Gabbing with Gareth at Breakfast at Tiffany's

May 19th.

I'm not a fan of the film Breakfast at Tiffany's. First watched by me on New Year's Day a few years ago, I found its conclusion ultimately dissatisfying with no probative value, and its overplaying of what was at its opening a very good song was frustrating. Admittedly, the scene where the kids are all sitting round talking about something, and the camera circles the group, and there's lots of emotions, and it's all ad-libbing by the actors, that bit is impressive. Ultimately though, the whole thing felt inconsequential and there was too much of unlikeable characters doing unlikeable things, and so when the film closed to Simple Minds (again...) and Emilio Estevez with his fist raised pointlessly in the air, a meaningless gesture from a paper champion, I felt as though 2000 and whatever had gotten off to the worst possible start.

When I was younger, I often got Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Breakfast Club mixed up. I do the same thing with The Princess Bride and The Princess Diaries. Fortunately, Brighton does not have a cafe called The Breakfast Club, and so there was little risk of me going to the wrong venue for my rendezvous with Gareth Strachan.

Gareth is a friend that I have met through past and present housemates Tim and Zia, who all worked together in Ottakars bookshop in Guildford many moons ago. Back then Gareth also organised a couple of film festivals in the town, at which, before we'd even met, he introduced me to some great cinema which I would recommend to anyone; The Seventh Seal, The Seven Samurai, Shaolin Soccer and Riding Giants. I doubt he ever chose to screen The Breakfast Club at one of these events.

These days, Gareth is more concerned with creating film that curating it. He has recently applied for a place on a prestigious screenwriting MA course and all fingers are crossed that he is successful in his application. He has previously written plays that have been performed, and well-received I might add, and this creative experience would ensure that he would be superb in this field.

It would be quite an involved course though. Doing a MA is generally an all-consuming venture. I previously did my Creative and Critical MA part-time whilst continuing to work full-time, and so I was able to offer a wee bit of advice to him about this side of things. Generally speaking though, Gareth is driven and would like this to be an inroad towards a career. As much as he enjoys teaching and his greeting card line is beginning to take off, he feels his real talents lie in the creative writing. All fingers are indeed crossed.

Gareth is also not the best at time-keeping, and so I had a decent amount of time in Breakfast at Tiffany's with which to take in its ambience. I took in all of its ambience. We both agree that Brighton is a very easy place in which to simply exist and have a nice time and that's exactly what I did, enjoying Heart FM, the wooden furniture arranged so spaciously and the multiple pictures of Audrey Hepburn adorning the walls. Couldn't see Emilio Estevez anywhere though.

And so, the breakfast:

Veggie Set

Egg, veg. Sausage, tomato (fresh, tinned or grilled), beans, mushrooms, and 2 hash browns, bubble & squeak, and 2 toast or hash brown

Veggie Set - £5.95

I had eaten at Breakfast at Tiffany's a few times previously, but those jaunts had been a long time ago. The one thing that had stuck with me the most from those visits was that the cafe was one of a select few that offered bubble and squeak as part of its vegetarian breakfast, and it was with gusto that I launched myself into it when it arrived. It is a mystery to me why more places don't serve it; it adds a different dimension, both in taste and texture, and is a quintessentially British breakfast item. Here again it did not disappoint, bringing a soft and rosemaric presence to the dish.

Its potatoey cousin, the hash brown, came in at the other end of the texture scale, incredibly and satisfying crispy, whilst retaining a tuberous taste which was sufficiently different to the greenery-laden B&S. The other carbohydrate provider, the toast, was both buttered and plentiful. Now, the menu does say that I had a choice as to whether I had a mound of toast or a further hash brown. Unfortunately, when ordering, I was not presented with either of the choices indicated by the menu. I would have probably opted for toast in any case, but it would have been good to have been able to vocalise this preference.

Note the application of finger to 'thinking cleft'

The other advertised choice regarded the tomatoes. For me, most of the time it would be a straight toss-up between tinned or grilled. Unfortunately I was again not given the opportunity to be the master of my own destiny but fortunately again they successfully guessed that I would have opted for tinned tomatoes on this occasion. Perhaps the kitchen staff at Breakfast at Tiffany's are clairvoyant? That would be a welcome innovation in breakfasting, and would help to combat that gross vagueness that often plagues the most urgent fastbreaker. These tomatoes were plump buds that exuded a great amount of juice with prompting, and were a fortunate success.

Prompting was also required by the egg. It was solid from the outset, but with careful probing it suddenly yielded a warm blanket of yolk, rather in the manner in which you might gingerly explore a skin lesion before accidentally bursting it. Other moisture was provided inevitably by the baked beans, whose caramel richness prompted me to think of much more aesthetically pleasing imagery entirely.

The other downside, aside from the lack of choice on ordering, came in the form of the flesh options. Both the mushrooms and the sausages suffered from the same blandness as The Breakast Club. The mushrooms, seemingly fried in oil, and the sausage, of the glamorgan genus, were lacking in character like the majority of John Hughes' cast.

At the final credits began to roll over mine and Gareth's breakfast, I felt satisfied with what I had eaten. The meal was large, varied and interesting. Although it didn't blow me away, lacking the ever-present glamour of Ms. Hepburn, it was warm, pleasant and satisfying. Perhaps the pictures of Audrey in the cafe are misleading, and in fact the venue is named after the mid 90s chart hit by Deep Blue Something. The breakfast here was much more reminiscent of enjoyable chart-bothering pop rock-by-numbers than being a dish that could make you divinely and utterly happy.

Function: bubble and squeak raised the homely factor 4/5

Adherence to Canon: Yes

Value: felt decent 4/5
Taste: on the whole, satisfactory 3/5

Presentation: solid positioning 3/5

Venue: lots of space, but order options not given 3/5

Overall: the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there: 3.5/5