Reconnaissance with Ryk (likewise Lou) at Temptation Cafe

April 19th.

Few could have predicted what would happen on Saturday 19th April.

Both myself and Louis Browne can count ourselves fortunate that when placed in a situation that occurs less frequently than Halley's Comet, we were with someone that has been studying the dark arts of improvisation for over a year. When you stumble across something that has no right to be there, when an event occurs that should never happen, when you end up somewhere that shouldn't really exist, the only thing you can do is improvise. And with Ryk Waters, improvise we did.

It had been a fairly standard breakfast. Ryk, a fellow member of Kemp Town F.C., had given me some good advice with regards to improving my life. Basically, all that needs to be done is to use the responses "thanks a latte!" and "tea-riffic!" when receiving the appropriate hot beverage in a cafe environment. It's as simple as that. Set phasers to pun. The three of us (for we were joined by club captain Lou) also chatted about exercise, standing on logs, and future TV hit Hangover Quest (Ready Steady Cook contested by those suffering from deep existential crises). It was all going to plan, up until we made the fateful decision to leave central Brighton and head up towards Hanover.

We had decided to go up to Hanover to seek a venue where Lou could watch some football in the close vicinity of his girlfriend's house. Ryk suggested The Constant Service, and so we began our ascent up from the base camp of Grand Parade, traversing the treacherous slope of Albion Hill. Hills; so often portrayed as an otherworld in folklore and traditional storytelling. Hills are an escape, a retreat, a wilderness away from the intrigues and rush of urban dwelling. The hills are a nowhere when unimaginable things can and do happen. It is in the hills where prophets can have their visions and the unwary can meet their end at the hands of fantastical beasts.

A combination of these two things occured to us on that fateful day. We encountered the Hanover Plug.

Artist's impression of the Hanover Plug

Many have spoken of the Hanover Plug, always in hushed tones. Songs have been sung. Carvings have been made. Intricate carvings, by rustic artisans and penniless wordsmiths. Carvings upon the collective consciousness of generations. All of the generations. Despite the indelible effect that the Hanover Plug has had upon Sussex, vast numbers dispute its very existence. Many a time has an individual descended from a journey into those very hills, told others of that sighting that he had made, only for his story to be dismissed as the ravings of a madman. He's crazy, the people say. He's suffering from a lack of oxygen, or overexposure to puns. They pat him on his head and send him on his way if he is lucky, otherwise he will be cast out of the city, pelted with stones, and forced to write his breakfast blog from the safety of a thorn bush on the Downs.

Well, if there's one thing you choose to believe from this blog entry, let it be the review of the breakfast. But if you have space in your heart ready for all of the truth in our world, then please believe me when I write this: that day, we three saw the Hanover Plug.

And so, the breakfast:

Vegetarian Breakfast

Griddled halloumi, balsamic field mushrooms, wilted spinach, roasted tomatoes, free range Sussex eggs as you like them, fresh toast and baked beans

Vegetarian Breakfast - £8.95

"When you cook them right / Such a delight"

Louis Browne

Temptation Cafe was a pleasant place to spend a Saturday morning. Although it felt somewhat like a canteen at a college or uni (the combination of the furniture and flooring), this was offset by fine musical choices, local art on the walls and knitted tea cosies that resembled moles burrowing out of the ground.

It was also a pleasure to have halloumi served as part of the breakfast. The halloumi on offer here was a classic example of how this could be the premium flesh option for the vegetarian; a rich salty flavour twinned with that smooth and chewy texture that has me salivating just thinking about it. This was perfectly cooked and set the tone for the rest of the dish.

21st Century Scott and Oates

Rich flavours were prevalent across the plate, thanks to some thoughtful cooking from the Temptation Cafe staff. The mushrooms too were cooked to perfection; soft but also chewable, with a strength to the tongue being underlined with a peppery aftertaste. The spinach also benefited from extra care in the kitchen, maintaining a freshness to touch but with an extra buttery comfort to them. Little intricacies like these went a long way in establishing the breakfast as a potent force.

There was a great variety of textures on offer to accompany those powerful rhythms making my tastebuds bop. The toast was carved softly by an artisan, providing a crunchy hug. The fruitiness of beans washed like running soup. The poached (though they could have been scrambled or fried) eggs were pure and lush, offering the silken explosion that I always yearn for. The tomatoes were sharp, their flesh felt bright in my mouth. The mouthfeel, oh the mouthfeel. It was top.

I'm not a fan of the M&S approach to making food seem special. No matter how many adjectives you add, Dorset sea-salt and cask-aged Balsamic vinegar is still going to be plain old salt and vinegar to me. Despite Temptation Cafe utilising this nefarious tactic, I was able to forgive them upon eating their wares. It was all well-cooked, with an air of care that came across on the plate. The only thing holding it back from greatness was the price, and perhaps that campus aura. Still, in a world of uncertainty, the Temptation Cafe can be held up as a place where you won't need to improvise in the fastbreaking stakes.

Function: warming and feisty - 4/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: rich and thoughtful - 5/5
Value: just about justifiable - 3/5
Presentation: practical and pretty - 4/5
Venue: could have been a bit more homely - 3/5

Overall: a tempting prospect if you're in the area - 4/5

 Let them know on Twitter if you've spotted the Hanover plug:
@rykwaters
@loubrowneIOW

Authentic or hoax?

#HanoverPlug

Lounging with Louise at the Alcampo Lounge

March 20th.

As my previous post alluded, Brighton moves fast. When I used to live just off of St. James' Street, I noticed one particular takeaway change its name at least five times in three years (my personal favourite name was Armani Kebabs). Another "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" moment was the surreal change that Sawadee Thai restaurant underwent, when it became an Italian for about a week before reverting to Thai. Inexplicable, especially as both its Thai and Italian incarnations provided delicious food. It was as though the owner had gone on holiday for a week, and whoever had been left in charge decided to go rogue, Colonel Kurtz-style.

One place in Brighton in particular that is currently undergoing a lot of change is London Road. Many old establishments have been receiving facelifts or flashy re-openings, and in other places new, exciting enterprises are starting up. There are new student residencies being built to open in the autumn, and so it looks as though lots of funds are being made available in order to have the area looking as enticing as possible for when the scholars come to town. One of these new, exciting enterprises is the Alcampo Lounge.

I had no idea that The Lounges were a chain. Heck, I didn't even notice that this place existed until Louise Wilde suggested we go there for our breakfast, despite walking down London Road on my way home from work most days. I first met Louise through my old friend and bandmate Olli, and when we played a series of benefit gigs for the Big Lemon bus company she made a couple of...erm...big lemons...for us to garnish the venues with. She is a very creative and enterprising lass with great skill, and if there was ever to be a further need for football-sized lemons then there are few people in Brighton better to call upon.

At the time of our meeting, Louise was searching for a different direction, a new vocation. This meant that she had a lot of free time and was spending a fair bit of it on the Internet. As I well know, the combination of free time and Internet often leads down the road of procrastination, but as Louise discovered procrastination is not always fruitless. During a particular session, she entered a competition and ended up winning a holiday to Switzerland! The moral to this story? Internet procrastination is definitely a good thing. I gave up YouTube for Lent in an attempt to be more productive, but as you may have noticed in the gap between blog posts here, this hasn't exactly been the case...

So we found ourselves sitting in the Alcampo Lounge, a mammoth place that sprung up overnight like a mutant snowdrop. It looked nice, with lots of comfy wooden furniture and sofas, and also featuring a book share in one corner. It felt ambitious. Its mere existence was a statement of intent. Would this ambition and intent be matched in its food?

And so, the breakfast:

Vegetarian Breakfast

Sweetcorn fritters, hash browns, grilled tomato, baked beans, button mushrooms, spinach, hummus, fried egg, and toast

Vegetarian Breakfast - £6.95

It looked pretty cool. The above photo should serve as an "after" shot; here is a "before":

It was as though the toast was a hat! This was pleasing. Also pleasing was the fact that I got a free filter coffee thrown in with the meal. Less pleasing was the absence of hummus in the mix, which would have been interesting to sample in a full cooked breakfast, but I was still to experience sweetcorn fritters for the first time, and for this I was thankful.

These then, the most exciting of the components, were first to be tried. They were pleasant; light, with a hint of coriander and a similarity to falafel in texture. They would not have been out of place as part of an Indian meal, and although the flavour wasn't strong they did provide a nice difference in texture to the plate.

Bonus tea too? Bribery!

The other carb-y elements, the toast and hash browns, were polar opposites to each other on the carbohydrate scale. The toast was soft and limp whilst the hash browns had a wonderful hard crispiness to their outer shells. This thin crunch gave way to lovely fluffy innards.

Unfortunately, many of the components charged with bringing strong flavours to the breakfast did not manage to rise to the occasion. The beans were slightly bland, and the egg, despite a bulbous yolk, had an anonymous white to it. The mushrooms were dry and tasted plain. The tomato had a good texture to it, soft, fleshy and warm, but lacked any sharpness.

Each of these items could have had an additional edge to them, which would really have made the breakfast a more exciting proposition. Only the spinach managed to achieve any kind of power in its flavour, being salty and rich. The care shown in the cooking of the spinach should have been extended to the rest of the dish.

A lot of flavours went missing (figuratively), and perhaps the dish would have been aided by the hummus not going missing (literally). Ultimately this breakfast was a case of something looking good on paper and not delivering on the plate. Talking the talk but failing to walk the walk. Is this an accusation that could be levelled at the Alcampo Lounge in general? Potentially. Both the venue and the meal seemingly rose swiftly out of nowhere in a glorious statement of intent, but both left me feeling slightly disappointed in the aftermath.

Function: lacking in fiery heart - 2/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: disappointingly shallow - 2/5
Value: decent amount matched in price - 3/5
Presentation: superbly laid out - 5/5
Venue: looks good, masking other shortcomings - 3/5

Overall: as powerful as lounge music - 3/5

Deep Existential Crisis

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.

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.

Unsure of the real blood/fake blood ratio

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:

Veggie Farm Breakfast

Eggs, veggie sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, beans, and white or granary toast

Veggie Farm Breakfast - £7

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).

Bright-eyed and bushy tailed (somehow)

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

An appointment with Amo at Marion's Cafe

January 25th.

Toast and marmite. A most glorious combination. If pressed for time, my ideal breakfast is two slices of toast and marmite with a glass of cold orange juice. The contrast of the marmite's bitterness and the sharp sweetness of the orange. The melting of the spread or butter into the bread, the crunch of the toast giving way and falling away in your mouth like a collapsing arctic coastline. Mmm. Heavy heady flavours. Yet the amount of marmite one uses can be problematic for some. Spread too much on and it can become an overwhelming experience. Spread too thinly and there's not enough on your plate to make much of an impression. You've got to be careful with marmite. Getting the balance right is a fine art.

I personally don't have this problem, as for me there is no such thing as too much marmite. Canada also doesn't have this problem, but for different, more sinister reasons. I have been beset by a similar issue though with writing; recently I was struck with the writing bug and inspired to work heavily on a story I have been hacking away at. This was great, but it has taken me away from this breakfast blog. It was good to have a break from the fastbreaking, as too much focus on writing about this one topic can burn me out, but now returning to it, a month on from the last breakfast I ate, and my notes appear like a foreign language to me.

Take these scribbles for instance:

"Pregnancy vitamins good for growing hair > Tina Fey > Big Momma > Water > Fave Drink"

I can remember that Amo had said that her favourite drink is water, but couldn't remember the links backwards. A swift bit of internet research revealed that Fey was in a film called Baby Mama, linking with the pregnancy vitamins, but still the anecdote trails runs cold for me. I would imagine that Amo would be able to piece together this puzzle, not least because she brought the subjects up, but also because she has the incredible skill of being able to draw reference and link to pieces of conversation from much earlier on in the day with uncanny ease. Sometimes she's almost as good as Poe's Dupin. Twin this with her indomitable knowledge of pop culture and celebrity and you have a very useful member of a competitive quiz team.

Amo wanted to pay a visit to Marion's Cafe as she remembered having some incredible fried potato there once before, and wanted to see if they were still serving such delights up. I had walked past Marion's many times on my way to and from football training at Preston Park, and I was excited to have the opportunity to finally see what it was like inside. My guess was that it would be a classic greasy spoon, and as we made our way there my fingers were crossed that my hunch would prove to be well founded.

My hunch proved to be well founded. It was a classic greasy spoon set-up with two particularly endearing factors. The most immediately noticeable one was the Liverpool shrine behind the counter; when going to order breakfast our gazes were met with prints of Dalglish, Barnes, and Fowler, hanging above a shelf holding a large figurine, possibly of Steven Gerrard, wielding a Liverpool flag as though it was a gladiatorial trident. Pinned to the shelf was a large, bright red scarf, burning with all the passion of the denizens of the Kop. It was nice to be in a cafe that wore its heart on its sleeve.

The second endearing factor was Marion herself. I didn't get to meet Joe in the last cafe I went to but there was no avoiding Marion, she was standing right behind the counter. She was wonderful. Within 5 seconds she had forgotten what I had just ordered (whilst elsewhere demonstrating a great memory for the orders of cafe regulars), she assembled my coffee with all the dexterity and grace of a rugby prop, and finally forgot to give me cutlery and a serviette whilst giving these to Amo shortly beforehand. It was all incredibly exciting. Would I be served what I asked for, or would I be presented with a steak and a stack of waffles?! I waited with bated breath.

And so, the breakfast:

Vegetarian

Egg, 2 vege. sausages, hash browns, mushrooms, beans or tomatoes, toast

Vegetarian - £5

Phew! All present and correct. Marion had done her job, conveying my order to the kitchen, and done it well. It was a decent amount for what I'd paid, but how did it taste? Had Marion translated the longing that burned away in my eyes into a request to the chef to make the most delicious breakfast the cafe had ever served?

Ultimately it was a bit of a mixed bag. Some components were just what I was after, and others disappointed me with their indolence. For every plus point there was a counter-acting minus, nullifying any good work that had been done in the kitchen.

Marion is visible in the upper frame

There had been some overcooking. The toast, a single slice of white bread, was soft but had a slight burn to it. The mushrooms had been fried in oil and were left without much taste at all. Both components were the victims of cooking too swiftly and at too high a temperature. This may well have been the fate of the sausages too, which had pleasantly crispy exteriors which encased a mushy and vague vegetable interior.

There was heartiness to be had though. The beans in particular were delicious, providing a taste that was warm and salty like a tearful hug. The hash browns were impressively sized, and hit similar notes to the beans in a more wholesome way. Here the crispiness complimented a good taste, rather than masking a poor one.

The egg had a pleasantly thick albumen, but the casing of the yolk was perhaps slightly too solid, as it exploded out sideways following a confident probing. The taste was satisfying in a methodical way, but may have been disappointing if it had been on a plate surrounded by flavours of a higher quality.

There were positives to be had in this breakfast, but overall it was more Sotirios Kyrgiakos than Sami Hyppia. In other, non-Liverpool FC terms, the breakfast was hit and miss, though largely functional, rather than brilliantly memorable (I might have to start using "Hyppia" as an official breakfasting term). I greatly enjoyed my visit to Marion's Cafe, but in a manner similar to my enjoyment of John Barnes' rapping; there was a whimsy to it, verging on novelty, and it certainly couldn't lay claim to critical success or getting my world in motion.

Function: not enough doing it for me - 2/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: lots of flavours AWOL - 2/5
Value: cheap - 3/5
Presentation: arrayed decently, no overlap - 3/5
Venue: the world needs more Marions - 4/5


Overall: Marion, you'll never walk alone, but there is room for improvement - 2.5/5

Catching up with CJ at Joe's Cafe

January 19th.

The day had finally come. It was something I had been putting off for a little while, and rarely does a trip to a particular cafe for breakfast to write about it have much gravity. But when you've been hearing about the refurbishing of a place, have had friends actively working to start something up, and you are aware of how much has been invested in it, and how such a cafe has become people's lives, then, then there's a wee bit of gravity. And you can't just go rushing into somewhere for breakfast when there's some gravity involved; you've got to wait and let the gravity get its act together, and have all the objects stop floating around in space and settle down on the ground. Then it is apt to go for a breakfast and chronicle your time there. 19/01/14 was when the time was right for me to go, with Santiago, to Joe's Cafe.

I would also be going for breakfast with CJ Hopkinson, recently returned to Brighton and sadly without her dog, Percy. It was her that originally got me into the whole "meeting up with people for coffee" thing that was an influence on the formation of this breakfast project, and so it was great that she was back in town and around to do some fastbreaking with. She is also one of the best people I know for chattering on about random idiosyncratic esotericisms. An' shit.

Like Extreme Ironing. As someone who enjoys fun and games such as tree-climbing, as well as being well-versed in the homely arts, I would have thought this would be a true calling for her. Apparently not. She would like to have an ultra-foldable ironing board if she was to embark on this pursuit. Foldable not so much in the style of a folding bike, but foldable like one of these extending boxing gloves. What is that form of extending called? If anyone knows, please post the answer at the bottom of the blog. If anyone would like to sort out a Kickstarter campaign to create one of these ironing boards for CJ that would be great too.

We also had a nice wee chat about live performance, particularly music and comedy, and how important improvisation is. A live performance is a singular event and it is apt and correct for it to offer something different, something singular, from the recorded performance. As well as doing this, improvisation illustrates how adept the performer is in their chosen field, if they are able to offer something that is enjoyable and entertaining that they have created on the fly. CJ recently saw Paul Foot perform in Brighton, and in a set that seemed to be half planned, half improvised, it was the improvised half that shone the brightest. It is the importance of improvisation that means that I will always rate Ross Noble higher than Bill Bailey in the stand-up arena, despite the obvious skill and intelligence that the lovely Mr. Bailey possesses. From what I've seen of their live DVDs, Bailey reuses jokes and songs time and time again, whereas Noble loves nothing more than going off on an audience-inspired tangent. Bill Bailey might be a lovelier chap, but I'd rather see Ross Noble in the flesh.

Just like Bill Bailey, Joe's Cafe had a lovely feel to it (that was my attempt at an improvised link). It reminded me of one of my favourite pubs in Brighton, the Barley Mow, which feels more friendly and inclusive than any pub I've ever been to, catering to all tastes and ages. The only thing Joe's needs is a good collection of board games and you've got the cafe equivalent. It's quite small, so there's not much space for wild dances of celebration, but that's a minor quibble. They've also decided to use the word "breaky" on their menu, rather than using the spelling "brekkie". I would personally go for the latter, as their choice of spelling has some rather unsavoury non-breakfast connotations for me... Whether or not this is a minor or major quibble though is a matter of taste.

And so, the breakfast:

Veggie Breakfast

 Veggie sausage, portabello mushrooms, toast, beans, slow roasted tomato, fried egg

Veggie Breakfast - £5.50

As Santiago has never met Lynsey, it would again fall to him to come to my aid; the Passepartout to my Phileas Fogg. He also drew a picture of CJ for the blog. I'm not sure why he gave her a Viking helmet, I guess that must be artistic license.

It is very nice to be asked to write the food review again for this blog. I have been lucky to write about two very delicious breakfasts! Let me describe why!

First of all, I think that there was some great seasoning here. There was some oregano involved, and pepper, with the tomato, eggs, and mushrooms. Yum! The tomatoes and mushrooms were religious. Their textures were fleshy, and along with this passionate flavouring, they were strong; I think the word English people use is lush, like the power of the smell that comes from the Lush shop near North Street. Slow roasting the tomato and using Portabello mushrooms made an impact.

Unsure about this Viking helmet

The eggs and the potato were cooked very well also, with the egg white  having a nice shiver to it, with the yolk flowing over it like the waves on the beach. The potato reminded me of good English chips. These were good to have as there were lots of fleshy and juicy things on the plate that need something to soak them up.

Oh man, and the sausage! Again another great sausage! I wonder if they have been Brighton Sausage Company sausages? This was another expert one, meaty and peppery. Estupendo.

And then, yes, two very English things! Beans on toast! Did you know that 75% of the world's baked beans are eaten by the British? Crazy! These beans had what James calls a very good tang. The toast was lovely as well, juicy from being given butter before served, but also crisp as well, from being toasted well. The crisp toast was great, as it was a different texture to the other foods. What wonderful food.

Thanks, Santiago. I don't think I know any more chefs, so that'll probably be the last we hear from him for a while, unless I take him for a breakfast at some point. Who knows? In any case, he's done a fine job writing here. I should just highlight the joy of receiving bonus potatoes which were not mentioned on the menu, as well as the jolly presentation of toast, which formed either a heart or the ace of spades depending on how sentimental/into card games you are. Lord knows what it looks like if you're into sentimental card games, but it probably look nice all the same.

Joe's Cafe is a place with warmth that hits you immediately, and the effort that the people there are going to to make it an engaging cafe really comes across strongly. As soon as they realise that they need to change their spelling of "breaky" there'll be no stopping them...

Function: smile inducing and cockle warming - 5/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: great mix of textures and flavours - 5/5
Value: good price for quality food - 4/5
Presentation: looks purdy, with extra cute toast delivery 5/5
Venue: lovely and cheerful, only lacking in extra space - 4/5


Overall: an udder superb place to visit around Seven Dials - 4.5/5

Entertaining Elliot at the Cow

January 12th.

It was time to get back into action. It was the Sunday morning after the first full working week of 2014. The people of Brighton were recovering, it would seem. The streets surrounding Seven Dials were largely deserted. The roads were relatively quiet. The Cow was mainly empty, but for Elliot Tume and a staff member who would welcome an excuse to fire the coffee machine up.

It felt apt that I would be seeing my first breakfast of the new year with one of my newest acquaintances, in a venue where another one, Joe, was working as chef. It was all very exciting. The Cow was a venue I'd walked past several times down Dyke Road towards Churchill Square and all of those wonderful, wonderful shops. It had caught the eye, and my associates I had spoken to about it were complimentary in their reporting. The Cow was the place to start 2014's fastbreaking. It felt right.

Elliot had not read any of my blog previously, but said that he expected the experience to be "very The Trip esque." I am sadly yet to watch any full episodes of that programme, but I fully expect it to be as enjoyable as eating a big cooked breakfast. I decided to try to work my best 'dishevelled Steve Coogan' look though, in an attempt to live up to Elliot's expectation.

Elliot is a very friendly chap who I met last year through mutual friends in The Knights Project; an adept local folk group with an especially adept accordion player. The band is comprised of lovely people, and unsurprisingly Elliot fits that mould also. He has only been living in Brighton for a relatively short while, having finished studying film at uni. He quickly fell into that trap that many of us do; when you spend years fully occupied with studying or working on something you love it is very easy to turn your back on it once you have finished. For Elliot, his film-watching took a back seat to other things, and I too successfully managed to neglect reading and writing for some time after finishing my BA and MA respectively. It is a new year though, and a time for us all to sit down and think, hey man, this time round I'm going to focus and concentrate on doing the things I love doing, and not faff around so much, with more sleep and better eating so that I'm not so drained when I get back from work. As a man who works up in London (although I'm not sure you can really label it as work if there's an X-Box in the office), Elliot understands the devastating effect that the long-distance commute can have on one's evening life.

The new year is also a time for changes, not just cultivation. This is something that Elliot seems to be quite good at, as he admits to being prone to determined acts of life-changing character, for their own sake rather than for any loftier motive. It was through this propensity that he became a vegetarian, and it was very interesting to chat to a fellow vegetarian with motives slightly different from my own. There are many good arguments for becoming vegetarian. Those most often cited are the moral argument and the health argument, (here is a paper that might be interesting, and it also includes a feminist argument as well) but I would like to quickly mention two other arguments that I have noticed apply since becoming vegetarian myself. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly in this age of austerity, food is much cheaper when you're not buying meat. Secondly, and perhaps more pleasantly, washing-up is largely easier when you don't have to contend with the greasy, fatty oozings of meat in pans and on grills. When it comes to purchasing a cooked breakfast, this second point isn't so important, but every now and then point number one can make a difference.

And so, the breakfast:

Vegetarian Breakfast

2 fried eggs, beans, veggie sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes with toast

Vegetarian Breakfast - £7.95

I was initially worried about writing about the food at the Cow, due to the fact that the chef of said food may well read what I have to say. That is why I have outsourced the writing of this portion of the blog to my good friend Santiago. Santiago likes eating quite a lot, and has happily agreed to step in to the firing line whenever my opinion might be compromised. It is fortunate that Santiago has exactly the same political leanings as me as far as breakfasts are concerned, and he is not afraid to speak his mind. Without further ado, I shall pass control of the keyboard over to mi amigo, Santiago.

¡Hola! It is a pleasure to play a part in my friend's blog, which I have enjoyed reading quite a bit since I have met him. In Spain, where I used to live, we did not have so many breakfast like these, but I have grown to love them so much whilst living here in Brighton, almost as much as I love Guinness!

The breakfast looked good to me, a bit like Fernando Torres. I was impressed with the layout, and with the separate pot for the beans. I could eat it a little like tapas! But, I wondered, will it do the job like Fernando Torres at Liverpool, or will it be more like Fernando Torres at Chelsea?

Veg for veg's sake

The mushroom was the first thing I sampled and it was good! It was mucho juicy, like some kind of super barbeque mushroom. Jajaja! There was a lot of juiciness all across the plate really, in particularly with the baked beans (muy rico!) and the tomatoes, which had a very pleasing texture and would have worked well in last year's Tomatina which me and my friend Cockleberry went to. Crazy!

As well as being very juicy and moist, the breakfast was seasoned well, with lots of exciting peppery flavours coming through. The tomatoes shared this with the potatoes which were soft, and the sausages, which were quite meaty both in texture and taste. They were surprisingly stodgy for a vegetarian sausage, and though I haven't had many of these since moving here, they were unlike any I had before in a English cafe. Yum! The eggs too were expertly seasoned, taking the tastes which were crafted well, with soft yet solid white and nice thick flowing yolk, and raising them to a new level of tasty.

The toast was a good slice of baker's white bread, with butter on for me. It was a friendly texture. The one thing I think that would make better the dish is if there was something crunchier involved perhaps, as a lot of the food was soft and juicy. I love breakfasts like I love Spanish women, soft and juicy, but every now and then you want something like a Spanish man, like Fernando Torres when he shaved his head, and that is a bit of crunch. Overall it was great and tasty, and I would be happy to go there for breakfast again, or maybe go in the evening and have a Guinness. Moo!

Thus ends Santiago's breakfast blog debut, substituted in the 85th minute after being brought on at half-time. That's probably happened to Fernando Torres at Chelsea at some point. One thing that Santiago didn't mention was the feel of the venue. The Cow is a bar rather than a cafe, yet one of its less obvious strengths is the amount of light that comes in, courtesy of large windows at the front of house (just look at that photo at the top). This gives it a similarly homely feel to most eateries, and really added to the energising effect of the breakfast we ate. It was a good way to start the day, and definitely a good way to start the year's fastbreaking.

Function: warming and energising - 4/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: only to be improved with textural variety 4/5
Value: quite a few coins but worth it - 3/5
Presentation: good for a "tapas" approach 5/5
Venue: - light and airy unlike most bars 4/5


Overall: no need to find an udder place to go at Seven Dials - 4/5