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.