfast blog gradings, a triumphant 4.5. This had been allocated previously to only one other venue, the wonderful Montpelier Cafe. Now, that breakfast had been around a year ago, and I wanted to make sure that the James of 2014 was singing from the same hymn sheet as James Mc2013. I rounded up two of my housemates and we made our way over to Western Road in order to put the Montpelier Cafe to the test once more. After a few minutes of walking the pavements though, something began to become painfully obvious.
Montpelier Cafe was no longer there.
At the point of realisation (somewhere between Sainsburys and William Hill) I was rocked by a blow to my psyche, a right-hook direct to my sense of self. This monolith, this yardstick I had used to measure the breakfast endeavours of practically an entire year, was now apparently a kebab shop. This wasn't something new. I was aware of other venues I had previously visited either becoming new places, moving, or closing down completely, but what made this particularly galling was that this had been the example I had often held up as a pinnacle of Brighton and Hove fastbreaking.
It did not end there, however. Instead of being able to eat at Montpelier Cafe, we contented ourselves with some delicious hashes at the nearby Billie's Cafe. These were rather wonderful, and my housemate Zia said that I should write a review of them. I replied that I had already written about Billie's Cafe and, besides, I wrote about vegetarian cooked breakfasts. But then he drew my attention to the ingredients of the hash I was eating; amongst the carb ridden mass of potato was egg, baked beans, and mushrooms, thus fulfilling every requirement I had for a breakfast dish. But this wasn't a cooked breakfast though, was it? This was a hash. But why wasn't it a breakfast? What meant that this or other similar meals weren't breakfasts? What else is there that is a defining part of the cooked breakfast? I could not answer this at the time, and although I feel as though I am coming to an adequate response to this question I still don't feel completely certain just yet.
There's more though. A few days ago my housemate came in and reported that he had just eaten a disappointing breakfast at Joe's Cafe. I've also been aware for a long time that there is an element of chance with food journalism, and just eating the one meal at a venue is not going to be completely indicative of the standards of the place. It only takes one accident or off-day for a venue's reputation to be eternally tarnished in textual form. In order to reach truly fair conclusions about the breakfasts I eat, I would need to eat at each venue a couple of times in order to get a full idea of what they're like. Thinking along these lines damages what little credibility my food journalism has.
These three psychic jolts sent tremors into my fastbreaking soul and left me feeling like a culinary Sisyphus, doomed to wander the weekend streets of Brighton, flitting in and out of cafes and restaurants for all eternity, getting fatter and fatter and yet never any closer to the truth of the breakfast world. After further meditation though, I realised that this is not the way to be looking at things. Going back, aaaaaallllllllll the way back, to Dave Gorman vs. The World, a major influence in the setting up of this project, and I am reminded that this project is not just about the breakfasts. It's as much about the meeting up with the people and exploring different places as it is about finding the best breakfast in Brighton. Even if the destination is one that I will never reach I can still have lots of fun on the journey.
With that, the deep existential crisis was resolved. It is a shame that Montpelier Cafe is gone; I will never forget the way that breakfast stared up at me from my plate, and how its use of falafel really made me think. There will be future cafes though. If there isn't a pre-existing cafe in the area that uses falafel in its breakfasts then there is a good chance that one will appear in the future, popping up out from the undergrowth like a triumphant and delicious fungus. The breakfast world is constantly expanding. There will always be somewhere different to visit, with new sights, sounds and tastes to be experienced. It's the possibilities rather than the existential crisis that is deep, and I'm looking forward to diving in as far as I can in 2014.
Wednesday 26 March 2014
Thursday 6 March 2014
Time out with Tara at The Farm
February 28th.
Often in this blog, my fastbreaking has been a direct response to a deep existential crisis, also known as hangover vulgaris. It is an efficient solution to such times when the body is reduced to a frail and quivering wreck, and the mind wanders lost in the aching caverns of the skull. This was to be another one of those rescue missions. I was stuck in a dank spiritual gulch and need guidance back to my pastoral home. You see, the night before, The Red Diamond Dragon Club had played a gig at an event where some of us had felt that we'd been treated rather shoddily by the organisers. Some of us took to the bar in an attempt to quench our fiery anger, and once the headline band had finished we were able to retrieve our gear and head out into the night. This did not signal the end of our evening though; Tim's cousin, Tara Huzar, invited us to come to the Mash Tun, the pub in which she worked, as she had been unable to come to the gig earlier. Cue several more pints, some free shots, a crucial trip to Buddies, and a cut finger on the way home.
Somehow during all of this I managed to arrange to go to breakfast with Tara the next morning. She's quite busy and elusive, working at both the Mash Tun and at a local tailor (a maker of suits to the locally well-to-do) to balance the books, as well as frequently mislaying her phone. As a result I was determined to seize the opportunity at the time to schedule in some fastbreaking. There was a brief window before Tara started work again the following morning where breakfast could be eaten and so a valuable lie-in was sacrificed.
I've known Tara for a few years, ever since she first came to visit Tim as a prelude to studying at Brighton University. She is bubbly, able to chat with enthusiasm, and is always full of energy, even after a long bar shift and post-work drinking. She is also a great aficionado of cabbage. Is there a connection here? Is that why bubble and squeak is named as it is? The best take-away cabbage in Brighton is, according to Tara, available at Kebab Knight up on Lewes Road, and she is known as a regular elsewhere near her flat due to her regular cabbage requests. She recommended Kimchi as one of the finest forms of cabbage eating available, which I might hopefully be able to find a space for in my Breakfast Blog World Cup in a few months time. I had hoped to discover that kimchi was the inspiration for the Hell is for Heroes' track 'Kamichi', but careful research showed that this was in fact the name for either a Rwandan R&B artist or a South American bird, also referred to as the Horned Screamer. Not cabbage then. Unfortunately for Tara, the Farm did not offer cabbage as an option with their breakfast dishes.
And so the breakfast:
I had been recommended the Farm by several other friends and so it was high on my list of places to visit. At first glance it looked like a lovely venue; it was decked out with hefty rustic wooden furniture and was quite light and airy, with only the smallest of embellishments such as holly on the light fittings. It had a good homely feel, suiting its name, but all this would be for nothing if the food was not fit Old McDonald himself (he had a lot of animals on his farm, and so adequate sustenance was definitely a must).
It started out pretty well. The beans were like a tractor of taste, ploughing down my tastebuds with a brutal richness, full of all the salty tomatoey force I could have wished for. These were some of the best baked beans I had ever tasted, and had a heartiness that could not be rivalled by any other beans I could remember. To reference my last blog post, they were Hyppia.
When thinking of farms and food, eggs, tomatoes, and farmhouse bread may well crop up, and fortunately these too were good enough for McDonald. The eggs' dual components provided a good contrast, with soft but firm whites accompanying thick flowing yolks. The toast was crunchy and invigorating, and the tomatoes felt fresh with an edge to their juiciness.
This was all well and good, but unfortunately the arch-farmer would have been disappointed with the fleshy components on his plate had he been eating at the Farm. Both the sausage and the mushrooms failed to maintain the standard set elsewhere in this breakfast. The sausages had a great chewy solidity to them, but sadly this was offset by a tragic blandness. The mushrooms' texture also was great, smooth and juicy, but the flavours there were subtle to the point of almost non-existence.
It was these disappointing components that really brought the meal down for me. The Farm is right next to Bill's, and in order to be worth a visit it really needs to either offer something completely different, something considerably cheaper, or just do what it does with exceptional quality. Unfortunately it doesn't do any of these things, only really offering an escape from busyness and pretension. At this current pricing you should expect a little more than this, and so it is difficult for me to think of a situation where you would favour this venue over its illustrious neighbour. One could use this as an allegory for the crisis in UK agriculture if one was prone to pretension, and as the Farm offers little in the battle against pretension there seems to be nothing else I can do:
The manner in which The Farm is dominated in the field of fastbreaking works as an allegory for the crisis in UK agriculture.
Function: hearty and homely in part - 3/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: not enough of this - 2/5
Value: high price, low yield - 2/5
Presentation: spaced well on the plate, - 3/5
Venue: lovely homely farm aesthetic - 4/5
Overall: E - I - E - I - oh well - 2.5/5
Often in this blog, my fastbreaking has been a direct response to a deep existential crisis, also known as hangover vulgaris. It is an efficient solution to such times when the body is reduced to a frail and quivering wreck, and the mind wanders lost in the aching caverns of the skull. This was to be another one of those rescue missions. I was stuck in a dank spiritual gulch and need guidance back to my pastoral home. You see, the night before, The Red Diamond Dragon Club had played a gig at an event where some of us had felt that we'd been treated rather shoddily by the organisers. Some of us took to the bar in an attempt to quench our fiery anger, and once the headline band had finished we were able to retrieve our gear and head out into the night. This did not signal the end of our evening though; Tim's cousin, Tara Huzar, invited us to come to the Mash Tun, the pub in which she worked, as she had been unable to come to the gig earlier. Cue several more pints, some free shots, a crucial trip to Buddies, and a cut finger on the way home. |
| Unsure of the real blood/fake blood ratio |
I've known Tara for a few years, ever since she first came to visit Tim as a prelude to studying at Brighton University. She is bubbly, able to chat with enthusiasm, and is always full of energy, even after a long bar shift and post-work drinking. She is also a great aficionado of cabbage. Is there a connection here? Is that why bubble and squeak is named as it is? The best take-away cabbage in Brighton is, according to Tara, available at Kebab Knight up on Lewes Road, and she is known as a regular elsewhere near her flat due to her regular cabbage requests. She recommended Kimchi as one of the finest forms of cabbage eating available, which I might hopefully be able to find a space for in my Breakfast Blog World Cup in a few months time. I had hoped to discover that kimchi was the inspiration for the Hell is for Heroes' track 'Kamichi', but careful research showed that this was in fact the name for either a Rwandan R&B artist or a South American bird, also referred to as the Horned Screamer. Not cabbage then. Unfortunately for Tara, the Farm did not offer cabbage as an option with their breakfast dishes.
And so the breakfast:
Veggie Farm Breakfast
Eggs, veggie sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, beans, and white or granary toast
 |
| Veggie Farm Breakfast - £7 |
 |
| Bright-eyed and bushy tailed (somehow) |
When thinking of farms and food, eggs, tomatoes, and farmhouse bread may well crop up, and fortunately these too were good enough for McDonald. The eggs' dual components provided a good contrast, with soft but firm whites accompanying thick flowing yolks. The toast was crunchy and invigorating, and the tomatoes felt fresh with an edge to their juiciness.
This was all well and good, but unfortunately the arch-farmer would have been disappointed with the fleshy components on his plate had he been eating at the Farm. Both the sausage and the mushrooms failed to maintain the standard set elsewhere in this breakfast. The sausages had a great chewy solidity to them, but sadly this was offset by a tragic blandness. The mushrooms' texture also was great, smooth and juicy, but the flavours there were subtle to the point of almost non-existence.
It was these disappointing components that really brought the meal down for me. The Farm is right next to Bill's, and in order to be worth a visit it really needs to either offer something completely different, something considerably cheaper, or just do what it does with exceptional quality. Unfortunately it doesn't do any of these things, only really offering an escape from busyness and pretension. At this current pricing you should expect a little more than this, and so it is difficult for me to think of a situation where you would favour this venue over its illustrious neighbour. One could use this as an allegory for the crisis in UK agriculture if one was prone to pretension, and as the Farm offers little in the battle against pretension there seems to be nothing else I can do:
The manner in which The Farm is dominated in the field of fastbreaking works as an allegory for the crisis in UK agriculture.
Function: hearty and homely in part - 3/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: not enough of this - 2/5
Value: high price, low yield - 2/5
Presentation: spaced well on the plate, - 3/5
Venue: lovely homely farm aesthetic - 4/5
Overall: E - I - E - I - oh well - 2.5/5
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