Mittagessen mit Michael an der Wild Cherry

2nd June.

May was a bit of a sporadic month for breakfasts. There was a financial crisis at the beginning of the month, a trip back to my parents in the middle of the month (featuring a masterly crafted breakfast by Derek McIntosh, to be proudly displayed here soon), and then a stag weekend at the end of it. Very busy stuff. Still, now that all the debauchery (well, karaoke) is out of the way, I can concentrate on other important matters. Obviously there were several cooked breakfasts consumed over the past fortnight, it's just that these visits were purely in the name of debauchery, rather than the more noble aims of this breakfast project. I visited Buddies three times in the space of a week, for example, and that is an institution that one can only really venture into after 1am.

You can read this lack of action as an excuse for any shoddy writing that may occur in this post. I feel that I need to get some excuses in early, as this week's breakfast was shared with Michael Neu, a German, who has quite the following in Germany. The pressure is on. I need my writing to be at its very best, in order to do justice to a great man and to impress my continental cousins. Never has there been more at stake!

I've come to know Michael through my housemate Tim. Tim is currently working towards his PhD at Brighton University, and around a year ago Michael Neu came to Brighton to start teaching at the University. It turned out that Michael is one of the nicest people in the world, with a warmth and friendliness that few can match. He is also keen to point out that he is German, so I should probably do so whenever I get a chance. To recap then, Michael is German, a thoroughly nice man, a teacher and a German.

For our breakfast we journeyed to the Wild Cherry cafe, situated near Queens Park; a small, deli-style cafe with a decidedly Mediterranean feel. The weather was beautiful and so we sat outside to discuss the various projects that we had been working on and thinking about. As I've said, Michael is German, a thoroughly nice man, a teacher and a German, and one of these projects is a short speech he is going to give at the old school he worked at back in Deutschland. It is to feature a charming allegory, entitled 'Freddy and the Fishes', and although I'd best not go into details for fear of a student reading this and having it spoiled, it will be illustrative of two things; his ideas about living (which I shall come on to shortly) and the high esteem at which he holds all of his students. Michael is a major advocate of friendly teaching, and making his lectures and seminars places where a dialogue can occur, rather than a one-sided exchange. With a friendly approach, the learning can be a two-way thing, with the designated teacher able to learn from the students, as well as creating an environment that is enjoyable to be in, thus making students more receptive. Michael has taken this approach outside the classroom recently, setting up 'Walk and Talk' trips; an excursion in the countryside often ending up at a drinking establishment, all the while offering an occasion for thought and debate to occur. These sound like a great way to be productive whilst having a jolly good time. I should probably do stuff like this with other writers, rather than spending afternoons with fingers poised over the keyboard with YouTube taking centre stage.

As well as teaching (or should that be 'as part of his interests'?) Michael is keen to write, and has been working on a number of projects which all sound terribly interesting. He is currently nearing the completion of a satire on Greece's current economic situation, along with Germany's role in how it is playing out. Michael is German after all. Once he has finished this he will then look to start writing about 'the Bad Life', about people living badly or living worse than they could. Once he has finished this then he will finally be able to embark on his major goal; writing about 'the Good Life'. He is concerned with how friendship, what he considers to be one of the most important things of all, can be destroyed by the way we live, and how the importance of outcomes, money, and work, rule us. This leads to people being treated as a means to an end, with the end being profit. This is not conducive to 'the Good Life'. He is also keen to challenge the nature of the concept of 'the best', which works as a part of this. By thinking of 'the best' - having a best friend, finding the best breakfast(!) - we are quantifying something that cannot, or should not, be quantified. This is a dangerous thing to do, and could lead to us living badly or worse than we could. This sounds like an exciting project, and I have no doubt that if Michael sets about it with the same degree of fun and friendliness that he sets about most things, he could be on to a good thing. This certainly got me thinking about the dangers of searching for 'the best'. Perhaps I should just be searching for damn good breakfasts instead.

And so, the breakfast:

Mount of Olives Breakfast

Humous, lábána, tomatoes, olives, bread, olive oil and goat cheese

Mount of Olives Breakfast - £6.49

Well now, this was something a little different to the norm. There were a few things on the menu that were more cooked and more like the breakfasts I am used to, but this meal was the only thing that was labelled as a breakfast, and so by process of elimination this was the one. The weather was feeling comfortably Mediterranean, and I hoped that this good feeling would rub off on the breakfast. Sure, I've eaten this sort of thing before, but never to start my day off.

One of the best things about mezze is how many opportunities you get to combine different flavours and textures within one dish. The way that the breakfast was laid out was ideal for this purpose; each component having its own receptacle or area of the plate meant that the items were easily accessible, but also that spaces were created in between in which the combining could take place. For me, the combination of flavours and textures is one of the great and important things about the cooked breakfast, and so ideologically this Mediterranean dish was suited to what I was looking for, despite not adhering to my canon in the slightest.

There were a couple of things on the plate that I had never seen before. One was written as 'lábána' on the menu, which I have only been able to find written elsewhere as 'labna' and 'labneh'. In the photo it is the white creamy mound in the left-hand triangle dish. On paper it is yoghurt that has been strained through a cloth or paper bag to remove the whey, and in practice here it was very light, creamy and milky. Like a fluffier, more cloud-like version of Philadelphia cheese. It shared a similar taste with the goats cheese but managed to restrain the flavour somewhat, meaning that it was able to be combined with items with great ease.

Der Lehrer des Lebens

The other thing on the plate that I had never seen before was a powdery form of seasoning, seen in the photo on the left-hand side of the plate in another little receptacle. Unfortunately I didn't get round to asking precisely what it was, but it was tasty. It was subtle, with a slight tang and a woody after taste. There something of the paprika about it, only leafy. It was an intrigue, and when applied to the various components of the breakfast via the adhesive oil it easily added another dimension. It was crucial that this form of seasoning was given a position of importance, being a part of the dish itself rather than a side elsewhere on the table, given the similarity of textures that were at work. The humous, lábána and goats cheese were all very similar, but with the addition of this mystery seasoning they would be transformed into something quite different, roughening the edges and sharpening the flavour.

The other components that I was more familiar with seemed to operate on one of two flavour settings; intensely sharp and salty, or light, soft and mild. In the former group were the juicy and plump olives, and the solid goats cheese, smooth and tangy. These were counter-balanced by the latter group, consisting of a placid hummous, some great home-baked bread that was crispy on the outside but fluffy on the inside, and the tomatoes. Although freshly cut, their taste was subdued as is often the way with supermarket tomatoes. Some locally grown toms would have gone down a treat in this breakfast, but alas, as it was they tumbled into the 'light flavour' category in spite of their potential.

This analogue flavouring coupled with largely homogenous textures (despite the mystery powder) meant that the breakfast felt a bit two-dimensional. Sure, there were exciting and powerful flavours (with mixing things up strongly encouraged) but there wasn't really enough variety for this to be the vivacious and engrossing experience that it could have been. Some of the more intensely sharp items were too abundant, such as the goats cheese which was a bit of a struggle to finish. We could have requested more bread to go with this, but this wouldn't have lended any further depth to the meal.

It also lacked a certain heartiness that I look for with my breakfast. Perhaps this was down to a lack of carbs, which could have been remedied by requesting more bread, but this wouldn't have added enough in the flavour stakes. The components that brought the flavour to the meal were mainly all of a similar texture; soft, and sitting somewhere between liquid and solid. It could have done with more firm items. With a breakfast I look for something that is able to provide a solid foundation upon which to build my day. This dish would serve better as a lunch (ein Mittagessen), as building a day upon this would be akin to building a house upon sand.

Function: does different things to what I look for 1/5
Adherence to canon: nononononononono
Taste: good strong flavours, but needed more depth 3/5
Value: quite expensive for what it was, I feel 2/5
Presentation: spaces, segregation and beautiful colours 5/5
Venue: another benefiting with good weather. Not as warm as other delis 3/5

Overall: probably not one for fastbreaking. Lunchmaking would be a different story 2/5