Coming up to Christmas with Clare at Soup-Urb

December 22nd.

Whoops. It happened again. I stopped going out for breakfasts. The main contributory factor for this was NaNoWriMo; this year I had decided to make a proper fist of writing 50,000 words of political and environmental polemic, thinly disguised as a fantasy novel about steampunk dinosaur pirates, and this meant that there wasn't much time for dilly-dallying around eating tasty food and expending precious words on it. Then, once November had been and gone, I wanted a bit of a break from writing. This was coupled with football training being later on Saturdays, and then matches on Sundays being very tiring. All in all, there was neither the time nor the inclination to go breakfasting.

And then Christmas began to come along. This meant a surprise seasonal break in the football playing, along with some time-off of work which left much more space for writing in the distance. The magical mixture of a free Sunday and space for writing meant that it was time to hit the breakfast trail once more!

Clare Silver was my breakfast companion, and it was good to finally arrange a time that we were both free to fastbreak. She seems to have one of the most hectic schedules of all of my friends, being an active member in at least two strong friendship groups in Brighton, as well as maintaining incredibly strong ties with her family who live in Horsham. She went to 9 weddings this past year. Only a registrar will have been to more. I don't know where she gets the energy to do all of this butterflying around, but she always does it with a smile on her face and kindness in her heart.

She is also a seriously talented individual, a true master of craftwork. In her time she has created many, many things that people would eagerly spend vast quantities of money on were they to come across them in shops. Scarves, blankets, dresses (Team Silver played a major part in the creation of the bridesmaids' dresses at the Sykes-Williams wedding earlier in the year), furniture coverings, and she discussed with me her plans to maybe make a corduroy pinafore at some point in the future. I myself am the proud owner of a lovely blue and white striped apron with my initials on. You can't buy class like that.

We made our way to Soup-Urb on Trafalgar Street, a place that bills itself as serving up "urban food". I'm not entirely sure what urban food is supposed to be. I shall attempt to dissect this term later on in the review. The venue had a comforting feel though, even if this tagline was a little bamboozling. The furniture was rustic and artisan, and the menu was cutely bound together with an elastic band. Bob Marley was playing softly in the background, gaining the approval of both myself and Clare, who thought that he was good background music. Not because he should always be played quietly and out of the way, but because the mellow easy-going nature of his songs is welcoming and non-intrusive. Ever since she went to visit one of her best friends in Tanzania, she has developed a keen taste for reggae, although in general Tuff Gong is not one of her favourites. It's remarkable that I haven't heard reggae playing in more of these venues to be honest, considering how well a lot of the genre ticks the same boxes as the cooked breakfast. Both seem, to me in any case, all about recognising the value in taking it easy.

And so, the breakfast:

Full English Breakfast

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Full English Breakfast - £8.50

"Live for others and you will live again" - Bob Marley

It's always a bit of a risk ordering a meal from a menu when it doesn't tell you what's in it. When me and Clare were in halls of residence at Exeter University, every now and then an interesting item would appear on the dinner time menu called Jackpot Casserole. This was a bit of a strange dish, and to this day I'm not any of us were ever sure what it comprised of, apart from celery being the majority stakeholder in the dish. It felt like a similar risk here at Soup-Urb. Was I going to be on the receiving end of celery mounted on a piece of fried bread?

Fortunately this was not the case. The Full English Breakfast comprised of the following; toast (choice of white or granary bread), eggs (choice of poached, scrambled, or fried), spinach, mushrooms, potatoes, tomato, and halloumi. It didn't adhere to the canon and so looked as though it would be a bit dry, but it was certainly much better than anything involving celery.

The one thing that was most striking about the breakfast at Soup-Urb was how perfectly all of the separate components were cooked. Cooked breakfasts usually contain several items that have very different optimum cooking times, and so the act of co-ordinating them can be a fine art, particularly with the more complex breakfasts. The Soup-Urb breakfast contains pretty much the full spectrum of cooking times in it, from the delicate spinach through to the hardy potatoes, though foregoing the inclusion of any item that can just be bunged in an oven for a while whilst attending to other things. To get all of the items spot on is an impressive feat.

To hammer this point home, I have eaten there twice now (partly because I forgot to photograph my food there the first time...) and have tried both the scrambled and poached eggs. Both require very different approaches and amounts of time in preparation, and both yielded superb results, being solid, moist, fluffy, and explosive when required, and keeping these qualities in harmonious balance.

None of the items seemed to have any extra extravagant flavourings added to them, letting the original ingredients speak for themselves. It is a testament to good cooking and ingredients that a component of a dish can taste so delicious in isolation.

The problem was, inevitably, that there were no baked beans. One could argue that beans would ruin the overall aesthetic of the food; the "urban food" aesthetic. I have been in discussion with several people since the breakfast, and the jury is still out as to what the term means. A swift google search shows that it is likely that Soup-Urb have coined the term themselves. To me (and others), "urban food" suggests food for the urbanite, for the individual in an urban environment. Such an individual is likely to be very busy, as is the way with urban environments, and so is in need of food quickly. The urban individual is also cultured, and so wants something a little classy, but also reliable. We're either talking about trendy chain outlets like Pret a Manger or Delice de France, or street food that's a bit more flashy. Sexed up street food, or street food for the middle class. Urban food. I think it's possible to create baked beans to fit this model, and the extra vibrancy and moisture would have gone a long way to securing Soup-Urb's position near the top of the table.

Like reggae, the realm of breakfast can also be a place for social commentary. The cooked breakfast can be a uniting force; there is a certain beauty to the way in which you can buy a meal whose basic formula is replicated everywhere from the greasiest of greasy spoons to the starchiest of table-clothed bistros. It is a model that is enjoyed by all, regardless of their social strata. There is no place for elitism at the breakfast table. It could be argued that the strict worshipping of my "breakfast canon" is a form of elitism, but I feel strongly that each of my four essentials are as mandatory in a cooked breakfast, for both traditional and practical reasons, as water, yeast, malt, and hops are in beer. Bob Marley wanted to see all of mankind live together. One way for this to happen would be for all people in society to open themselves up to baked beans. One love. One heart.

Function: hearty, but strangely marketed 3/5
Adherence to canon: No!
Taste: simply done, but done very well 5/5
Value: costly, but perfectly executed 4/5
Presentation: "urban food"?! No! And more colour please 2/5
Venue: felt homely, with calming ambience 4/5

Overall: largely superb, but driving me to over thinking everything - 4/5