Brunching with Ben at Grand Central

June 14th.

I’ve been quiet on here once again. This time I’ve had a decent excuse, however. All of my writing energies had been diverted into finishing the first draft of my dinosaur pirate novel. At the start of last month, an old friend from uni was scheduled to start working at my office. As he also hails from Brighton, it was likely that we would be commuting together, thus reducing my antisocial writing time, and so it was imperative that I finish the draft before he started the job!

In speaking to him, I discovered that he had also interviewed for my job last year. Although surprising, I would later find - while breakfasting, no less - that he was not my only comrade from Sussex Uni that had interviewed for the post.

Finding out that both he and Ben Meredith had interviewed for the position immediately validated the 5-or-so years I spent working in a hospital.  I know for a fact that Ben is a skilled writer, having read various pieces of his work and heard him discuss texts and ideas with wit and dexterity in workshops. He is also yet another person who was a finalist in the Myriad Quick Fictions competition.

Ben has his fingers in a lot of creative pies at present, and so perhaps it is best he doesn’t have his creative energies sapped by the rigours of medical news writing. Oh, the rigours.

In terms of his creative output, Ben is currently working on an exciting-sounding comic, set in a world where the post-colonial influences of our own are inverted. In this world, airships that are powered by music play a prominent role, as do the people who fly them. Composers are needed to pen the music that is used to get the ships from point A to point B, while conductors are needed to pilot the performances of these pieces.

As you would expect, music will have a prominent role in this story, and even more exciting is the fact that a certain chap-hop legend may have some part to play, after Ben got talking to him about the project at an Iron Boot Scrapers EP launch.

Ben’s love for stories also has him busy in two other key areas of geekdom; video gaming and role playing. Alongside his comic, he is working on a computer game that will explore the idea of fate, and playing an ongoing role-playing game documented in the regular Rusty Quill podcast. This game utilizes the open-source Pathfinder system, and as someone who also enjoys dice-based role-playing games, it has been interesting seeing how people outside of my own circle of biscuit and pizza eaters approach it. If this kind of thing is your bag, I recommend giving them a listen.

Of course, being the arch-creative that he is, it wouldn’t be Ben to just sit back and play a game. Last weekend, he ran a game jam at Nine Worlds Geekfest in London. A game jam is where people come together to create games within a short period of time. In this jam, participants were tasked with creating their own pen and paper RPG on a side of A4 paper within an hour, and then building an expansion for someone else in another hour. I can only presume that Nine Worlds 2015 was bursting with rampant Ben-inspired creativity last weekend.

It was a pleasure hanging out with someone is driven to putting all of his creative ideas into practice. Ben is a man with a lot of exciting projects on his plate. Speaking of plates…

And so, the breakfast:

Veggie Breakfast

Grilled halloumi, wilted spinach, Heinz beans, tomato & field mushroom, free-range eggs (also includes toast)

Vegetarian Breakfast - £7.50

The Grand Central sits over the road from the Bystander Cafe in the same way that North sits over the other side of the compass from South. On the one hand is what appears to be a classic greasy spoon-style cafe (I shall investigate further) and on the other is a trendy bar. A fine illustration of two of Brighton’s many sides.

We opted for the quieter Grand Central. I had been in there the previous weekend and noted a sign advertising a “banging breakfast;” a challenge if ever I saw one. After a short wait with some coffee and juice, two beautifully vivid breakfasts were brought forth.

The most eye-catching component on the plate was the halloumi, a surprisingly underused veggie breakfast component. Here it was grilled well; not too firm and retaining a good level of moisture to give it a meaty texture. This consistency was shared by the mushroom, which was delightfully big but with a taste that lacked in depth. This field mushroom did not taste any different from smaller mushrooms gathered elsewhere.

Composer and conductor

Green vegetables are not seen often in veggie breakfasts either, and here the spinach was another welcome addition. It had been cooked so that it still had a pleasing bit of crunch to it and it offered a great counterpoint to the baked beans (Heinz, don’t you know) which were sweet but not too overbearing.

What was disappointing about the spinach and mushroom was that these are two vegetables that are very easy to jazz up in the cooking process and give a little extra character to. Sadly, no extra risks were taken. These remained plain.

For the most part, however, all of the components had been cooked well. The poached eggs stayed together, even if the yolk could have been a bit thicker, and the toast (no pre-buttering) was nourishingly crunchy. Only the tomato felt underdone, whose core was just a little too firm.

The Grand Central have opted to season their food with adjectives rather than ingredients. I say this because each of the components here had simple and unsurprising tastes. There were no extra embellishments of flavour to give the food true character, and although it looked good and was perfectly functional, the meal did not stand out as a result.

One of the most repeated maxims you will here in creative writing is “show, don’t tell.” Rather than letting the food do the talking, all of the seasoning at the Grand Central takes place in the menu. Eating this breakfast felt a bit like reading the description of a character where the writer has just listed precisely what they look like and weighed them down under a mountain of adjectives and adverbs. Sure, the character might be a good one on paper, but in the act of writing there are certainly more exciting ways of doing it, and ways that readers are more likely to appreciate.

Function: not "banging" but not whimpering either  - 3/5

Adherence to Canon: Yes

Taste: solid but unspectacular - 3/5

Value: a bit pricey for what it was  - 2/5

Presentation: rich, vivid colours, nice plate - 4/5

Venue: a generic Brighton bar - 3/5

Overall: show, don't tell - 3/5

Cherchez pour petit déjeuner avec Charlie au Caffe Aldo

April 6th.

The plan was simple. Finish off the excess of a 28th birthday with a nice bit of breakfasting the morning after. My companion was going to be Charlie Guérin, a Frenchman, and so I had proposed visiting Paris Cafe Bar. Simple, easy, apt.

The problem was that it happened to be a Bank Holiday Monday, and Paris Cafe Bar doesn't appear to open on bank holidays. Zut alors.

And so the search for an alternative began and we set off for Trafalgar Street, home to a mighty plethora of eating options. There was bound to be somewhere open here that I hadn't been before.

Sure enough, Caffe Aldo presented itself. In truth, I had eaten there before, on my birthday two years ago in fact, but I had yet to review it for this blog. And as many of us well know, two years is a long time in terms of cafes in Brighton.

I have known Charlie for a much shorter time than that. It has been less than year since he first arrived here, ready for an internship alongside Steve Kelly at Espresso TV. Hopefully he will be here for many more years to come.

Now the internship has finished, Charlie is looking for further work in media production. Our fingers are all crossed that he can find something and continue to live and work in Brighton. It's not as though he doesn't have the talent. Charlie has made plenty of his own films in the past, as well as helping to create a popular hack version of Metroid called Darkholme Hospital along with promotional videos.

Not only that, but Charlie also likes to make music. Going under the name Area XG, he has made some great electronic industrial ambience that you can check out on his bandcamp page. He hopes to perform some music at the next [beep] event, a monthly platform for local electronic artists to play their music and collaborate with other like-minded souls. Usually held at the Verdict, these nights are worth a look and are free to attend up until 7pm.

Passionate about his music, Charlie has thrown himself into the electronic scene. It is an enthusiasm and passion that he also brings to friendship. He is a very friendly and kind-hearted individual, equally charming and open. He is also quite adept at the game of petanque, but this was to be expected from a man who embraces many of the French stereotypical characteristics with open arms. I once bumped into Charlie walking down London Road and he was carrying a baguette under one arm.

Hopefully, with all his skills and good qualities it will not be long before Charlie finds the job that he is looking for, ensuring that the breakfast we had is just the first of many.

And so, the breakfast:

Veggie Breakfast

Veggie sausages, fried eggs, hash brown, tomato, roast veg, toast, and beans

Veggie Breakfast - £5.40

I remembered having a good time last time I ate at Caffe Aldo. Certainly the signs were good as we were greeted with the sound of new wave post-punk playing on the radio. It appeared to be a quiet morning, although shortly after we had sat down the cafe began to fill rapidly. Wonderful timing.

We were served just as quickly. The menus did not specify precisely was the breakfast was comprised of, and so when I was presented with my plate I was both pleasantly surprised and perplexed.

The inclusion of roast vegetables was welcome and refreshing to see. However, the quantity of hash browns (1) and baked beans (a metric shit ton) was bamboozling.

"Je suis Charlie"

Only having one hash brown would have been ok if it had been an exceptional hash brown but unfortunately it was not. It was all crunch and no flavour. Only having one hash brown would have been ok if the other carb component, the toast, had been especially good. Again, unfortunately it was not. The toast was average in taste and texture, making me rue the lack of multiple HBs.

In contrast, the beans were there in superabundance. Sitting there in their little receptacle, it felt almost as if they were there for other items to be dipped in, almost like a grossly underwhelming breakfast fondue. As the picture might indicate, there was far too much juice, diluting the flavour that was there. When I gave in and poured the contents of the receptacle out onto the plate, a beanie flood of biblical proportions swamped across the land. It was a mess.

There were some positives to be had on the plate. The two sausages had crispy surfaces that gave way to pleasantly soft flesh and notes of rosemary. The roast veg was varied, meaning that there were a number of different flavours and degrees of sweetness to play with. These were also cooked well and carried a uniform crispness to them.

The tomato was not quite as well cooked as these. As it was, it felt solidly chunky where it should have been soft and submissive. Also on the "not quite" pile were the eggs. The whites were fine and firm but the yolks were only slightly juicy. Considering the amount of beans, however, perhaps I should have been grateful for all the dryness I could find on the plate.

My abiding memory of this breakfast will always be the ocean of baked beans, excessive and dominating. I know I have sung the praises of beans on here and sung them often, but you can always have too much of a good thing. Here at Caffe Aldo, I definitely had too much of a good thing. Something has gone wrong if there's a component of your breakfast that you can eat with a straw.

Function: breakfast should not be perplexing - 2/5

Adherence to Canon: Yes

Taste: many problems here, not all bean-induced - 2/5

Value: a lot of bang for your buck (though it could benefit from less bang in the bean dept.) - 5/5

Presentation: to be fair, they've made the bean abomination look presentable - 3/5

Venue: pleasant environment, good music - 3/5

Overall: it's bean emotional - 2.5/5

Liaising with Lynsey at Silo

22nd March.

breakfast

[brek-fuh st]

It is unsurprising that something so homely, friendly, and familiar as breakfast should be so regularly referred to in a colloquial fashion. It is also unsurprising that these colloquialisms should make their way onto the menus and A-boards of cafes and eateries wishing to persuade hungry folk to fork out their money for a homely meal.

It can be surprising to see how this colloquial version of “breakfast” can sometimes be spelled.

For me, it has always been spelled “brekky.” No other alternative as ever crossed my mind. You need to get shot of the “a” and double up the consonants before the “y” to ensure that the sound of the “e” is short. I don’t know if there’s any technical English language science behind these feelings, but they feel pretty good.

What you don’t do is spell it “breaky.” Just look at words like “freaky,” “creaky,” and “leaky.” You wouldn’t want to associate breakfast with words like that. A haunted house, maybe, but not a breakfast. Weeeelll, ok, maybe carnivores might have something to say about “streaky.”

I don’t want be pedantic though, there is more important ground to be covered. Let’s just draw a line under this particular gripe of mine. I will write no more on the subject.

I couldn’t believe that Lynsey Jean spelled it “breaky.” For someone so talented when it comes to the arts of the kitchen to make such a catastrophic food-based error, well, the mind boggles. Perhaps it is for the best that she is making a dramatic change in her life by leaving behind the cafes and bakeries and heading off to New Zealand.

By the time this is up on the Internet, Lynsey will have arrived in New Zealand, ready to touch some glow worms, see some whales and to follow her dream of becoming a llama ffarmer. It is a big change to make, and like all big changes it is an exciting one that positively thrums with possibility. 

It also offers her an escape from terrible middle-management. To be fair, she had already escaped terrible middle-management by going to work at The Marwood, one of the finest coffee houses in Brighton, at times both relaxing and fiercely idiosyncratic. Its quirkiness is a matter of pride and is defended vigorously. Apparently a customer once asked a staff-member to turn down the music in the cafe, who then responded with, “oh sure, we’ll just get rid of the atmosphere.”

Rude? Perhaps, but not quite as rude or downright bad as the middle-management that Lynsey had experienced prior to joining The Marwood's coterie. The boss in question would sit upstairs, only engage with their staff through email (at times in a very threatening manner), and took away their tips. These are classic strategies for “how to be a horrible boss,” and it is unsurprising that someone would feel compelled to travel halfway around the world to get away from them as a result. 

It is a shame though, as it means that Brighton will have lost another talented soul. As well as being handy at crafts and musical instrumentation, Lynsey is a grand master of baking. Her cake creations have wowed the tongues and stomachs of many in Brighton over the past few years, and now the southern hemisphere will have exclusive access to these skills.

But before Lynsey headed off to the southern hemisphere, there was one thing she needed to do. A trip to Buddies was lacking from her resumé. I sincerely hope she managed to take a trip there before leaving Brighton. We had a nice breakfast at Silo, but Buddies is a monolithic institution. Living in Brighton and not going to Buddies is a bit like living in New Zealand and not stroking a sheep.

And so, the brekky…

Silo Breakfast

Sourdough toast with silo beans + slow-cooked eggs (w/ Espresso mushrooms)

Silo Breakfast - £6
(add Espresso Mushrooms - extra £2)

Silo's aim is to run with zero waste, achieving this through direct trade with farmers and by only using local ingredients that do not generate any waste themselves.

This mindset was not limited to the food. From the glass jars used for drinking to the furniture fashioned from plywood, everything felt salvaged.  One neat innovation was the projection of the menus onto the walls, meaning that the regular production of new menus is not required.

In addition to the homely aspect that this salvaging provided, Silo felt full of friendliness. Cheerful bonhomie exuded from the staff - prompt to clean up any spillages and on hand to describe each and every component of our meals - all the way to the toilets, where users are encouraged to leave messages on the walls in chalk.

A typical llama ffarmer. Lynsey's calling.

The sourdough toast (baked over 48 hours) was the perfect mix of soft and crispy, offering a crunch to the dish but not one that was so hard that it alienated the other ingredients. Our ever-fastidious waiter even pointed out what type of flour was used in the baking. I felt intimately acquainted with the sourdough by this point.

I was reminded of those wee rubber aliens that used to be all the rage over a decade ago when it came to the bulbous egg. You know, the ones that would always end up stuck to the classroom ceiling. The egg quivered just like one of those, yet was a thousand times more rewarding when its surface was pierced. It was poached and wasn’t shy about gushing thickly all over my plate.

The beans (homemade, of course) tied the egg and the toast together. Their tang was familiar, but the texture was reminiscent of a thick vegetable soup, sharing a size and mouthfeel with lentils. These were interesting beans and were the more rich and fulfilling for it.

The mushrooms were some of the greatest I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. Homegrown (what else?) shiitake shrooms that were so meaty and chewy, at times I was uncertain what I was eating. These were streets ahead of the usual. Added to this texture was a delightful saltiness, strong but not overpowering, that was reminiscent of the subtle hand that soy sauce brings to stir fries.

I also have it on good authority from Lynsey that Silo serves up the best black pudding she’s ever tasted.

Here was a truly mighty breakfast, served up in an environment that is not only friendly to the customer but friendly to the local environment as well. I was so impressed that I dragged my pals here on my birthday for brunch. Although it lacks potato, the finesse with which the other components were served makes up for this shortcoming. It is truly wholesome fare, a breakfast that is not only hearty but has a heart as well.

Disclaimer: Now, I was expecting to have some tomato with the breakfast. Unfortunately, I was informed by the oracle/waiter that they did not have any tomatoes in at that point in time. One of the perils of operating with zero waste, I suppose, is not having infinite access to all ingredients. To remedy this problem and to bring the breakfast up to the standards demanded by the canon, I opted to have some extra “espresso mushrooms” with mine to make up for the missing fleshy component.

I have since discovered that tomatoes are not a part of the general menu, and shall reflect this deficit in my rating.

Function: a warming experience overall - 4/5

Adherence to canon: No

Price: limited variety but high quality - 3/5
Taste: ruddy beautiful - 5/5

Venue: great vibes and intentions - 5/5

Overall: a triumph, hampered only by non-adherence to the canon - 4/5

Agreeing with Adam at Cafe and Salvage

February 21st.

On occasion, you will get an individual that does something far beyond the scope of your own talent that astounds you so much, the only rational thing you can do is to try and stop them from doing it again. This is my first memory of Adam Rowden.

My 5-a-side team, Jurassic Park Rangers, were in the same league as his, the wonderfully named Ross Kemp On 5-a-side. We came off the worst against them on a couple of times, what with them being a team of very skillful individuals who worked well as a cohesive unit. There was one particular guy, a small player with a beard, who enjoyed flair moves quite a bit. As one specific game drew on and the thrashing we were in the midst of receiving grew bigger, I was beginning to get frustrated. And then he pulled out a rainbow kick, also known as a lambretta, Ardiles flick or coup de sombrero. There was only one thing that I could do.

A month or two later, and who should turn up at my 11-a-side team’s training? Thankfully, I don’t think he’s flicked the ball over me since that fateful day, and now we were doing things on my terms at the breakfast table. This was my field. He wouldn’t be flicking any meals over my head, let me tell you.

Mind you, he is another that dabbles in writing. Recently, he and some his friends set up a music blog called And Antarctica which is looking to regularly put out reviews, interviews and other features. He has asked if I would like to contribute, so we spent some time discussing how this would work and what sort of things would work for them. There is already some great content on there and it is certainly worth checking out.

We also had a wee chat about the process of writing and how much of an endeavor it is to write anything of length. Adam has an idea for story, involving woodland animals in the style of The Wind In The Willows, only setting them in some kind of noir-thriller context. It sounds like great fun, but the idea of sitting down and pouring hours into the project is a daunting one. And how much of an idea is needed? For something as long as a novel, do you need to actively plan out the whole thing?

It’s a difficult call to make. I’ve been working on a story of my own for a couple of years now, set in a world of dinosaur pirates threatened by an incoming meteor (which gets more and more depressingly similar to the plot of Final Fantasy VII each day), and although there have been some bits I’ve needed to have a rough plan for, I have found that the best - or at least more fun - way to go has been to plan some plot points but not think too much about the stuff in between. Sort of like a literary join the dots exercise. This approach has given the characters and setting some room to breathe in this first draft and I think it has stopped me from getting bogged down in forcing myself to write through scenes. Having freedom and space when you’re working on a project of this size is important.

Adam is a keen fan of dinosaurs. His favourite is the deinonychus, the inspiration between Jurassic Park's 'raptors. When working at a music festival, he attempted to act out the entirety of Jurassic Park to his fellow campers, only for them all to fall asleep. He has a fine collection of dinosaur stickers in his wallet. 

The difficulty of naming things also came up. With my story I have gotten into a pickle with my main protagonist. When I started writing I couldn’t think of a suitable name for him and so I just decided to label him R. to get the ball rolling, planning on returning to him at some point to give him a more appropriate moniker. Unfortunately, he has now become R. It will be tricky amending this problem. Adam has been experiencing similar troubles with naming things with a musical project he has been working on for the past four years or so. The music of Fierce Friend is now out in the wilds of the Internet for perusal. Coming up with song titles and even a band name can be very tricky. The ultimate cop-out, self-titling, only works if you have a band name in the first place. Adam had been puzzling over a track called ‘Sign’ for quite some time. Jeez. That’s not a great name. Let’s hope Fierce Friend can resolve that one, pronto. Who calls a song ‘Sign’?

OK, so perhaps we share quite a number of fields, and in most of which Adam displays a formidable amount of skill. But certainly, the eating of cooked breakfast was the one thing I could claim to specialize in more than him. I mean, he ordered pancakes for heaven’s sake… 

And so, the breakfast…

The Mound

2 Eggs, Double Potatoes

The Mound - £6
(add tomatoes - extra £2)

Quick disclaimer: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with pancakes at all. I think they’re great, and it hurts me deeply that I didn’t get to eat any this Shrove Tuesday. That was just me attempting a breakfast journalist rainbow flick…

Anyhow, the breakfast. It had been suggested to me that I visit Cafe and Salvage by Josh from the football team who had started working there. Josh had made some great suggestions in the past, and so this seemed the logical place to begin fastbreaking in 2015.

It was a lovely venue, a cafe with a cosy feel. It had a huge ceiling that gave it space to hang lots of exciting things from the walls and rafters without making the place feel too cluttered. The furniture was comfortable, dogs were allowed in, and upon my arrival I was asked if I would like a drink. Good service and great first impressions.

Here is Adam looking very proud about some shelves.

Unfortunately, although the menu looked good overall, the one thing that it was lacking was a traditional cooked breakfast option, or at least one that fitted my criteria. The closest thing to it was referred to as “The Mound.” I asked what this was exactly, and what was described to me sounded like a classic hash. This would have to do. The waitress said that some vegetables were involved, but I thought it would be best to ask for additional tomatoes, just to be on the safe side and guarantee another component of the canon.

I needn’t have worried though. The hash was packed full with mushrooms, peppers and onions in abundance. The tomatoes weren’t really required to provide extra moisture and texture, and so unless you are a tomato aficionado or have the appetite of an iguanodon, I would suggest skipping these as an extra.

As well as being plentiful, the vegetables in The Mound were delightfully sweet and soft, offering a good counterpoint to the solid base provided by the potatoes and egg, and the bitter sharpness of the rocket. The rocket, incidentally, was a well-deployed innovation and did not feel out of place in the breakfast arena at all.

It was the rocket that provided the crunch to The Mound, given that the potatoes were soft. This was probably the ideal way to handle things on the texture side, as too much crunch from these, comprising the main body of the dish, would have taken away the cohesiveness of the ingredients.

The eggs did their job as well. These were marvelously oozy, dripping gushes of yolk down into the body of the hash, binding the breakfast in a gametic blood pact.

Overall, it was a well-constructed hash. Each ingredient performed its duty well, giving the dish a sense of order and cohesion that pleased me. However, the dish was cohesive on a simple level. The Mound was lacking in a diversity of flavours that many other breakfasts are able to provide. 

This may have been remedied by the inclusion of baked beans somehow, offering something a little different to the fleshy vegetables that were already in there. As refreshing as it is to write a review and not include my usual cliché buzzwords like ‘tangy’ and ‘mouthfeel’, beans really do make a difference when it comes to a cooked breakfast.

Cafe and Salvage is a great little cafe. It feels warm and homely, and I was very comfortable during my time in there. The food was also good and I would recommend it. The one caveat to this is that I would recommend it as a place to go for food so long as you didn’t want a cooked breakfast - I question their dedication to the cooked breakfast cause. Of course, if you like pancakes as a cooked breakfast, this a mighty fine place to go.

Function: hearty and filling - 4/5

Adherence to Canon: Alas, no

Taste: tasty and well-cooked, if one-dimensional - 3/5

Value: fairly standard pricing - 3/5

Presentation: smart and exciting, like a secret agent - 4/5

Venue: friendly staff, light, airy and homely - 5/5

Overall: pleasing cafe, just not ideally suited to the cooked breakfast - 3/5

Dinosaurs strolling casually through an apocalyptic wasteland.

Occupying Lovefit Café with Ollie

October 18th.

Again, another blog post that was written a long, long time ago. I'll make amends, I promise...

Meeting people is easy. Both the title of a Radiohead tour documentary that finds the band feeling increasingly alienated following the success of their third album, OK Computer, and a statement of truth. So long as the two people want to meet up and hang out, there’s little reason for there to be any difficulty in a meeting happening. OK, well, perhaps if one of the two has diarrhea & vomiting and lives on a different continent, that might make things tricky, but otherwise, I would say that meeting people is easy.

This is a conclusion that Ollie Fournier has come to. Ollie was making his first return to Brighton for about 3 years, and was slightly annoyed with himself that it had been that long. He had moved to London once he had finished his degree, but the rigours of employment had deprived him of the impetus to make the short pilgrimage to the coast. Now living in Cambridge with a satisfying job that leaves him plenty of free time, Ollie is looking to make amends.

In this first instance of his new attitude, he has a friend who he hadn't seen for an inexcusably long time. Deciding that enough was enough, Ollie simply sent a message asking them to name a time and a place for them to meet up and that was that. Easy peasy. Our meet-up for breakfast was arranged in a similarly efficient manner.

I first met Ollie playing in a Stop The Cuts Bank Holiday 5-a-side football tournament. Our team, Workers of the World Utd (probably my favourite pun football team name, just ahead of Lokomotiv Sodor), were victorious, seeing off a team of black bloc anarchists and the Justin Fashanu All-Stars among others en route to victory. His footballing and immediate friendliness were instrumental in the early shaping of Kemptown F.C., and without his input it would doubtless be a very different team.

In Cambridge, Ollie is currently the organizer of play schemes for kids with the University of Cambridge. It sounds like an ideal job; he gets to work towards something fun and has the responsibility to work his hours flexibly. Excitingly, for the (then) upcoming half-term he was hoping to arrange for the kids to do some Parkour.

His argument is that Parkour is ideal as it is a form of process-based play, rather than outcome-based. This means that the reward comes from the process of participating, rather than the outcome of winning something. As it is a form of challenging oneself and passing one’s own boundaries, it is suitable for children of all abilities. Just so long as no one face plants into a handrail, it is a compelling argument.

In that respect, I would say that this breakfast blog was similar to Parkour. As I’ve acknowledged previously, it will be nigh on impossible for me to sample every single vegetarian cooked breakfast in Brighton; there is a vast multitude and new ones are opening every week. Treating this fastbreaking as an outcome-based project is not the way to go. Rather, it is a process-based project. The fun and joy of it is in the meeting up with friends and eating some (hopefully) hearty food.

And so, the breakfast…

Veggie Full English

Scrambled egg, baked beans, mushrooms, grilled tomato, hash brown and granary toast, with two grilled Linda McCartney sausages and an extra hash brown (plus a complimentary small coffee, pot of tea or 8oz orange juice.

Veggie Full English - £6.99

The Love Fit Café is also similar to Parkour (vaguely) in the keen eye it has on health and fitness at all times (you don’t often see an out-of-shape individual attempting Parkour). The casual and easy-going atmosphere gives way to a menu that gives healthiness precedence. Many options on the menu can be served with extra shots of protein. You can even find out the precise nutritional content of your breakfast. 

Nothing as maverick as that in the breakfast, but it did come with a complimentary beverage of choice. I opted for the orange juice which was freshly squeezed. Delicious and zingy.

The breakfast itself:

Calories 711

Protein 51.1g

Carbs 60.4g

Sugar 12.3g

Fat 17.6g

Salt 4.9g

2 of your 5-a-day.

The plate was full and some care was taken with the breakfast’s delivery. A small garnish of parsley and separate packet of butter left the amount of spreading to my discretion.

Meeting Ollie is now easy

I was eager to try the egg, with personal and professional egg failures fresh in my mind. The scrambling had been done well, giving a solid yet fluffy texture. The other items that require careful cooking were also well done. The mushrooms were succulent and the tomato seemed friendly in its soft juiciness. It was welcoming, though no additional flavouring was present on these items.

It was notable that the food had been cooked in as healthy way as possible. This was most evident in the sausages, bearing the scars of grilling proudly. These Linda McCartney sausages were hot and firm, their solidity contrasting wonderfully with the other fleshy items.

The other components all shared a certain chunkiness. The beans felt sizable and were fruity without further softness. The toast, too, was chunky in a triumphant way. Crisp rustic bread that was wonderfully chewy. 

Unfortunately, there is another form of chewiness. A chewiness that is unwelcome and unbecoming. This was the fate of the hash browns, which sadly had been overdone. The potato was subdued as a result and ultimately the browns came across as a re-hash of the toast.

Overall, it was a pleasant breakfast. The complimentary drink represents great value for money and on the whole the dish tasted good. Perhaps it could have benefited with a little less attention to healthiness and a little more attention to delivering some outstanding flavours. I feel as though additional seasoning wouldn’t comprise Lovefit Café’s mission and would improve the dish no end.

Still, one of the great selling points of the vegetarian breakfast is that it can be one of the funnest and most warming ways to make major inroads to your 5-a-day. With my orange juice I would argue that I was over half the way there way ahead of lunchtime. It is nice to have a café that makes me feel like I’m doing my body good as well as my spirit. A little bit of outcome to go along with my process isn’t bad every now and then.

Function: felt healthy and heart-warming - 4/5

Adherence to Canon: Yes

Taste: tasted fine, but have benefitted seasoning - 3/5

Value: complimentary drink? Right on! - 4/5

Presentation: looks good and good attention paid to healthfulness - 5/5

Venue: comfy, although the toilet has a weird security lock - 3/5

Overall: a lot of love and a little bit of fit in this breakfast - 4/5

Recovering with Rachel at the Green Tomato

October 11th.

Please note, I actually wrote all this up in October. It's just taken me this long to upload the pictures and put in the links. Happy New Year!

What does it mean to party? The great Andrew W.K. has a lot to say on the matter. Alongside his helpful columns advising people with how to deal with situations such as crises of faith or friends joining the army, he also likes to let everyone know precisely what a diverse concept the concept of partying is.

A selection of things that count as partying:

- books
- hugging chubby pets
- drawing
- role-playing games
- being obsessed with sports

Rachel Silverlight may be someone that, in the words of Mr. W.K., parties hard. We were supposed to meet for breakfast last weekend, but the after effects of a party proved to be too much for her. She left the party, maybe sometime between 1am and 2am (I can’t remember too clearly, I was also partying hard) but didn’t rouse from her slumbering until 4pm.

(Despite partying hard and leaving at some point between 5am and 6am, I was up and ready to break the fast as the morning hours were rolling into double figures. Just sayin’…)

So, second time lucky. We successfully managed to meet at the Green Tomato on Western Road at 10.30am and proceeded to have breakfast in a cafe that seemed to buy into the partying hard ethos. On one wall was written, “Eat good, feel good, life is short, enjoy your coffee.” Positive and uplifting music was playing and there was a small shelf devoted to condiments. This was my kind of party - a polite, homely one.

Rachel is another friendly chap whom I met at Sussex Uni, sharing with me both a module in psychoanalysis and a knowledge of Paul Weller’s favourite town, Woking. Similar to previous breakfast buddy, Sophie, she also had a winning piece in one of the Quick Fictions competitions. She has got writing skills.

As well as having strong writing skills, Rachel also has strong taste in music (well, she’s come to see Red Diamond Dragon Club play a few times) and literature. I have lent her Donna Tartt’s wonderful novel, The Secret History, and I can imagine that she (and possibly her whole family, considering how long it's taken me to write this up) will have finished reading it before I publish this blog post. She’s currently writing a novel, and hopefully Tartt’s work will give her the final spark to speed her over the finish line in a Bacchanalian blur.

Rachel was going for a haircut later. Both us dislike getting haircuts. Visits can often make you feel like Samson taking a seat at Sweeney Todd’s. Fortunately, she has found a place where she is able to have a nice chat with the hairdresser, something that is worth its weight in gold. Sure, there are many places where you’ll be able to talk to the person cutting your hair; talk about the weather, what you’re doing that weekend and where you work. It is a rare and wonderful thing to find someone to discuss poker, the radio and children's books. I miss Harry from Toppers.

With regards to hair, Rachel made a bold (bald) prediction: “mutton chops are the new beard.” It’s not completely out of the question, but would the hipsterisation of mutton chops deprive them of their rural charm? Like a good breakfast, thick sideburns have a homely feel to them, an aura that is more comfort than glamour. Only time will tell whether their inevitable return to fashion erodes that away.

And so, the breakfast:

Vegetarian

2 v. sausages, 2 eggs, 2 hash browns, beans, tomato, mushrooms & toast.

Vegetarian - £5.95

I was rumbled by the staff of the Green Tomato. They saw me jotting down their menu and asked me what I was up to. I was only confronted after I had finished eating, however, and so my newfound status of food critic did not lead to preferential treatment. The only extra helpings I received were of smiles.

Not that I really needed any extra helpings with this breakfast; the portion sizes were good for the amount I had paid. I was particularly fond of the beans. These were fruity, rich, soft like vellum, and were plentiful enough to be taken in freely with each of the other components as I chose.

Publishing shrimp and literary cowboy

Our food was brought to us very swiftly. This was good, although suggestive of a meal that was cooked quickly. This was conveyed by the textures of the components, some of which were softer than usual and others firmer. In nearly all cases though, this did not prove to be a problem.

The hash browns, usually reliable for a hearty crunch, were soft and warm, albeit with a crisp skin. Fortunately, there was ample crunch in the toast. It came pre-buttered and happily on the spectrum of crunch right in the middle, yielding happily to my teeth but with that satisfying roughness of texture.

The sausage was also quite soft. These were of the vegetable variety and were surprisingly sweet. They probably had more in common with bubble and squeak than sausages, but had enough going to differentiate them from the other components.

In contrast, the tomato and mushrooms were much firmer. Pleasantly, despite their firmness, both ingredients managed to carry a lot of flavour. Although I could tell that the tomato hadn’t been cooked for a great amount of time, the seedy sections had a decent softness to them. It was soft but didn’t offer much juice. Conversely, the mushrooms were solid but somehow very juicy, with a bright and cheerful taste.

Everything was fine for the amount of time it had been cooked, save for the eggs. I’m not sure what had happened here, but they were fragmenting all over the place. I would pick up a piece on my fork and before I could raise it to my mouth it had split apart and tumbled back to the plate. They felt undercooked and were frustrating to finish. Those darned eggs...

Overall, the Green Tomato had a lot to offer. As a venue it was warm, comfortable and friendly. The food was affordable, quick to arrive and, for the most part, tasty and enjoyable to eat. Still, the egg was the feature that stayed with me. It fell apart like an impressionable new student getting caught up in a group of elitist Classics academics and finding that they’re in a little too deep. If only the eggs had gotten on with the job of cooking rather than plunging headfirst into the glamorous world of the breakfast plate. Things might have ended up much better for everyone. Still, egg breakdown makes for an interesting story. Donna Tartt, take note. 

Function: would have been higher, but those darned eggs... - 3/5

Adherence to Canon: Yes

Value: more than a fair price - 4/5
Taste: everything tasted fine, save those darned eggs... - 3/5

Presentation: looked great, even those darned eggs... - 4/5

Venue: very friendly, with commendable condiments shelf - 4/5

Overall: those darned eggs... - 3.5/5

Handily placed, well catered