Seeing Stu at Spinelli

January 27th.

On a sunny Sunday the Breakfast Club project kicked off, unlike my regular Sunday morning football fixture which had been postponed due to bad weather. A slightly ridiculous decision considering how pleasant the morning was, but one that allowed for the first cooked breakfast of the project to be undertaken during the traditional hours of fastbreaking. The morning's target then, rather than Brighthelmstone FC, would be Spinelli Coffee, a cafe in Kemp Town.

My companion for the morning would be Stu, one of my housemates. Stu is a top guy, certainly one of the nicest people I have been fortunate enough to meet, and his cheerily creative disposition has made sharing a house with him for the past 9 months pretty swell. After both ordering vegetarian breakfasts we took our seats at the side of the cafe and settled down to chat over our respective tea and coffee. Conversation began with having a look at how 2013 was treating us thus far, moving onto the utilisation of archetypes and a literary model in conflict resolution, ending up with discussing living in various places via the topic of synesthesia (the inspiring conversation regarding archetypes and literature inspired me to write a wee piece around the subject here).

Stu is a man with itchy feet. I would eat my hat if he didn't return to see out old age in grace within his beloved Argentina, probably with a beautiful Lebanese story-teller/peace academic spouse by his side. So confident on this fact am I that if I get a tax rebate this year I will purchase a replica viking helmet without any fear that one day I might have to try ingesting it. He is also a creative inspiration, being someone that enjoys writing as much as I do. I managed to get quite a lot of good ideas for storytelling from him over that breakfast which hopefully I can bring into my writing. I never fail to feel invigorated talking to other writers, but I feel just a wee bit more energized after chatting with Stu. I also get the feeling that I should go live in Inverness at some point. I've had a decent breakfast up there before, so it could be a winner.

And so, the breakfast:

Spinelli Vegetarian Breakfast

Scrambled eggs, mushroom, onions, green peppers, spinach, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, sweet potato and rosemary mash, toast. 

Spinelli Vegetarian Breakfast - £6.95

Their website actually lists the meal as consisting of "scrambled eggs with mushrooms, onions, green peppers, spinach, tomatoes and cheddar cheese, served with sweet potato and rosemary mash and toast," (my emphasis there) which was not precisely what the menu suggested. Unless my eyesight was misleading me, and if this was the case then I apologise. Regardless of what was written, I was not anticipating the majority of those breakfast components being incorporated within the scrambled egg. Still, it made the breakfast feel compact. The other notable first impression was that there were no baked beans. Suggestive of the cafe's North American leanings, it was a bold decision that immediately set this apart from the usual. Would sweet potato mash be a fitting substitute for Britain's favourite side?

Ultimately, I'm afraid to say that I missed those baked beans. The mash was tasty, and provided a sweet contrast to the rest of the dish but its softness was too similar in consistency to the scrambled egg, and the flavour lacked the usual sharp tang and different texture that baked beans usually provide. The other ingredients in the egg were slightly lost and I couldn't really distinguish them after a few mouthfuls. It was a homogenous mass that scorned the myriad of individual names on the menu. Sure, it didn't taste bad, on the contrary it tasted fine, but it felt as the whole thing was holding back. As though there was an army of flavours pounding away at the gates but not being let in and onto my tongue. The toast element comprised of two pieces of lightly toasted bread which was crisp and worked well with the tomato and mash, the sweeter components.

Stu Alley. Writer. Dreamweaver. Visionary.

Extra kudos should be given to Spinelli for swapping Stu's toast for a gluten-free alternative without any fuss. The service in general was decent and we received our meals relatively swiftly. My gripe with the cafe itself is a purely personal one, with regards to the aesthetic. It doesn't strike me as a breakfasting venue really. Rather than feeling homely and heart-warming, qualities I desire in the overall breakfast experience, it feels as though it's trying to impress. As you can see from the poor quality photo, the meal was beautifully presented. Again though, the presentation felt like a barrier to what I was trying to experience, the rich flavours of the homely enacted in food and venue. There were no squeezy bottles of condiments on the tables, and salt and pepper were provided in neat little grinders. It didn't feel like a place to be eating breakfast, rather a place to be clinically conducting an operation. What sort of operation, I'm not entirely sure, but perhaps one that involves paging a client or closing a deal. The kind that means leaving the heart out and getting down to business.

This isn't the kind of place I'm looking for. Not for breakfast at any rate. I went there previously for coffee and cake with some friends and had a lovely time, though again that was down to the quality of the cake (superb carrot cake, moist, sharp and abundant) and the quality of the companionship (hopefully Michael and Ian will make appearances on here later on in the year). The cafe itself welcomed us in with Franz Ferdinand's second album which I enjoyed. I love Franz Ferdinand. I love their Scottish charm, wry humour and the way they want me to move my hips. Spinelli also love Franz Ferdinand. They love them so much that they decided to play the album a second time. And then a third. It was as though a malfunctioning robot had been put in charge of the music. That, or there was only one CD in the cafe. Another example of a lack of 'human heart' perhaps.

I feel as though this might all sound a bit too negative, bordering on scathing criticism. Perhaps, but only because I seem to have very particular expectations when it comes to a cooked breakfast. What Spinelli provided was technically good, looked wonderful and was cooked decently. The overall experience of the meal though, despite the high-level of conversation my companion provided, was just not proper fastbreaking. Had it have been a lunch then I would have been very satisfied. A case of style over substance, mayhap? If you're going to try and look flashy, best have some flashy flavours to back you up. The lack of genial warmth was key, as was the absence of baked beans.

You can probably equate genial warmth with baked beans should you wish to.

Function: not really life-affirming - 2/5
Adherence to Canon: where them beans?! - No
Taste: decent, but lacking a little something - 3/5
Value: needs a bit more if you're pushing £7 - 2/5
Presentation: looked swish without pretension - 4/5
Venue: not an ideal fast-breaking environment - 2/5

Overall: conflicting style over substance, needs more beans - 2/5