Joining Jackson at Corner Cafe

August 29th.

An Italian breakfast is something I had tried to emulate for my Breakfast World Cup. Unfortunately, what I managed to come up with (on two separate attempts) was not something I enjoyed particularly. In Group D, the Italian breakfast finished bottom, ranking behind the Costa Rican, the Uruguayan and, naturally, the English.

Now it would be time for an Italian man to feast upon the English breakfast. I had planned to meet up with Jackson Braghieri on his final day before leaving Brighton for good. His eventual destination: Salt Lake City, UT, to start the next stage of his post-university life.

I had been introduced to Jackson through a couple of my five-a-side football team mates who were both studying/working at Brighton University, and he was recruited by them to bolster our squad when numbers were reduced. He swiftly became a regular member of the team and, eventually, an indispensable one. 

Not only did he continue the fine tradition of Italian defending, but whenever regular goalkeeper Robin was unavailable, he could be counted upon to step between the sticks and leap about like a young Gianluigi Buffon (or Toldo, or Zenga).

Jackson has family in the US who have set him up with a job to be getting on with. He also as a result has pretty solid knowledge of US tourist hotspots, and so was able to make recommendations for Claire’s trip to the US. For anyone travelling to New York in the near future, he recommends taking a tour of the UN and visiting the Twin Towers museum.

Certainly one of the kindest guys I’ve met living in Brighton - and one of maybe only three people to provide me with a birthday card last year - Jackson will certainly be missed as he crosses the Atlantic for his great American adventure.

As Jackson was living in Whitehawk, I suggested the Corner Cafe as a venue - the cafe is situated on St. James’ Street in Kemptown and I was very familiar with its previous incarnations when I lived but minutes away a few years ago. There was one other reason for me suggesting the Corner Cafe, however; something on their breakfast menu had caught my eye…

And so, the breakfast:

Corner Vegetarian Breakfast

Baked beans, mushrooms, Lincolnshire veggie sausages, caramelized pear, egg, vine tomatoes and farmhouse toast.

Corner Vegetarian Breakfast - £6.95

As soon as I had read the menu, one item in particular leaped out at me. It was something I had never seen as a breakfast component before and something that I was especially eager to try out. It is fair to say that the caramelized pear was the second and more decisive reason for me choosing the Corner Cafe as the venue for our breakfast.

So let’s cut to the chase. The pear worked well flavour-wise, providing a level of sweetness similar to that offered by the baked beans. I would consider pear for future breakfasts; although it seemed a bit strange, it did not taste out of place. In this instance though, it could have been softer, having the texture of a potato that perhaps should have been boiled a few minutes longer. Slightly too firm to engage with with maximum joy.

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Solidity was an aspect that characterized this breakfast. The tomato, toast and mushrooms were all chunky. However, if the inclusion of pear had suggested that the breakfast was going to be taken me to places new, untravelled culinary shores, these items showed me that this was the extent of this thinking outside the box. No additional flavoring had been given and, like the pear, the tomato felt as though it could have been softened a little longer.

The sausages were nondescript and bland, offering little more than solid stodge. Variation was offered up by the chunky toast that was pleasantly fluffy, and in their chunkiness the mushrooms were bursting with juice. Further moisture came from the solitary egg whose yolk’s oozing flow was decent.

It was the beans that were the highlight of the dish. Sitting proudly in their own little bath, these beans were rich in taste, pleasingly viscous and fantastically abundant. The richness helped mask the deficiency of flavor that presided elsewhere in the dish.

While the breakfast here at the Corner Cafe offered the suggestion of a fresh start to fastbreaking with its inclusion of the pear, on the whole it was merely business as usual. Thankfully, I can safely say that Jackson’s jaunt to the US will provide much more refreshing and exciting flavours. He will probably be hard pressed to find caramelized pear on the breakfast menus of Utah, however.

Function: did what was required  - 3/5

Adherence to Canon: Yes

Taste: varied from average to delightful - 3/5

Value: needed more effort for this cost - 2/5

Presentation: neat bean bath but crammed plate - 3/5

Venue: spacious but staff forgot Jackson's drink - 2/5

Overall: without the pear, it wouldn't be worth much discussion - 3/5