Juking with Joe at Billie's Cafe

26th October

There was art on the wall, created by a local artist. The cafe offered this opportunity, to have your work displayed in view of the customers. The interior of the cafe had the type of straight-backed cosiness that you would feel in a National Trust tea room, though I was unsure whether it was the venue or the clientele. One of whom, a middle-aged gentleman with a beard, had to calmly gesture to me through the window as to where the front door was when I arrived. It was tricky to discern where the entrance was as Billie's Cafe has a front door rather like a residency on Downing Street. It is situated on the corner of Upper North Street, with wonderfully large windows which would be perfect for people watching were the thoroughfare busier. As I made detailed notes about the interior of Billie's Cafe and read about football on my phone, I wondered what time Joseph Ronan was going to arrive. It had been a heavy night the night before and he was running a bit late. In the time spent waiting for him I managed to think out another blog entry on football and boycotting (the results of which can be viewed here once it's written) after reading about the latest incident featuring racism from a set of football supporters and thinking about all of the underplayed controversies surrounding the nations who will be hosting the next three world cup tournaments. This (the football, not the waiting) annoyed me. I needed to be in the zone, the breakfast zone! In any case I had enough time to refocus my mind on breakfast before Joe arrived. I won't go into detail about how late he was, that would be impolite, but let's just say he arrived after the gentleman with the beard had gone and so I had to signal where the front door was.

So, after forty five minutes of trawling the BBC Sport website I was joined by Joe who was not in the best of shapes. The previous night had been a heavy one; not quite as heavy as an elephant playing in a Metallica covers band, but approaching it. It was heavy enough to cause Joe to sleep through three alarms. Such was his commitment to the breakfast cause though, he leaped out of bed and into a taxi. Drastic action, but as a man I had mainly experienced in the party situation before, I knew he was a man capable of such acts of dramatic spontaneous action. As well as the party side, Joe has a strong academic side. He's studying for a PhD at the mo, and so has to work hard both studying and teaching the youth of the university. Having lived with two other PhD students I am well aware that this can be a tricky thing to balance, so kudos to Mr. Ronan for being able to tackle the two sides of life with such vigour.

Following the breakfast I hoped to go on to play some badminton. Joe brought up the important fact that the sport wasn't always named thusly. Back in t' day it went by the much more impressive name of battledore. Why it changed over to badminton has been lost in the mists of time, but it remains that battledore is a far superior name. If you were given the choice between playing sport containing the word 'battle' or one containing the word 'bad', the decision would be an easy one. We pondered words for a little while, both failing when it came to knowing what the word 'juke' meant in terms of a juke-box. Careful internet research revealed that the word has a saucy past, however it also has a usage which could be applied during a good game of battledore, although this application is derived as a spelling variant of jouk. So there we go. Words change, (language) games continue.

Whilst chatting about words and battledore, another subject arose. My battledore racquets were given to me by my colleague Sharon, who had played when she was a wee lass living oop north. Inside one of the casings Wee Sharon had written several secret words, such as "Sharon loves Anthony" (disclaimer - Sharon no longer loves Anthony, that was a long time ago), and this caused us to consider the popular thing when you are at school of writing down secret messages in the back of books, like "James loves Katy Hill", or indeed scrawling the names of bands all over your pencil case. Where did this compulsion to decorate stationery with Travis and Placebo and Stereophonics and Sum 41 come from? And when did it stop? I guess in an environment where everyone was dressed (mostly) the same, writing down who you thought the best bands in the world were was one avenue where you could express individuality and create an image for yourself. I'd love to find my old pencil case and see precisely what image I had cultivated. No doubt a pretty cool one #casualtyofsociety.

Now Joe is a reader of this blog, or at least he was when it was a regular kind of thing. Hopefully he's not forgotten about it. He felt as though this particular breakfast experience was akin to going on holiday and taking photos, all the while thinking about how it feel looking back at those photographs once the holiday had ended. It was interesting thinking about that level of self-consciousness that comes when documenting your experiences. I too felt that the experience was somewhat like going on holiday, and I had played the role of stereotypical German, getting to the poolside early to lay down my towel on the best sun lounger.

And so, the breakfast:

All Day Jumbo Vegetarian Breakfast

Vegetarian sausage, home made hash browns, baked beans, fried free-range egg, braised mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, & two slices of buttered toast

All Day Jumbo Vegetarian Breakfast - £6.75

They weren't kidding about the jumbo status of the breakfast, the plate was struggling to keep it together, much as we were. Overhanging/hungover. A promising start.

The beans were my first stop on the breakfast journey. They were soft to touch, part velvety and part chalky. They were a big thick beany soup. This was a different feel to the usual fruitiness that comes with baked beans, and was an interesting change of direction. This softness continued with the tomatoes, who came across as thoughtful. The taste was subdued, allowing space to contemplate whilst eating them.

The toast, and there was quite a bit of it, was chewy in a kind way; it did not require too much effort to process and the pre-buttering meant that it was soft. And hey, this was also the case with the egg! Soft, chewy, nice. These two items can often be too soft to the point of fragility, but in this instance the levels were good. They were easy to engage with, yet remained solid enough to carry their flavours.

Duke of Juking

Now, the hash was the component I was most excited about. Whilst waiting for Joe I had perused the menu thoroughly, and Billie's Cafe take a lot of pride in their hashes. This would be their signature dish, and one or two individuals had recommended them to me. At some point I will have to return to sample one of them, but at the time I had to be content with the portion that came with my breakfast. Unfortunately it came to me just as soft as the other items I have already described. It was crumbly and delivered a starchy lesson in the ways of the potato that was akin to regular mashed potato. I was hoping for a bit of crunch to mix things up from previous softnesses, but sadly it was not forthcoming.

The fleshy components offered something different thankfully, with the mushrooms chunky and smoky, and the sausage, a Quorn banger, a firm prospect. It had a slight blandness to it which is often the case with Quorn products, but on the plate I was grateful for the change in texture.

Overall the breakfast was like a comfort blanket; it had a warming and soft gentleness to it which was lovely, but could have perhaps benefitted from a bit of maturity to give it some extra power in the taste department. It was a breakfast of thought rather than a breakfast of action. It was a breakfast that had decided to remain in bed that morning, rather than throwing itself into a taxi and speeding into taste town. As a result, there was a sense of 'missing out' on the plate. The breaking of the fast is not something that goes well with passivity; the fastbreaker is more often than not in a passive state (i.e. tired and/or hungover) and so relies on the food to provide some dynamism. As comforting as it was, it wasn't quite what breakfast Billie's Cafe had to offer, rather than my two coffees that had me buzzing as I walked off towards battle(dore).


Function: warming and gentle but not energising 3/5
Adherence to canon: Yes
Taste: tasty, but lacking in textural variety 3/5
Value: overflowing plate always nice 4/5
Presentation: pleasingly arranged 4/5
Venue: pleasant, but a little too National Trust-y 3/5

Overall: more bath than shower - 3/5